diy air conditioner from old fridge

I've got a small table top fridge, it works and gets cold enough to form ice. If I carefully cut away all the sides and insulation leaving only the compressor and ice box, could I then just blow a fan over it and have a diy air conditioner?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    the questions get dumber here every day.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Personally I'm inspired and am now going to remove all the extraneous filtration and air handling and thermostatic control equipment from an old furnace so I can cook on it.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Yes you can
        No it won't be effective and youre better off pulling an old one from the trash.
        It's way too fricking small and you'll have to do some frickery to get the compressor outside the house otherwise there's no temperature improvement and you'll heat the house with the compressor.

        You can do that as well but really all you want is the gas jets or wtfever it's called

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Well first it was “How do disassemble fridge” and “How do make AC” so it’s a natural evolution

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    some anon please tell him why this is moronic, I don't feel like typing that much.

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Sure, if you can somehow position the rear of the fridge that gets hot outside of your house then yes you will have made a shitty AC unit. It won't be as efficient as a regular window unit and it might not last long trying to maintain that duty cycle but it will work somewhat. It probably doesn't have enough capacity to cool your room but if you position the fan right you might get a cool breeze. If you leave the whole thing in your room it won't work, refrigeration systems don't make cold they only move heat from one spot to another.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    just figure out how you're going to isolate the heat from the radiator and push air over it and then out of your house

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    you could do that, yes

    you'd want to recycle the insulating walls and design it so that it fits into a window, then make triple extra sure that it mounts semi-permanently to the window frame. if an windowbox ac unit falls out and kills your neighbour's daughter, you might be able to pass some of that liability onto the manufacturer. in this circumstance, you are 100% liable for your shenanigans.

    also

    it'll burn itself out (those little fridges simply are not designed for this purpose), it won't be energy efficient, and it will be an electrical/fire hazard if done incorrectly

    overall, it's a bad idea and I'd advise against it. You'd be better off building a diy evaporative cooler. However, yes, it theoretically could cool your room for the couple days that it doesn't burn out/catch fire.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    A refrigerator doesn't just magically create cold, it uses compression and expansion of a fluid/gas to move energy (in the form of heat) from one place to another, in the case of the refrigerator that's moving it from inside the box to outside the box. That is why room AC units need to go in a window, and why whole house AC units have an interior and an exterior unit. So that they can transport that heat outside. Having a refrigerator just sit in a room running with no door will do absolutely nothing for lowering the temperature of the room. In fact it would probably make the room warmer because of the additional heat the compressor creates while running.

    tl;dr - you're a moron

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    that would absolutely work
    if you're cooling a room no bigger than the fridge

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    you know how regular air conditioners list on the box what size room in square footage they can cool? well that little fridge was designed to cool whatever the square footage of that fridge is.

    also it's motor works in conjunction with a sensor. when the fridge temperature falls, the motor turns on until it reaches the desired temperature, then turns off. With the fridge being closed most of the time, it only has to turn on every once in a while, mostly after the fridge door has been opened which let out all the cool air. they're not designed to run for long periods of time.

    so if you try your experiment and execute it perfectly, then you might get a few hours of cooling in the immediate area in front of the fridge before the motor overheats and kills itself, and possibly cause a fire. this is not even taking into account the heat from the radiator of the fridge. do not do this.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >you know how regular air conditioners list on the box what size room in square footage they can cool? well that little fridge was designed to cool whatever the square footage of that fridge is.
      True but just to be clear that little fridge was designed to cool whatever the square footage of that fridge is down to a *maximum* allowable temp of around 41°F, and even when adequately sized for the space they're installed in a window ACs lowest achievable temp is around 60° and most people like them run between 68°-72° or so.
      IOW asking a refrigerator to put out 70° air is significantly less demand than its designed for...nearly twice as warm as they regularly run at.
      So the size comparison thing isn't so cut and dried as it sounds when put the way you did. Making a fridge into an AC is *far* more feasible than the reverse.
      Also both ACs and refrigerators have thermal protection that can and will shut them down when they overheat, which can happen to both types of machines when the weather is hot and they are over worked.
      The OPs idea isn't a great one but it's not nearly as crazy and dire as you pretend; the principles are the same, thermostats can be swapped for different temps, and most importantly, nobody's refrigerator catches on fire when the door is left open even if you leave it that way for days.
      I'm not recommending doing it but acting like it's a practically guaranteed fire hazard is just as silly.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Not him, I said you can with a lot of work.

        Need to realize a fridge compressor isn't really meant to run 24/7 either

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Yeah, but neither are cheap window ACs...put one in a room that's too big for it at the coldest setting and it won't last long and wont get the temp very low either when its hot outside no matter how long it runs.
          How much space youre cooling is the part of the equation that affects duty cycle, along with how well insulted the space is and how well you handle the exhaust.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >neither are cheap window ACs
            Most window AC units I've seen/used have had no problems running for long periods of time. Hell, I've got a window unit in my garage that runs damn near 24 hours a day in the summer months and it's been going just fine for 6 or 7 years like that.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    just move into the fridge, homosexual

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    A 5000 BTU window unit at wally world is $150

    Then you'll have an AC and a mini fridge instead of an abomination that is bad at both

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