Sovereign Nations

Hot!!! Man, is that an under-statement!

The past week has been in and out of the 100’s like a Pynchonian simile (here)…

Damn, it’s been hot!

…So I had this customer come in to my (evil empire) work place the other day asking me if I’d ever heard of an “ice-box A/C unit”. I had never heard of such a thing but we, the customer and I, got into a heated (ha-ha) discussion about how one would go about making such a contraption. Anyway, inspired by the above record breaking temp’s in the Chesapeake Bay I went home on my day off and made one $17.00, 12 volt (off the grid) Ice-Box Air Conditioning Unit.

Here’s how I did it…

…First, I got a cheap, ok, it was free, cooler from work, an in-line bilge blower (far-right), two vents (left), a length of flexi-duct hose, a push-pull on-off switch and a drain plug…

… I installed the blower motor, the electrical wiring and the switch in a small group in the upper right corner of the cooler then I ran the 14 gauge wire out of the box.

…After that I cut an input air vent the same size as the blower output on the opposite side of the cooler, once again, in the upper right hand corner.

…I put a 12 volt cigarette lighter male-plug on the end of the wire and ran it into the cockpit.

… Then all you have to do is fill it up with ice, run the ducting to your favorite place (in our case it’s the companion way entrance) and turn that sucker on!

We’ll see how it goes, so far it’s been pretty cool, a bit on the loud side, even though the fan motor is inside the cooler, but I think it’s brought the temperature down in the main saloon about 10 degrees and for now I think I’ll just go off and pat myself on the back for a project well done!