DIY air conditioner | VANLIFE Hack

alright guys so if you are living van life then you definitely know how hot it can be and here in Salt Lake City it's been like a hundred and five degrees and that is just absolutely unbearable so since we don't have an air conditioning unit in the van not because we don't want one it's just that they use so much electricity that you generally have to be plugged into Shore power in order to use them and we're not ever really charged or we're not ever really plugged into Shore power so it's not something that we can really use I've looked at very small air conditioning units it's a little miniature swamp coolers that they make either everything uses way too much electricity or it's gonna put a lot of moisture into the air which is generally gonna be pretty bad for the inside of your van you don't want to just blast moisture in there even when it's hot that just makes it humid you're gonna end up with mold not a good idea so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make one of those ice chest coolers that forces air through a tube that's cooled by ice kind of like the opposite effect of what takes place in an external combustion furnace which is like an RV furnace which is what we have in the van so I've already got a boat blower motor off of Amazon I've gotten a 12 volt pigtail that's gonna connect to a cigarette lighter so that I can plug that blower motor into the house battery that's gonna help me power this ice chest cooler then we can run the ice chest cooler without starting the ban or without using a lot of electricity what I still need to pick up is a cooler some duct tubing some reducers and then some sealant so once we get this put together I'm gonna fill it with ice we're gonna test it out see how it works and you're stuck in places like this that are really hot you definitely want to be able to sleep in a cool environment so having one of these ice chest coolers to drop the temperature below you know like 80 degrees when you're trying to sleep in the van is an absolute godsend so we're gonna go ahead and get started on this we're gonna head to Home Depot why don't you come along with me all right so I know I said we're going to Depot but we've got to get a cooler and Walmart's gonna have the best prices so I'm really looking for a cooler that has a drain that's gonna be relatively small they try to bring the suckers down singing on the crowd we're gonna go that's big it's 43 bucks seems like kind of a lot but I think it'll probably keep the iSchool the longest and probably be the most efficient what that's enormous you think it's gonna be loud I don't even know what you're making Wow I ended up getting a pretty large cooler and has smooth sides it's pretty big but it's also like a really well insulated cooler and it has a drain to let the melted ice out of the water out but it's gonna be definitely worth it on those days where it's 100 degrees in an indie cooldown this is a 99% Trent episode but I thought I would pop in and say hi I as many of you know work full times writing a big report right now but I think I'm gonna take a short lunch break and go into Home Depot and figure out exactly what he's building I'm as lost as you are big Coleman cooler $43 84 cents 4 inch by 3 inch coupling eight dollars and ninety two cents three inch by one and a half inch coupling six dollars and 98 cents four inch by eight foot semi rigid aluminum ducting $10.98 one and a half inch by two foot ABS pipe two dollars and forty six cents white quick seal caulk three dollars and twenty eight cents four inch in line marine bilge air blower $29.99 12 volt cigarette lighter pigtail $9.99 12 volt cigarette lighter to USB adapter $9.99 that comes to one hundred and twenty six dollars and forty three cents the reason that that's so expensive is because this cooler was like almost forty five bucks but I think the more money you spend on a cooler the longer your ice is going to last the more efficient your band air conditioner or DIY air conditioner is going to be now for this entire job you're really just going to need a drill with a drill bit and then a screwdriver tip a jigsaw so that you can cut the holes out where the air needs to go in and needs to go out and then you're going to need something to be able to strip the electrical wires and crimp the ends together so that you can power the pump and that's what the inside of your cooler looks like styrofoam two sides of plastic pretty basic so just go ahead and cut the eyelets off of the pigtail and then you're gonna want to crimp the positive on to the positive end of the pump negative on to the negative end of the pump you want to make sure that you have the arrow going the correct direction so that you're blowing into the air conditioner and just use two of these 1 inch sheetrock screws to actually secure the blower motor to the cooler and we're ready to put the cuff link on this end you've got this cuff link installed into your ducting you want to take your elbow pretty much as far down as you can it'll come out right about here but this kind of is low into that little section as I can if this was cutting through anything but plastic and foam I would be kind of worried about this part because I can't really set the jigsaw flat down on here to go around the radius but I think holding the jigsaw up and kind of manipulating it in the air is gonna work just fine she isn't pretty but she works there we go cut this off and then you can take the end that you cut and that can go into the fittings so that you have a nice smooth edge on this side so there's no burrs or anything that's gonna scratch it now we just need a silicon up all of our entry points so that we don't have any hair or water leaking out and then we'll be ready to go pretty exciting go around the inside and the outside edge of the tubing or of the the ducting here and you can kind of back this up a little bit fill in all the gaps here I'm not the best at caulking things obviously I'm making a huge mess here long as it's airtight that's all it really matters it doesn't have to be pretty now you just got to fill it with ice and turn it on so there you go guys as you can tell I'm