Chest Freezer Mini Split Air Conditioner | Random Video Thursday's

[@GrowingAnswers]

Thanks for watching! On top of the parts list in the video description, I also left some other info not discussed in the video. This would not make sense for everyone to build. If this seems like it fits the bill for you then I hope this helps. Although this uses very low wattage by comparison to a conventional AC, in the long run the operational costs would be comparable. A regular A/C would run intermittently while this would run continuously. There are pros and cons to both situations so it comes down to personal choice. Also this will not cool the entire room noticeably for quite a while and the room would need to be sealed from other spaces (closed door etc.) If you have a larger room to cool and/or the room is not well insulated, then a larger chest freezer would work better. You would simply use the same amount of water as a smaller freezer, but a larger freezer has more wattage and surface area to cool the water. You can cool a room fast with a much larger heat exchanger/fan but you will quickly deplete the capacity of the system in just a few hours...I have tried.

[@CodyJokesss]

What if you add a heat exchanger into the water inside a closed loop? Woukd that do better?

[@CodyJokesss]

Thank you for sharing your idea, this idea came to me and i was looking to see if anyone had already done it. The tips are valuable! Make more videos if maybe your upgrades and discoveries in hot 100 climates

[@ianbottom7396]

In your case this is doing what you need it to but for other applications it makes more sense to allow the water to freeze (to some extent) keeping in mind that the evaporator coil will be installed hard against the inside casing for heat transfer so the ice will form on the walls first and slowly get thicker, on a domestic chest freezer I’d be very surprised if it was capable of making a solid block, virtually impossible as the ice really starts insulating to some extent. By doing this they would increase the stored capacity because you are no longer relying on just the sensible heat of water but also the latent heat capacity of the ice (which is maybe 10 x the sensible heat per kg). I’ve considered doing this and using (or converting) a freezer that is 12 or 24V DC, that way you could run it during the day on solar panels and use the stored capacity in the evening when you get home.

[@johndevries7122]

Have you ever thought about coolant used for the car?👍

[@PichuPeekaboo]

You are genius

[@dr.projectx5142]

Wonder how this will do in az when the garage is 135°F and keeping the water cold. Would be interesting info.

[@vincentadegoroye6777]

Brilliant idea. The cold battery storage makes it a very energy saving system. I wonder why this system have not been comersialised before now. What can be the setbacks from your experience Kindly share

[@batterynerd8779]

This is definitely interesting. You could also use a glycol solution or winter windshield fluid so you could store more „cold“ fluid. And thus be able in an extreme heatwave to use that. Its a good setup. My main problem is that you are putting the heat from your room in your basement, which in turn heats the basement and heat rises. But if it works for you, great.

[@GrowingAnswers]

@@batterynerd8779 I was using it during the recent heat wave and it worked fine. It’s a full open basement 1700 ft.² and I didn’t notice any rise in temperature. Whatever heat is created in excess is barely noticed overall if it’s even measurable. The only way to make it colder is to use a different heat exchanger design. Because it’s super cold liquid flows through the heat exchanger it will just ice up. Eventually, it just runs at equilibrium which is around 44°F water temperature. The freezer cannot make it any colder one running continuously. It would need a much larger freezer for that which is not really worth it..

[@netflixjim2005]

Have tou tried a larger rad and fan? I yave seen the "box fan/dual rad" setup, and I actually thought about the idea of combining your idea with that. Any thoughts?

[@GrowingAnswers]

Yes, that will act like a full scale AC for a few hours until it depletes the system. It cools a room rapidly but unless its a health emergency, its not the way to go. This only works as a trickle system so that it can be continuous and maintain cooler temperatures indefinitely. Freezers/Fridges do not have compressors designed for fast circulation to cool something down fast. A very large freezer might work better for a larger room or even colder temperatures for a smaller room but none will be able to act like a window AC and maintain that rate of rapid cooling. The only way to work around that is to have a larger freezer that can hold maybe 50-100 gallons pre-chilled water and then intermittently run a larger fan/pump. The problem with that is cooling intermittently is less efficient that continuous cooling. That is exactly why setting a house HVAC system to off during the day while away from home can actually use no less energy, if not more, than just keeping it at temperature all day. This is because it's not just air that that holds a temperature. Physical mass takes longer to change temperature.

