Ice bucket swamp cooler

Off Topic
#1

Has anyone tried the dual bucket swamp/evaporative cooler using ice water (or water and frozen ice jugs) and aquarium pump in the bottom bucket, with the top bucket containing the drilled holes and ice water cooled swamp cooler pad? All with the fan pulling air out of the bucket through an elbow for directional flow?

I’m looking for actual experience… I’ve already used my Google-Fu and read through the websites and watched the YouTube videos. Just really curious if anyone’s got any enjoyment out of it on their patio during the summer. We’re a little more humid than normal for an evap cooler, but ice water cooled air vs just using a fan might be more comfortable.

1 Like
#2

I’ve contemplated builds like this…
https://diydrywalls.org/diy-air-conditioners/
… but never executed (that and they decided to actually air condition the office I was working in overnight some five months in).

The extremely simple version (cups of ice water in front of a fan) worked to a degree on a very small scale.

#3

They also add humidity.

#4

While I personally don’t have any experience, one of my friends did this out at Waxahachie (Scarborough) this spring, and found it cooled pretty well. Probably, like any swamp cooler, directly in front of the thing is the coolest.

#5

You would need 83.3 lbs of ice per hour to equal 1 ton of AC

3 Likes
#6

Wow the efficiency just jumped!!

#7

I thought I messed up on my math the first time, so in-correctly corrected & then corrected back to the original.

#8

If you’re blowing air over coils with cold fluid in them, it acts as a crude de-humidifier, but the devices I was pondering aren’t proper swamp coolers.

#9

DIYs I’ve seen are “Air Over Ice” which cools the air and some evaporative effect. Nothing as sophisticated as this.

#10

The original air conditioning was a 2000 lb block of ice with a fan over it. This is where the 1 ton of cooling came from, in 24hrs that block would be melted equaling 288,000 BTUs of cooling. That’s all latent heat, 144 btu’s per lb of ice to lb of water. Then only 1 btu per lb of water to change 1 degree. Latent heat of vaporization 970 btu’s per lb of water to take it from 212 degrees water to 212 degrees steam.

If you look at most model numbers of light air conditioning equipment the tonnage side is devided by 12 giving you a rough estimate. Model numbers with say 36 or 60 in them would be 3 or 5 tons. Doesn’t always work though, some dont use that format.

3 Likes
#11

Guys, please don’t cover the aspects of cooling my home. In the original post, I said “patio”. But since it’s needed, I’ll also add “outdoor patio” since that needs clarification.

1 Like
#12

Sorry man, wasn’t trying to get too far off topic into the proverbial rabbit hole. I personally dont see it worth it. I had a friend build one with an igloo cooler, no water pump but it did have just the fan, it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.

1 Like