Hey guys. Today we're going to be taking
a look at DIY air conditioning. We're going to be
putting to the test of design made popular by the HouseholdHacker, and then we're going to see if we
can tweak that design just a little bit to make it a little more effective. [Captions by Judy V. at Y Translator]
[Music] [Music] One of the things I like best about
the HouseholdHacker's air conditioner is how quickly it goes together. You can make the whole
thing in just a few minutes. As the HouseholdHacker's design show, we've got a styrofoam cooler, and a fan that we had lying around the house, or one that we had the pick up at Walmart, because we don't have many fans. His original design showed
using two dryer vents, angling the air out of the cooler
to wherever we wanted it to point. However, I couldn't find those for
the low price he said he found his, so instead, I've got
two 2-inch PVC elbows. These should work
pretty much the same way, allowing our air
to be angled up and out, and when these choose
where to point it. Here's the basic idea. We'll build the air conditioner
with the fan and two elbows following the design given
to us by HouseholdHacker. We'll then see if we can improve
on the design using cubed ice, and a few methods to try and improve
the circulation within the container. To get started, let's get our fan prepped,
and ready to go on our cooler. We want to remove this front
grill and this base clip as well, so we just have the fan by itself, and we'll have the blades exposed, which will let us put the
fan closer down onto the cooler without losing
any air off to the sides. With our fan prepped, it's time to cut a hole in our lid that
will let the air flow into our cooler. The lids on this particular
styrofoam container are not quite as flat as
the one he was using, but it should work pretty well anyway. We want to cut a hole that's just
barely bigger than our fan blades. You can see that on this cooler, that's going to involve cutting down
into the sloped portion of the lid. I'm pretty sure
it's still going to work. Got that circle traced,
let's cut it out with a razor blade. [Music] We've measured this correctly. We should be able to
place our fan onto our lid, turn it on, and not have the blades hit any
of the sides of the container. Hey, I think we did it. I think we've also invented
a super cheap hovercraft... [Music] Which only works if you're
actively blowing a fan into it, by holding the fan above it. We now need to cut
two holes for our PVC elbows, and those are going to go
on the sides of the center hole. [Music] Because of the slope,
I think it is going to be just a little bit tricky to get
our hole cut to the perfect shape, but I'm not too worried. It's just gonna take a
little bit of trial and error. [Music] It's a pretty good fit right there. Our tube is coming up out
of the inside of the box, pointing at a 90 degree angle, and if we want to change the
direction that it points in, it spins quite easily. Let's do the same
thing on the other side. [Music] We've got all the holes we need
for both the fan and the elbows. We should now be able to put
this lid onto our container, place the fan on top with
some cooling elements inside, and get some nice cold
air conditioned air flowing out. In the HouseholdHacker's video, he used frozen water bottles
as the source of the cold air. So let's load up seven
of them into our cooler, put the lid and the fan on, and see what kind of cooled air
we can get blowing out of the elbows. [Music] We've got air flow. I attached these little
strips of plastic on there, not because they're
important to the function, but just because they show
when the fan is on or off. Although there's enough
static electricity on this styrofoam that they still like
to just hang out sometimes, you can see how much it's
being drawn to my glove here. Now, by putting my hand
or my face in front of this, I can say that it does feel
like the air coming out is colder than what's around, or even if I just had
a normal fan blowing on me. But just to make sure I've got
some actual measurements, I have here a little thermometer, and this is actually a food thermometer, but it should work pretty well. Right now, it says that it's
about 72 degrees in this room. Let's see what happens
if I place the temperature probe in front of the air
coming out of our cooled box. [Music] On this thermometer, it seems to have stabilized
at about 65 degrees. That's certainly cooler. That's about seven or eight degrees
cooler than the ambient temperature. So, if it were 75, and you thought that
was a little too warm, you could bring it down
to maybe almost 65 degrees. That wouldn't be too bad. 10 degrees colder is
nothing to be upset about, but I think by adjusting the design, we can get some better results. With the current design
on this air conditioner, all of the air moves from
the fan over to the vents, and then leaves, and hopefully circulates down
among the ice before it does that. But I think we might be able to get some
better results if we force the issue. If the air had to travel down past all
of our ice before it got to the vents, we might get some colder air out of it. Here, I've got a piece
of 2-inch ABS tubing, which is designed to fit
right into these elbows. I want to cut this ABS pipe
to just the right length, so that it almost reaches
the bottom of our container, forcing the air to go
down past all the icy bottles before it goes into the tube, and then out the top. [Music] You can see that now the air
will have to flow down past the ice bottles into
the entry at the bottom, up out the top vent, where it should be a
little colder than before. Ambient temperature measuring just about
72 - 72 and 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit. For any interested,
that is 22 and 1/2 degrees Celsius. Let's try and measure
the air in front of the vent that doesn't have the extension, and then the vent that
does have the extension. We'll see if there's a
