Re-inventing the Wheel

Today, being the first day of summer, I thought I would show you something that I made a couple of weeks back. Here in West Africa you try anything to beat the heat and this new toy that I made is doing a really good job.

It all started a while back when I was talking to my Dad on Skype. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about but the African heat was one of the topics. I explained that I have fans and that they do a good job but on some nights the fans just move the hot air and it’s difficult to go to sleep on those nights. My Dad responded “You got fans right? Make an air conditioner! You can do it like one in a car but use cold water instead of Freon.” And that got the wheels turning upstairs.

My first issue that I had to discover was how to get the air around the fan cold so that the fan would then blow cold air. I had a couple ideas and then I had an even greater idea. The internet!!!! I did a search online and I found about three different sites of people who made a contraption with cold water and a fan to cool the air. I studied them, and decided what I would do. I would put copper tubing on the back of a fan and then ran cold water threw the tubing and the condensation would lower the temperature around the fan.

The next big step was a way to get the water to move through the tubing. After making a big mess I canceled out using a siphon system and knew I would have to use a water pump. This is a whole 'nother story by itself but my friend Roy and I were able to find an aquarium store back when I spent that week in Dakar.

So after getting the pump I then searched the city of Kolda for the rest of the materials that I needed. I had a really fun time trying to explain what I wanted. I would say I’m using a fan, and cold water to get cold wind, and they would just stare at me. Half of them would look at me like I’m crazy and the other half would look at me like I was a mad scientist or something. So either way, I looked crazy…but that’s nothing new!!!!!!

So after making an even bigger mess than before I was able to get the water to circulate. The water pump wasn’t very powerful so I had to raise it, I first had a chair but then I went all out and had one of my friends make a stool for the ice chest to sit on.

This last picture is showing you the final product. If you look closely in the background you can see that I have it pointed right at my bed. Right before I go to bed I drop in about 3 big chunks of Ice and I get beautiful cold air till 3 or 4 in the morning, even if I don’t use ice it lowers the temperature slightly but when you got ice, you use it.

So are you jealous???