I’ve searched around and mostly seen people create custom radiator builds attached to their water supply, but that’s beyond my skill level and I’m not sure if linking it directly to the water supply via piping would violate the lease or not. Are there any solutions a bit more DIY that I could take advantage of?
Almost no matter how you do it, it’s going to be a horrible waste of good drinking water to try to extract cooling from the temperature of the water. If you are in a dry climate, make a DIY swamp cooler. Otherwise shell out for a small AC unit.
Also; using your free lease-included water for stuff like that, is probably the quickest way to no longer have water included in your lease…
So if
- Using water this way is a waste of water
- Using water this way will end the policy that permits this use case
Does that mean the fastest way to end the waste is to go ahead with this plan?
Only if that was your sole use of said water otherwise you’re just going to pay more for all the water you’d normally use.
Start a car detailing business. Use the water to wash the cars.
Use the money from new, low-overhead business to do anything you want.
we’re literally on the precipice of water wars
If the actual problem is that you yourself are too hot, cool yourself instead. A trick I’ve picked up working in kitchens, where it’s very fucking hot indeed, is to wet your nape and forearms regularly. You can wear a wet hat too. Doesn’t really take advantage of the unlimited water but it gets you there.
Gut an AC from the dump. Replace the condenser with a tube in tube heat exchanger, using your cold water as a heat sink. Brazed plate HX if you’re feeling rich. Replace the cap tube with a TXV for better load tracking. Recharge with R290.
T Sure this is even further beyond your skill level but is the best possible way to use a source of cold to chill your apartment. You can locate it anywhere convenient, not just by the window. You could likely get a COP over 5 and be discharging the water in a fairly modest stream at around 30-40C.
- Find a pair of vehicle radiators that are as close to a box fan in size as possible.
- Zip tie them to either side of the box fan. As the fan blows: it will draw air in through the “second radiator” and blow it out through the “first radiator”.
- Hook the out of the first radiator to the in of the second using flexible hoses. Cheap garden hoses might even fit.
- Hook other hoses to the in of the first radiator and the out of the second.
- Run water on through the first radiator, out of the second. This makes the most efficient heat transfer possible.
This is exactly what I was going to suggest. Use the water to cool the radiators, and use fans to push hot air through the cool radiators, cooling the air in the process.
This is basically what AC does on a much larger scale. It uses refrigerants, a compressor, and some basic physics to cool the radiators, but it’s still the same basic concept.
I don’t think a box fan could cool one entire 20x20in automotive radiator, let alone two.
fan -> plenum -> radiator would probably work best. The plenum only needs to be a few inches long, it’s just to direct the entire square of the fan over the entire square of the radiator. Cardboard and caulk would work.
It’s a low efficiency heat exchanger.
Just get a window AC if you have the right type of windows. Otherwise, a dual hose portable heat pump from costco or other reputable source.
Spray water in front of a fan. Way faster than forcing heat exchange through air to metal.
The reason it works on Winter is that the temperature difference is about 50C or more. On a hot 35C day it would mean the radiator is at most at -15C… And that’s why you’ll prefer to stand in front of the fridge that has 6C than a radiator that may run at best 15C water inside.
Wouldn’t be too difficult to jerryrig a system which does that but because it’s going to be a huge waste of water I feel morally obligated to not even give you any ideas. Invest in a split AC system instead. They make ones for windows as well.
AC is worse for the climate than wasting water
Ehhhhhhh
Is it though?
Youre not necessarily wasting any water. Any water that goes down the drain just gets filtered and recirculated. Even if it wasn’t filtered and made it directly to the river, evaporation would still ensure it returns to the cycle.
Not as far as the efficiency of filtering water vs an AC… well. You’ll need someone significantly smarter than I to tell you that
By your definition “wasting water” is impossible, since it all stays on Earth and will get filtered eventually.
That was what I was going for :p. Had hoped an engineer might come in and tell us the efficiency of either or both.
The wasting of water refers to water that is available for use by people. Water that’s been treated and is ready to go.
Depending on where you live yeah
Depending on you humidity, you could look into building a swamp-cooler. Sounds weird but works pretty great.
If you have a way of getting unlimited free ice (unlimited free cold water also works), you can run it through a radiator. Get a radiator of any kind, get a water pump and find a way to run the water in the bucket through the radiator. Put the radiator in front of a fan. As long as there is cold water running through the radiator, it will produce at least some cooling. Just don’t think you can create ice in the same room you’re trying to cool, a fridge generates more heat than the cold it produces. This barely works whenever I have to do it but it is better than nothing and it can make a difference if you just need the room to be a little cooler so you can sleep.
The entire problem with this is that ice or cold water is a really shit form of cooling and the only thing that’s any better is… Compressor a/c. Peltier plates look good on paper but once you hook them up to a heat transfer system, you’d be surprised how useless 500 watts worth of peltiers are for transferring heat. Swamp coolers only work on the desert. Ammonium nitrate can generate cold when it gets dissolved into water but the only way to make a sustained cooling system out of that involves boiling the water to get the ammonium nitrate back so you can reuse it so fuck that.
Alternatively, scientists invented some kind of metal that gets cold when you bend it but good luck figuring out how to make that.
Take a cold bath?
Use the water pressure to power a turbine generator, then use the electricity from that generator to run a window AC unit
What a waste of water that would be. Pressure comes just once
Pressure comes just once
unlike your mom. ha! gottem
Nice
A swamp cooler would potentially be a solution; those could be used in conjunction with your ready access to water in order to keep your home cool! Sadly, this is not great for areas of the world which already have high levels of humidity in the air. I don’t know if it would work well for you based on not knowing your climate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler
Swamp coolers only really work if humidity is low. If it’s already humid then any drop in temperature is negated by the increased humidity.
Honestly I get the most “cooling” by putting a dehumidifier in front of my fan. Dry air will feel a lot cooler than super humid air.
Dry air will allow more sweat to evaporate, providing the cooling effect right on your skin instead of in the air you blast at yourself. It’s basically the better swamp cooler.
