I'm a mile from the beach, too, and rarely need AC. But every so often, it gets unbearable in my living room (which is where I work).

This is a brilliant solution ... unless you don't have the tools and aren't particularly handy with this sort of thing (even if you could rent the tools). I'm still considering buying a portable AC unit -- it would probably be less than the cost of all the time and frustration I would expend on trying to put together one of these. (Still brilliant, though.)

http://www.homedepot.com/p/SPT-150-CFM-3-Speed-Portable-Evaporative-Air-Cooler-for-87-5-sq-ft-SF-608R/202105060

Or just buy one.

I value my time enough to not want to do things like "save" a few dollars by hacking together something like that.

I expect the commercial ones are quieter than that repurposed fan blowing into a bucket, too.

Umm, even a small wall unit, 8000 BTU, is just $100.

Had I known about this when I still had my condo (which got to 90 in the summer and stayed that way) I would have built ten of them.

That is a pretty neat idea.

Another idea I've heard of is just get a bag of ice, and a Styrofoam cooler and a fan. Put the ice in the cooler -- leave the lid off and have the fan blow across it. Probably not as effective, but it works.

Don't go to that much effort unless you really know what you want
out of the unit. If all you want is a cool breeze blowing directly
on you, then you may be okay. If you want to cool the room, you
may well be very unhappy.

Let's do the engineering. First, let's figure that you start with a
little more than a gallon of ice (10 pounds). How many BTUs are
absorbed to take ice at 0C up to water at around 25C (on the
assumption that you won't feel any cooling at 25 degrees)?
Melting the ice gives you 144 BTU/pound. Add around 46 BTU to
raise the water temperature and you get around 200 BTU/pound.
That's a total of 2000 BTU.

If you have a small, 5000 BTU/hour air conditioner, that would be
the equivalent of running it for about 25 minutes.

This is a homemade swamp cooler. Not useful for anyone in a humid location. If you live in a very dry climate it would be useful.

This is a homemade swamp cooler. Not useful for anyone in a humid location. If you live in a very dry climate it would be useful.

Posted by: Red at April 24, 2014 8:10 PM

Had a swamp cooler in the window in Wyoming back in the 60's Noisy, wet beast, that had to be filled from a hose in the yard.

Made the crackers soggy. I didn't figure out what humidity was until I lived in New York for a while.