[@sjhall2009]

Very interesting idea

[@markmilstead4630]

I was thinking about getting a chest freezer and running it through my air hammer and my mobile home with a water pump. Fill the chest freezer up. with either a water, alcohol mixture or antifreeze to keep it from freezing then I can just circulate cold Water through the air to the house

[@jcolbyt82]

Doubt it would do much to cool a whole home. When cooling anything you have to have enough btu’s to “pump” the heat out of the space being cooled. In this case the heat is being removed via vapor compression refrigeration from the liquid that you are chilling, then the heat from your mobile home is absorbed by that cold water through the air handler heat exchanger. Deep freezers and refrigerators (domestic ones) have very small compressors with a limited cooling capacity. They can remove approx 500 to maybe 1,000 btu/hour of heat. They depend upon really thick and efficient insulation to cool the space down and keep as much heat out as possible. A two ton heat pump/air conditioner is 24,000 btu/hour or 3 ton is 36,000 Btu/hour. So as you can see you would have to have multiple deep freezers working together to make any real difference. Mini split units can be bought on Amazon, many of them do it yourself models, for under 800 bucks for a smaller size 1 to 1.5 ton system. It wouldn’t be worth it to try this for a whole house system when you can get a large enough system that cheap. Plus you can’t really use glycol as a coolant and chill it down to below freezing. That will cause your coil in the air handler to freeze up from condensation. The reason an air conditioner freezes up when low on refrigerant is because the low pressures cause the small amount of liquid refrigerant in the evaporator to vigorously boil near the entrance to the coil. That drops the evaporator temp down well below 32 (sometimes well below zero) in that area and ice starts to form. Same thing will happen with below freezing glycol (minus the boiling of course 🤓😉). Regardless, even if you could run 10 degree glycol through the heat exchanger, the heat from inside your mobile home will quickly have the water temp well above freezing. So you would get an initial burst of really cold air that would quickly start to get warmer and then wouldn’t cool much at all. Also, a deep freeze won’t last too long in this type of setup if you don’t have it located in a fairly cool room like a basement. Deep freezers are designed to work with an evaporator temp of -10 F degrees or so, if not lower. Keeping the evap at 35-50 degrees or so is increasing the load and consequently the motor winding temperatures in the compressor. The hermetic compressors in refrigeration systems rely on the refrigerant to cool the motor windings. So the higher evap pressure increases the amount of refrigerant that the compressor is pumping, putting a higher load on it which translates to more heat generated by the windings. If the deep freezer is in a high ambient temp environment, the head pressure will also be very high. The compressor will likely have a fairly short lifespan in that situation. It is a really interesting idea though! Most large buildings/skyscrapers, universities, hospitals, and other large buildings and/or campuses use this exact type of system to air condition their buildings. Most of them use centralized chillers with huge compressors and large heat exchangers to chill ordinary water down to 40 degrees or so. Then that water is pumped continuously through pipes and distributed to air handlers located all over the building or campus. Some air handlers are like household heat pumps with ductwork and all, with the chilled water providing the cooling through coils instead of refrigerant. Other air handlers are single room units. These huge chillers also use condenser units outside that utilize water and the evaporation of that water to cool and condense the refrigerant, greatly increasing the heat rejection capacity (most units do it this way, some smaller chillers just use outside air without the water). Some of these big chiller units are absorption units using ordinary water as the refrigerant but that’s another topic. This concept is no different, just a much much smaller unit.

[@keishadholmes9796]

What if you put 12oz of 48 frozen bottles of water in the deep freezer with the freezer on, will it blow cooler air ?

[@randybird9979]

very strange but, my chest freezer don't heat up the room its in, works like a champ

[@gutrali]

Idk if I like this bc the heat output by the freezer in the basement ... (Which includes waste heat from the compressor motor, and any heat during a defrosting cycle, and all the heat transferred out of the bedroom at night) will just be heating up the rest of your house via the basement ceiling. Some of it even goes back up into heating your bedroom which costs you more energy. If anything you should store the freezer outside so that you expend the exact same amount of energy keeping the water cold, but don't pump all that heat into your home in a time you probably want it to be cooler (summer). Also , you didn't measure watthours used on your setup in the course of a fully 48 hrs or sk. I would think that a simple window air conditioner Will do a better job converting electrical energy into a cool and slightly dehumidified bedroom environment. Plus ... You can get them for like 1/5 the price of what you have there via aarage sale or fb market place. Hell even a brand new one for a size of that room is gonna be pretty cheap. You do have the battery aspect going for you but I handle power outage just by having a cheap gasoline generator on standby. It gives us a way to charge up everything which even your system is going to require. Any AC works a lot faster than your system would though. Here's an idea .. why not use a peltier cooler. You can pump the wasted energy into your hot water heater (or heated pool, hot tub?) , and cool down water for cooling your room at the sameeee time / no extra energy needed.

[@GrowingAnswers]

Pelts are very inefficient when it comes to watts per btu.

[@randybird9979]

window ACs make to much noise