sweating to death out here it's like a hundred degrees the Do It Yourself cooler air conditioner for your van is definitely done all we got to do now is go and buy a couple bags ice throw them in there and kick it on so let's go pick up some ice and we'll see exactly how it works beautiful another thing that's nice about this is you can actually use that ice for like drinks or smoothies or whatever you want because other than a little metal tubing that's in there it's gonna be pretty clean for your grimy hands like my grimy hands today is the day to do this it's what a hundred and seventeen is what the dash was reading earlier it's definitely at least a hundred degrees just outside in the actual Sun now we're gonna let that I sit in there for a minute get the tube really cold and then we have a infrared thermometer that we're actually gonna read the temperature of the air coming out of the cooler and see how big of a difference it actually makes in the van when it's hot now we've got the DIY air conditioner cooler completely finished I put those two bags ice in there I let it chill out for about 20 minutes to make sure the internals are nice and cool so basically this is going to suck air in below through the chamber which is gonna cool the air and then it's going to come out this port right here we have this infrared thermometer so it's gonna kind of tell us temperature so that is reading ninety nine point eight degrees right now that's the inside of this tube we're gonna go ahead and plug this in just a basic USB pork okay okay pretty good oh yeah conditioner oh it's cold I think we just fixed our problem holy crap temperatures pretty much just consistently going down down to 76 degrees remember it was a 98 before it turned on the fan a couple things that I want to go over this whole setup was 125 bucks you can probably get an actual air conditioner for a little bit more expensive than that but one it's gonna drain the electricity of your house battery in your van so fast it's not even gonna be worth it or you can be plugged into Shore power I bought a cooler that was like 45 bucks basically you can buy coolers that are like 15 bucks and probably get the same amount of cooling out of them I believe that this cooler will actually keep ice for a longer period of time so in the long run will save more money than buying the 15 dollar cooler also might keep the internals cooler which is gonna produce colder temperatures coming out of the port so this 12 volt cigarette lighter adapter a lot of people in their vans have the actual receiver for this the female ends so you can just plug that right in it runs off your house battery everything's good to go I did never install one of those because I never used these I had to buy an extra $10 piece that is the female version of that I have plenty of USBs in the van so I just plug this into one of our charging USBs more business baby yeah it's like it's cold it's like having an actual air conditioner right here I was pretty skeptical because I wasn't sure how much airflow there would be and also how loud it would be and if you're gonna be working in your van I'm on like conference calls all day I didn't want something super loud this makes noise but it's not gonna be it's not gonna be loud enough to like make background noise in a conference call or a video call it's kind of it almost sounds like a fridge yeah when a fridge kicks on and it's like it's pretty similar to that level of noise I mean it's totally safe there's no combustion there's no no fumes no anything you're literally just pushing air that's hot through a frigid chamber and then when it comes out the air is cold so kind of the longer this thing runs the cooler it should keep the interior of the van it was great it's noticeable instantly noticeable it doesn't really use any more electricity than the roof vent fan and whence this hot the Solar is pumping out enough electricity that it doesn't even know this thing's running so just lowering the temperature of the air of the room that you're already in so you want to keep the windows and the roof vent closed so that you don't have a bunch of hot air coming in while you're trying to cool the air down and this thing is doing a great job yeah we're not going to keep it on pianos so I think we'll kind of give this a few weeks try it out and then maybe do a more extensive review once we know the kinks yeah let's we kind of once we put it through the wringer yeah we'll let you guys know we'll kind of update you in one of the future videos and let you know how it's been working out over a long period of time if you aren't subscribed to Trent Natalie already go ahead and hit that subscribe button check out our other videos I'm Trent and this is Allie obviously if you could give us a thumbs up on the video we'd really appreciate that if you're gonna try this we'd love to like see how yours turns out so maybe tag us on Instagram or let us know shoot us a DM or something if you're gonna try it and let us know your thoughts how does it work for you what would you change what should we have done differently yeah and if you have any questions about how to build this or any of the specs or any questions in general just shoot them down in the comments I'll be glad to answer them for you in the description I'm gonna leave links to every single piece of equipment or tool that I use to build this thing so you can see a full list of everything that you'll need to replicate this exact design pretty easy I think this is worth honor 25 bucks I'm I'm not sold it's been five minutes I'd just like oh this will definitely make it bearable on those nights when it's really hard to sleep and it's hot you've got the windows open there's nothing you can do kick one of these puppies on just sleep like a baby get out there and try it yeah like the video if you liked the video or give us a thumbs up whatever you want to call it subscribe if you're not already thank you guys so much for watching see you later oh this is a better idea than I expected it to be whatever yet now bouncing around between 76 and 78 which is like in the first 10 minutes I'll take it really nice compared to 20 degrees Lodi India and

