Due to the number of comments I thought it best to add an extra page to address some of them and to answer some of the questions and clarify a few things.



In regards to using car radiators - although at first this appears to be a good idea I would not recommend it for many reasons, some are as follows:

First - you would find it very difficult to connect up the water lines in a way that would hold the pressure. You would need to find adapters to somehow go from radiator size hoses down to regular water pipes. Even though it might be possible to do so, it is highly likely that you would end up with leaks.

Second - High water pressure would probably cause leaks. Car cooling systems are designed for relatively low PSI. Radiator caps are designed to open and vent at about 12 to 15 PSI if I remember correctly. Your normal house water supply runs between 30 and 70 PSI. My pump is set to cycle between 30 and 50 PSI (30 on, 50 off). This kind of pressure would likely rupture a radiator or cause the cap to pop open and vent. So, while you are outside moving the sprinkler and you turn off the water, inside a fountain erupts in the living room. Not so fun.

That's why I used standard water pipes - they are designed specifically to hold the higher pressure.

Third - Many older radiators leak to begin with. In order to keep them in service, many are plugged up with stop leak. But as soon as you start running lots of fresh water through them all of the stop leak and other assorted crud will be flushed out and they will probably end up leaking. And there goes your fountain again.

Fourth - Radiators are going to be difficult to get clean. Most of them are full of bug leftovers and oil and other assorted things from the engine compartment. Even if you do get them clean they will probably continue to put off a nasty smell.

Fifth - The ability to use the outside water in a normal way, and by this I mean that you can turn off the water at the hose, run sprinklers or even wash your car without any fear of fountains in the living room, is something you probably could not achieve using radiators. With my cooler there is no need to just let the hose drain on the ground because it can be pressurized - it is not just a drain. In addition because it is made to hold the water pressure and not leak you can locate the cooler anywhere in the house where you need the cooling. I actually considered building a unit to fit into the heat ducts and use the furnace fan to drive the air through it so that it would become a whole house unit, but I decided that it was too much work and too complicated for my needs. Keep it simple and you will have fewer problems.

If you are planning on using this for your garage or shop I could see using radiators. Water spills wouldn't be near the problem that they would be inside your house but I would not recommend using radiators for in-house use.

Next - If you mount one in a window and pull in air from outside you will defeat part of the cooling effect. The outside air is far warmer and has much more heat in it than the inside air. By setting this up completely inside and circulating the air inside through it you get more cooling because the air going through it is already more moderate. Use outside air only if you need the ventilation.

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What would be really great is for some enterprising company to manufacture a specific unit for this purpose. A heat exchanger/radiator that is designed for the standard water pressure built into a plastic housing for catching the condensation and with a fan mounted inside. An all in one unit. Just attach the hoses and plug the fan in. But it's unlikely that anyone will because the market is not large enough. Of course, that being said, some Chinese company will probably market this in the future and totally screw me out of any share of the profits.

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I did a Google search on the internet and there is baseboard heating pipe available, even some for salvage prices. Somebody in Texas had 200 feet that he had just taken out and didn't want to throw away because it was in ÃÂlike new shape. My cooler used about 40 feet of the pipe. So that's around the amount that you will need to make a similar unit.

The water I use is directly from my pressure tank. It's untreated and is intended for outside watering. Our ground water here is pretty nasty. It's very alkali and has lots of rust in it. Just to be able to use it for the house I run it through a sediment filter, then a rust filter and finally a water softener which uses rust removing salt. And after all of that we still don't drink it. So the inside water and outside water are kept completely separate.

I want to emphasize this---- I don't waste the water by just dumping it on the ground. It is used for watering the garden, grass and trees. It hasn't rained here for 8 weeks now. With temperatures in the 80's and above everything dies if it's not watered. So the water is not being wasted. I try to keep a band of green around the house as a fire preventative. In 1999 we had a grass fire / fire storm sweep through the area and 3 neighbors houses burnt to the ground along with 4 out buildings/garages and the UPS shipping depot. Only the houses with green grass around them were spared. So having a green belt is a pretty good idea. So again I emphasize, I would be watering anyway, I am just taking advantage of something that would normally be thrown away. (The cooling properties of the water). Also this doesn't need tremendous amounts of water to work. Even at a trickle there is still a lot of heat absorbed by the water.

"bricko" described this as Âa poor mans water source heat pump". He is pretty correct in that. Regular heat pumps don't work here because the winter air temperatures are too low, as much as 40 bellow zero and often 10 below for weeks at a time. So they developed what are called ground source heat pumps that both heat and cool using the ground for the moderate temperatures that a heat pump needs. My cooler is actually only half a system in that it's not for heating, but for cooling only. A full Ground Source Heat Pump system is very expensive and uses a lot of power year round. In addition the laws concerning them have changed recently. In Montana you are no longer allowed to return water back to the water table by using a well. There were too many instances of people contaminating the water table by returning dirty water to a well. So any new heat pump system has to be contained or sealed. You can run a fluid through underground heat exchangers but the inside fluid cannot come into direct contact with the ground water, thus it's a sealed loop system. I have avoided all of this by simply using the water for both watering plants and cooling the house. It's not sophisticated, there's no compressor, no thermostat, it's manually regulated, this is what makes it cheap and green. This is also in keeping with the whole concept of the going green contest. Yes there are more sophisticated systems available. But that's not the intent of the contest, at least as I understand it. (Or so I thought until I saw the contest results)

I do have a plan for a wind powered/compressed air/water pump that I would love to adapt to this system and make a totally self contained system. But I have never had the funds to develop it or the kind of shop tools I would need to build it. Maybe someday----.

Finally for those of you who have asked, I run the coldest water through the outermost layer so the air to leave hits the coldest water as it departs. The temperature drop between the incoming and outgoing water depends on the flow rate. Running full open the water temp only drops a few degrees. But running only one sprinkler and so reducing the flow, the temp difference can be as much as 15 degrees. The inlet hose will be wet with condensation but the out hose will be completely dry. Interestingly the fan speed doesn't appear to have to much affect on the difference in the water temp, but it does have an effect on the air temp. The lower the fan speed the colder the air coming out of the cooler. That's because the air spends a little longer moving over the fins and gets a chance to shed more heat. However the cold air doesn't circulate around as much because there isn't much air movement, so I usually run the fan on high or medium.

Also in case anyone is wondering or interested, my well is around 70 feet deep with a submersible pump at the bottom and a pitiless connector about 10 feet down. Because our ground freezes down to 8 feet on occasions all underground pipes need to be at least that deep if not deeper to prevent them from freezing. So this is a sealed well, the top of the casing is closed to prevent any contamination from getting into it. Our water table is around 20 feet down so the pump is well below the table. This allows for it to draw down a lot before it starts sucking air.