difference in the temperature. [Music] All right. Seems to be leveling off. It's not a huge difference, but we are looking at 3, 3 and 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler
on the one that vents down below the ice. So, we definitely
have a proof of concept. It is colder when it has
to travel down past the ice before it can vent out to us. Well, that worked on one side. I'm going to put another pipe
on the other side to see if we can just get that same
effect out of both vents. We're getting pretty good results
with our vents being fed by pipes that reach all the way
down past the cooling ice. But I think we can probably
do a little bit better. Frozen water bottles certainly
have some advantages. They're cheap, they're easy,
and they're reusable. Once they melt, you can pop them
back in the freezer, and refreeze them again. Then they're ready
to go a second time. However, because of their
shape and the plastic around them, they don't conduct the heat quite
as well as some plain ice cubes. So, I want to try this test
using some ice cubes rather than the frozen bottles. [Music] Our thermometer is now reading
under 50 degrees Fahrenheit when the air has to travel through
the ice to get to the vents. I would say that's quite an improvement. We're getting some pretty good results. Less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit, is going to keep you cool on
pretty much even hottest of days. There does need to be a fair
bit of the ice down in there for the air to
really circulate through it. So, I have one more modification
I want to try that hopefully will let us circulate the air
through the ice without having to have quite so much of it in there. I got this sink mat at a
dollar store for you guessed it, $1, and I want to try using it
to suspend the ice up off the ground with the pipes passing down past it, so all of the air has to
travel through the ice, down below the mat, and then enter the vents from below. I'm gonna go for about halfway down, and it looks like right there, we have a width of about 8 inches. So, that's what we'll trim our mat to. [Music] That's a pretty good fit right there. Although with the weight of all the ice, I'm pretty sure that
would still fall down. So, one more thing that
I do want to do is use a couple of thin dowels stabbed
through the size of our carton to support that weight. [Music] Lovely. Look at that little tray,
all ready to suspend ice, and just let air flow
right down through it. Of course, we're going
to need our pipes to reach down through there as well. So, let's throw our lid on, drop these down, and then mark off where
we need to cut some holes. [Music] Let's fill it up with ice. [Music] All right, ambient temperature
of about 72 degrees. See what this drops down to. 46... Bam! 46 degrees Fahrenheit,
that is pretty chilly. You're almost down to the temperature
of a refrigerator right there. That's not bad at all. There's one more thing
I do want to try though, and that's just see what
happens if we also put ice on the very bottom of the cooler. So, we've got ice,
and then the vent opening, and then more ice suspended above it, so the air has to travel down through ice, and then there's still
even more ice below. I think this could give us
our best result yet. Let's give it a shot. And it's just going to fall on its own. Shake it to get it evenly dispersed. [Music] We are leveling off right
about in the 42 degree range, that's in Fahrenheit of course. Switch this over to Celsius, and we can see that we are measuring
at less than 6 degrees Celsius, 5 and 1/2 approximately. That is nice and chilly. Now, as for whether or not one
of these will cool down a whole room, it's hard to say. I don't have a perfectly enclosed room
that I can do side-by-side test with. But this is the kind of thing you probably
want to set on the couch next to you, while you're just
sitting watching something. That is some very nice cold air
blowing on there right now. The original version of this
DIY air conditioner was designed by HouseholdHacker, and he called it an
$8 air conditioning system. Now, of course, that assumes that you have a little
fan that's just the right size, and some water bottles. Water bottles are very cheap,
but you do still have to get them. This version does cost a little bit more. I had to actually go out and buy a fan, because I didn't have one lying around. These elbows were a little over $2,
each I think about $2.20. The fan was $10. The elbows together were about 5. The cooler was less than $3, I think it was $2.80 at Target, and then added the plastic
grate which cost $1, and the two pieces of the dowel. I think that dowel was about 60 cents. So altogether,
after buying everything, including the fan and the ice, this air conditioner costs about $20. That's a pretty good price. If you live somewhere hot, and you don't happen to
have air conditioning, or maybe there's just
that one room in your house where the AC doesn't quite do it, this might be a good solution for you. It's pumping out very cold air, and it should last quite a while. Guys, that's not all,
we've got more for you to see. That little box up at the top
will transport you directly to our last video, and you should go check that out. The box of the button
will show you what YouTube thinks you need to be watching now. This bomb here in the middle
will subscribe you to the channel so you never miss a video. Don't forget to ring that bell, and we'll see you in the next one. Talk to you then.
Gracias a u/Geo_Gutierrez por publicar su experimento y recordarme de esta joya.
Si alguien se pone a armar esos y a venderlos puede ser un buen negocio de temporada. Les compro 2.
Yo ya hice una y les diré el primer problema que los desanimara de armar una.
El ventilador que pones es más pesado que el resto de la caja y siempre estará a punto de ladearse hscia ese lado, por lo que tienes que fijar la hielera a alguna parte o poner el ventilador más centrado en la tapa.
Experimentó divertido pero de poca vida útil.