So, its Autumn. That time of year when your apartment building turns from A/C to heat for the winter (oh, you don’t have that problem? you must live in a domicile built since modern civilization began.)
Anyway, window A/C is out because
a. Its not allowed, and
b. The windows are funny shaped, tall and skinny.
The water that comes out of our faucets is quite cool. Is it possible to have a radiator type setup that would cool off a room from cool water going through piping and blowing air over it? My water bill last month was $11, so water is not that expensive.
You can do this, but the water bill will be extraordinary.
“Cool” is simply the absence of heat. You could build, or have someone else build, a ‘water source heat pump.’ (or buy one for $3000 or so…)
The basic idea is that you would use the cool water as a heat sink for the heat (btus) in your place. You’re essentially moving heat (and thats what A/C is all about) from the ambient air to the water.
The problem is…the water will accept some heat and then no more, unless…you kept the water running through the heat pump…
Will it work? Yes, its done all the time. Will it be ungodly expensive? Yep.
Problem is you need to move the heat out of the apartment.
Ever stand near an operating air conditioner? It is essentially a heat exchanger. Cold air comes out one side and hot air out the other. That is why window AC are in windows.
If an air cooler is in your apartment you get nothing. The hot air needs to go somewhere and if that is in your apartment you get no net benefit (indeed thermodynamics demands the process would be a net loss for you…you’d heat the apartment more than cool it).
I suppose cold water coming in from the faucet may sidestep this somewhat but not much. Basically the water is room temperature (or a little cooler from coming from underground). The difference will not be much though and I doubt would lower interior temps by more than a degree or two at best.
In short, massively inefficient (read expensive) to run for little benefit.
They are not as efficient but you can buy ducted air conditioners that are not window units, though you do shove a hose out the window to duct the hot air out.
Of course all that heat is being pumped back into the room to make the ice, I could be wrong, but I think that should cause a net increase in room temperature. In that respect, it might make more sense to just use cold water.
That is assuming the ice is made in the same room, and not brought in from outside. I would guess the latter, as it woud take a lot of ice trays to fill a coooler.
Not sure what the point is here. Heat gets transferred from the air into the water, then down the drain and out the apartment. Pretty much the same thing as standard central AC, only replace “water” with “refrigerant” and “drain” with “the condenser outside”. Sure, the temperatures deltas involved are a lot less and there’s no phase change, so its going to be terribly wasteful of water, but the concepts are the same.
The heat would go down the drain… or wherever the water discharged.
The conditioning one could achieve with this setup would depend on the GPM available, the Temp of the incoming water, the rating/size on the coil, the SCFM of your blower, the size of the room, and the insulation in the room.
This exact setup is sometimes used to cool industrial equipment. But not only is it expensive, the local municipalities don’t like the increased water and sewer usage, and many times requires a permit.
Hm. Interesting posts. Obviously I don’t have the means to actually create such a device, I just thought it an interesting theoretical quesetion. Our water is pretty cheap, ~4.5 gallons per cent, but I supposed that would add up after a while.
Fear Itself had some interesting links. I think the cooling gained from changing ice to warm (room temp) water would be pretty good, but I have no efficient hardware to do such.
The portable ACs are an option, but they are expensive for just a couple weeks a year and storage space is at a premium at this point.
At that point we would have to start analyzing the costs and deciding what’s worth it. It might be worth it to make your own ice (as opposed to buying it or using running water), even though at adds heat to the room overall, the cool air blowing on you might be all you need. Or your could cool off a different room from where the fridge is. A homemade AC like this would be much more efficient if you were trying to cool a smaller room (ie a bedroom).
Well you can use the water’s cooling properties to effectively cool you down for some temporary releif. I will sometimes take and run my hands (I have huge veins on my hands) and wrists under some cool water, and splash it on my face for quick releif. If I am looking for more extended releif, I will get in a warm shower and slowly reduce the tmp of the water. I get out once I feel really completely cooled down. It takes a while for your body to heat back up once you do that.