It gets damn hot here in central California in the summer, even
with water cooling your rig can get up to 120f in the evening. This may not
be a problem for most people, but it was driving me nuts! So this year I
had my eye out for a bar fridge to convert into an active radiator. At first
I was just gonna put the rad in it and turn it on - but when I got one for
7 bucks at the scrap yard it was real ugly and had caught fire, so I figured
I'd better try something else.
Unfortunately my vid. cam ate the tape I was using to film the
making of this unit, so the only pics. are of the completed deal (but you
will get the gist of it, I hope). The box is just some pine shelving I had
laying around.
Here's the business end, the control on the right is straight out of
the fridge. I was able to disassemble the whole thing without opening the
lines and letting the freon out,although looking back it probably wasn't the
smartest way to go. The dual thermometer with humidity gauge came from Ace
and has a remote on a capillary tube so it wont short out. The 3" 120v fan
is from the "Shack" and is not too loud for the amount of air it pulls.
The only thing on the other end is the draw tube which I crammed all the condenser
tube into. This tubing was covering the whole outside of the fridge on the
inside of the housing using the sheet metal to dissipate off the heat. Knowing
how hot these things can get, I used a piece of 3" muffler pipe to put them
in to help transfer heat and prevent a fire, the fan sucks from the other
end.
Here's where it gets cold. This particular unit had the evaporator built into
a sheet metal shelf that held the ice trays. I just flattened it out and screwed
it to a piece of wood in the middle of the box. Then I spray foamed all but
a circle in the middle of it so I could stick the tubing on top of it, even
though I have used this stuff on doors and windows for years - I still made
a huge mess and still have that crap behind my ears and up my nose = P. The
white stuff in the middle is the gel out of the artificial ice packs - it's
non toxic and does a pretty good job of heat transfer without evaporating
or leaking like water would ( I removed some for the photo). The space
on the left is to hold 2 beers :)
Well this says it all. If I can have temps like these when its 98f in my house
and hotter outside, it was worth the effort. Now to wait and see how much
power it eats up a month!!!
Dr Surlyjoe
