Cooling A Room

[Pavan Dave]

In my house, my room is the only one that does not get its share of cool air when the AC is turned on. After having a professional look at it, he said something about the position of my window towards the sun as well as the fact that my room is the last on the line to get the cool air.

My father said that he is up for me figuring out some way to cool my room. Without buying an external AC unit [that hangs out of my window] I was wondering if anybody has any ideas or knows anything about this type of stuff so that I can mod my room? Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated because I have no idea where to start for my research except off of others' (who have some knowledge possibly about this field) knowledge.

EDIT: I have a ceiling fan, and some other fans in my room keeping me cool right now but all that does is circulate the warm air inside my room.

Thanks for your help,
Pavan Dave.

(PS. If you think it gets hot where you're from, please visit Houston in the summer and I don't think I'll have to say a word, )

[John Gutmann]

My room is the same way it would get like 95 degrees in the summer, with the AC on. I basically just lived with it. How hot does yours get? Mine basically felt like a car that was sitting in the sun. I would get the afternoon sun through a biigggg window.

-John

[Zyik]

My house has no AC, we cool the house by opening all the windows and running fans at night. I don't know how cool it gets in Texas, but you might want to try that.

[Cynette]

Start with the window! Cover it with a sun protecting layer, either directly on the window or as a shade that will reflect the heat back. Many shades can still let light in while reducing the heat!
http://www.srmi.biz/Tips.Low_Cost_Cooling.New_window_shading_options.h tm
This web site has some other good ideas as well!

[tseres]

it sounds like you have a/c, but your room is the last in line, therefore you get little or no cold air. my solution is this:
you can get fans that you install in the air ducts that literally suck the cold air into your room. almost certain you can get them at Home Depot or sotres like that. it's basically a duct segment with a fan in it.

[Bongle]

An engineering solution from one of my fellow students at Waterloo is to have a large container of cooler-than-air water at a high level. Get some copper pipe, run it from the water container in a spiral in front of a fan, then have it empty into a lower container (or out your window).

As the water runs in front of the fan, it will absorb heat energy from the air. The pump is powered by the height difference between the container and outside. Efficiency can be increased by adding more surface area to your copper pipe to facilitate heat exchange.

http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~gmilburn/ac/geoff_ac.html

Edit: Beaten.

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by John Gutmann

My room is the same way it would get like 95 degrees in the summer, with the AC on. I basically just lived with it. How hot does yours get? Mine basically felt like a car that was sitting in the sun. I would get the afternoon sun through a biigggg window.

-John

My room is small, a few inches bigger than 10' x 10', and on average feels about five to ten degrees hotter, if not more, than the rest of the house. So I went up to my father and made a deal with him: if I could find a way to cool my room, which is both efficient and economical, he would get me the parts and let me go from there.

Thanks for the help guys.

[whytheheckme]

Another solution that I left out (practically free compared to an air conditioner) was to create the fan idea that I described above, but instead of using a bucket of cold water, was to run a hose outside and bury coils of it under ground (which is constantly 50ish degrees). Use this as your cooling source. This is a very cheap, almost no power usage solution. You may need a bigger pump than an aquarium, however.

Jacob

[tseres]

Originally Posted by whytheheckme

Another solution that I left out (practically free compared to an air conditioner) was to create the fan idea that I described above, but instead of using a bucket of cold water, was to run a hose outside and bury coils of it under ground (which is constantly 50ish degrees). Use this as your cooling source. This is a very cheap, almost no power usage solution. You may need a bigger pump than an aquarium, however.

Jacob

isn't that calles a geo-thermal exchanger or something like that? or, use the outside garden hose with cold water....

[Jake Hansen]

Partially close the vents that are in the rooms that do get adequate AC. That way, the remaining air is forced to go to your room. It works quite well.

[Qbranch]

Well if you wanted to go all-out-robotics-style on this, you could try building a thermocouple peltier effect cooling array out of these. The first few on the page are the same as ones used in those nifty take-with-you-in-your-car thermocouple based cooler/warmers. Just remember that these MOVE heat, they don't just get cold, so you'll need a cooling fan and a place to blow the heat (probably just hang a hose out your window if you have to, or put it into your attic, something like that.

Building an enclosure for this out of plywood and insulating the inside to keep the heat from reentering the room, then using some surplus kit fans from the FRC kit should work for moving the hot air out of the box down your hose. A large PC power supply should do the trick for supplying 12VDC to your thermocouple array(s). Wow now i wish this was my project!

-q

p.s. each one of the first junctions shown on the page is equivalent to about a 275btu/h air conditioner, so 22 of these babies gets you up a little past a 6000 BTU/h energy transfer rate, about the average for mid size window air conditioners. its a little pricey... but man is that cool! (no pun intended )

[AJ R]

Living in Texas, there proably isnt a basement. So the unit would proably be in the attic or garage. Because air takes the path of least resistiance, it will be flowing to the grilles closest to the unit. There should be a damper at the takeoff of the plenum. You can slightly close off the airflow to the rooms closest to the unit. I wouldn't close it more than 50%. This will help in two ways. It will increase airflow to your room while increasing the runtime of the unit. If this dosent work, Fantech makes a quality in-line fan that will boost the air to your room.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Jake Hansen

Partially close the vents that are in the rooms that do get adequate AC. That way, the remaining air is forced to go to your room. It works quite well.

this is what I would do first, too. Also make sure there is an exhaust path for the warm air to leave your room and return to the a/c unit.

[Not2B]

Mmmm...

2 main things to do.
1) Reduce heat energy from entering
2) Remove heat energy

Window films will cut the sun load. (And in Texas in summer, I'm guessing you are close to 1000 watts/m2.)

Powered vent fans will help pull in cold air (remove heat). OR - if you find the return vents, fans going the other way will remove hot air (remove heat).

Insulate your room to the outside. (reduce heat from entering.)

You live in Texas. It gets humid I assume. The swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) might not be a good idea, since it requires a dryer air to really work well.

The peltier effect is really awesome and fun, but probably not a good solution for this. The average store TED (thermal electric device) is about 40 watts. A human at rest, on average, gives off 100 watts. PLUS - if you remove 40 watts from one side, the hot side has to get rid of 40 watts plus the power used to run it (lets say about 80 watts), for a total of 120 watts. Now you have a HUGE problem getting rid of all that power. And don't get me started on the tiny Delta T.... (I spent about 2 years doing research on these things. They are AWESOME, for the right application.)

And before anyone says plug in a fridge and open the door, remember that will heat the room up. It's all energy. Learn as much as as you can about energy, and you'll come up with some cool ideas. (Pun intendent.)

Good Luck!

[Pavan Dave]

Thanks for the ideas. Jacob and I have been discussing this for about an hour to two hours tonight and tomorrow I will try to make a cooling fan similar to the ones suggested in the earlier posts. This of course will be a short term solution. Also I am looking into possible shades to put outside my window like some sort of tree or a large screen of some sort to put inside.. For the long run I will suggest prioritizing the vents and possibly looking into some thermoelectric technology (Click Here).

The project, which is expected complete by the end of this Saturday, is to coil some copper tubing around one of my current oscillating fans and to pump cold water through it, and hopefully through the use of ice packs keep a steady supply of cool air in my room.

Thanks for the ideas guys, and keep the coming. Many of you have very good ideas. Chief Delphi's 5000W think tank is running at full blast and the to think that the season has been over for nearly a month.

Peace.
Pavan