How you can make a simple 'air conditioner' for $30 on June 05, 2015 at 6:55 PM, updated As a Midwest kid, I thought I could take the heat. Then I moved to Oregon, land of houses with no AC, where your only relief is finding somewhere to swim or working overtime to avoid going back outside. By this weekend, it will be in the 90s in Portland and that's just too hot for someone who lives in a second-story apartment with no ceiling fans. The cheapest window air conditioner will cost you around $100 — and you'll use it maybe two months of the year for the hottest weather. But with about $30 and a trip to the hardware store, you can build your own AC unit which uses hot air to evaporate ice water and a fan to circulate the newly created cool air. Another term for this type of homemade unit is an evaporative or swamp cooler, which works a bit differently in professional models but accomplishes cooling by evaporating water and circulating it with a fan. The Internet is full of instructions for life hacks and DIY projects, especially for homemade air conditioners.

Here are two of the top examples: • There's the box fan-cooler model, where you take apart a box fan and wire it up with copper tubing, then attach it with plastic tubing and a fountain pump to a cooler filled with ice water. (This graphic explains the process pretty well.) • Then there's the styrofoam cooler all-in-one model, where you cut two holes in the top of the cooler — one for a fan to move air into the cooler (filled with ice or ice water) and the other for a PVC elbow joint to let the newly chilled air escape. We decided to try out the second type. Watch The Oregonian/OregonLive's Dave Killen and Dave Cansler construct one in the video above. A couple caveats: These DIY units work in theory. A lot depends on what kind of materials you use, especially the strength of the fan (which we certainly found to be an issue). More powerful fans that are still small enough to fit in the cooler lid are available, but more expensive; if you already have one on hand, you'd be ahead of the game.