Channel: Trent & Allie

Views: 433,084

Rating: 4.9157848 out of 5

Keywords: DIY air conditioner, low energy Air conditioner, Do it yourself, make an AC unit, build a cheap Air conditioner, tnt mtb, tntmtb, vanlife hack, campervan, van build, van conversion, experienced van builder creates masterpiece, van air conditioning, air conditioner for your van, Cheap AC, minimal millenials, eamon and bec, 40 hours of freedom, home improvement, renovation, remodel, how to, how to build an ac unit, staying cool living in a van, living in a van

Id: jVVrKrAfGqE

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/cr0ft]

Honestly, I don't think the effect of that will suffice. The ice will melt fairly quickly because there is a tube in there with 100+ degree air going through it, to begin with, and you'd basically have to keep shoveling ice in and throwing water out, I suspect.

The ice just can't soak up all that much energy before it's room temperature.

Swamp coolers that rely on converting heat into moisture and cool air are scientifically sound, though they do use up a fair amount of water and they do moisturize the air (and only work in very dry air to begin with.)

If you have to try to dwell in 100+ degree F, there are ways. Specifically an air conditioner and either a generator (a relatively quiet Honda portable should work) or a big-ass second alternator on the van that pumps out 300+ amps into a really powerful inverter and from there to the AC.

[u/TheFox-TheWolf]

Can’t wait for the extended review

[u/HughTubeVlog]

My only critical point about this is the constant need for bags of ice. Which won't always be available and also the amount of plastic waste that he generates 3 bags a day. But it is a 'cool' idea and it looked pretty good as well. One mod for me would be to stack 2 12v computer fans as they are VERY quiet. You could mount one against the cooler wall at the intake and one at the outtake and it would decrease the size of the system dramatically.

[u/[deleted]]

So... just want to point something out here: you mentioned that you could get a worse quality cooler but the ice in it would probably melt faster... the result of which is still taking heat out of the van interior. The net temperature effect would be the same if you used a large tupperware, although if what you're looking for is a cool breeze on your face then this "hack" would work for that. From a cooling standpoint, this isn't any different than putting the ice in a trash bag and hanging it from the ceiling.