Ok ok ok, before you say it, I know this is a little bit hillbilly, but at the end of the day this sucker works and I am all the more thankful for it in this Texas heat. And for the ladies reading this, this is a great man present. My husband works on cars in his spare time and my dad practically lives in his garage; I made them both one for Christmas last year and they loved it and both use the crap out of it. The air coming out of this thing is around 58-62 degrees and can last for around 5 hours. The concept is you fill the ice chest full of ice (I use frozen milk jugs) then turn the fan on and cold air blows out the top exhaust pipes. ….: D It isn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but when I’m sweating my butt off and the cold air hits me, I don’t seem to care anymore! Here are the steps if you want to make one. Note: 5 hours is the time span if you use a big block of ice like a milk jug. If you use loose ice, then it only last about 2-3 hours. The bigger you can get your blocks of ice, the longer it will last.

Another alternative to milk jugs is using the inside bladder to box wine.  <–Good excuse to drink some wine this weekend. 1) I went to Goodwill and found a couple of coolers for around $5 a piece. central ac units carrierIf you plan to use regular ice instead of freezing water in milk jugs, then make sure you buy one with a drain plug.best ac units energy efficiency 2) I found the fan at Home Depot for $15 as well as the PVC parts. air handling unit performance testIncase you aren’t familiar with the different joints, these are made of 2″ male adapters and 2″ 90 degree street elbows. 3) Take the ice chest and figure out where you want the exhaust pipes to go. Then take the male adapter and trace it on the lid so you know where to cut.

Tip: If you are using 2″ PVC then make at least 5 pipes. I first made mine with only 3 and unless you were right up close to it, you couldn’t feel the air coming out. That makes the thing pretty pointless, so make at least 5 unless you are using larger pipes. Another option would be to use a stronger fan, but then you are looking at spending closer to $60 on the fan alone. 4) Now take the fan and trace it on the backside of the ice chest. 5) To cut out all the holes I first took a drill and made a hole in the center of all the circles, then used a jigsaw to make all the cuts. At this point you should have the smaller holes on the lid for the pipes and the large hole in the back for the fan. After making each cut, you can take the item (either the fan or the PVC) and make sure they fit. If not, just keep whittling away material until they do. If you end up cutting the hole a little too big, that’s ok because we fill it in the next step anyways. 6) I placed each PVC pipe in it’s place then used some caulk to fill in the base.

7) Wait until it’s dry, then lay the chest on it’s face and caulk in the fan. Since I was going to spray paint mine, I wasn’t worry about making it pretty. 8) I grabbed a can of $1 black spray paint, and gave everything a good coat. (I used a spare piece of cardboard to not get any on the fan) 9) The last thing I did was take the base off the fan since it wasn’t going to be needed. I used a box blade to pop off the side caps, then a screw driver to take out the center bolt holding it together.Now I have a portable AC unit I can use when I’m working out in the shop. It is not ideal for all situations but I can see it being useful if you have an outlet near by. With 5 pipes I can stand about 5 feet away and feel the air hitting me. The next one I am going to make will be with a 12 volt fan that can be ran off a 12 volt battery, that way I can take it camping and sleep comfortably without needing an outlet to power it. I’ll post instructions on that build once I get it done.

Total Time: 1 hrI made a dorm legal AC unit for next semester! ()submitted by π Rendered by PID 27448 on app-542 at 2016-09-30 18:22:03.661995+00:00 running 62abcea country code: US.There are few sentences in the English language less believable than “I’m going to build my own air conditioner.” The amount of daring and hubris required to even utter such a phrase is rare enough to be found only in the very smart, or the very stupid. But it’s hot, dammit, and desperate times are calling for desperate measures. The rent is too damn high, and the weather is too damn hot — surely there must be a solution to this. It’s only August, and the season isn’t over yet. And so, now in the summer of our discontent, the time has come to put ingenuity to the test, to throw both caution and reason into the wind and to laugh loudly in the face of ConEd. If global warming is a scientific problem, one has no choice but to propose a scientific solution: the DIY air conditioner. Several models are floating around the internet.

But do they work? IS THIS A THING PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO? Research — also known as Internet rumors — suggests that it is possible to build your own air conditioner for about $30-40. The idea originated when an unnamed university forbid students from having air conditioners in their dorm rooms, and a group of enterprising young people took it upon themselves to defy this rule and build one themselves. This story has been floating around Lifehacker since 2005, and has since been revamped twice by increasingly enterprising and decreasingly sweaty young college students. Unsurprisingly, the definition of “air conditioner” in these circumstances is a bit loose, expanded vaguely to “something that blows cold air.” Their model was built off the idea of a “swamp cooler,” which relies on the evaporation of water rather than vapor compression to cool the air that it circulates, or at least that’s what Wikipedia says. Since the initial attempt (which was apparently successful), there have been a number of elaborations and variations on the process, ranging from a wet shamwow behind a box fan to an electrified ice chest to a double-bucket gravity contraption that only god and nerds know how to assemble.

The options are endless, and a little bit daunting for someone who doesn’t even own a screwdriver. OK, HOW DO YOU BUILD THE DAMN THING? As previously mentioned, some designs for the A/C are more complex, requiring pumps and copper wire. Others relied on gravity to get the job done. This one requires something called a Seachoice bilge blower, which sounds difficult to acquire and maybe even a little gross. The chosen candidate for this experiment is the redneck air conditioner, brought to us by the reliable folks filming themselves doing reasonable things on YouTube. The idea is that the fan will blow air into the cooler, and the ice will cool the air before funneling it out through the pipe elbow. And there you will have it: air conditioner. •   1 Styrofoam cooler ($6) •   1 Pipe elbow ($3) The Home Depot ran out of fans, which is both stupid and funny as well as scary and possibly apocalyptic. Maybe you are somebody who already has a fan. Maybe your fan fortress is the reason that Home Depot no longer has any.

If that’s the case, good on you – you’re saving money on this part of the project. As far as everything else is concerned, the Styrofoam cooler was acquired from a Rite Aid, and the rest of the materials came from bodega-style hardware stores. Step 2: Cut two holes in the Styrofoam container, one on the side for the pipe elbow, and another on the top for the fan. Place fan and pipe in respective openings. Secure the openings with duct tape. Red duct tape earns extra urgency points. Step 3: Fill the container with ice, and maybe beer if you feel so inclined. Step 4: Replace the lid of the container and turn the fan on. Step 5: Grab a beer, leave the room, and let the cooler do its thang. Okay, so, show of hands: who’s surprised this didn’t work? After half an hour of waiting for the magic to happen, it soon became apparent that probably only magic — not science —  could coax cold air out of this contraption. It might be a bit of an exaggeration to say that this DIY A/C unit actually made the room hotter, but between closing the window and the door and funneling the fan’s full windpower through a tiny tube, it’s entirely possible that it actually did.