Our Do-It-Yourself Air Conditioner

I made a simple unit back when I was playing around with the idea of using groundwater as the cooling medium for a room air conditioner. I substituted a small radiator from a motorcycle for the ice tray and used a 12 volt fan running off a solar panel to move the air over the radiator's vanes. To prove the concept I hooked the radiator hoses to a faucet set on a very slow drizzle and turned the unit on. The temp in the kitchen dropped noticeably but the real difference was in the room's humidity. That's when I discovered the need to drain away the condensation. At the very least, it made a great dehumidifier. Based on this demo, I figured it's possible to scale this up to a whole house unit but I'd like to change the design to circulate a non-corrosive coolant like propylene glycol through the radiator unit powered by a solar panel and have that cooled by an external radiator sunk in a well bore. Feel free to adapt and use as you like. This is an open source design. Keep innovating! It's not the corporations that will save us, it'll be us nuts in the basement!

This works well for cooling however it does add humidity to the cool air. An air conditioner cools the air and also reduces the humidity.