Bikeshed topic of the week: How to make the space a cooler place

I like your thinking kid.

I disagree on this being the main solution, because if we don’t circulate air, it’ll indeed take hours for the cooler air to get anywhere. If we go for the AC, we would also need to improve air circulation so that the cooler air actually makes it to the front of the space and doesn’t just stay in the back. Drawing in outside air in combination would be pointless as well, as this would diminish the effect.

My proposal would be to either do that and improve circulation, or we draw in cooler air from the rest of the building and set the fans by the window to exfil only.

When I have some time, I’ll see if I can draw up some airflow schematics.

I’ll bring down my temperature monitor tonight and hook it up.

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Temperature monitor is setup. Basic ESP8266 based on nodemcu using a DS18B20 one-wire temperature sensor.

It can be accessed at 172.31.0.199 right now. I set it up on a static dhcp address for it on openwrt. If anyone can figure out how to give it DNS entry, please do.

Here is a gist of the lua code running on it.

Once we setup a stats.vanhack.ca, then we can hook it up.

For now it is sitting on @Shane’s awesome isVHSopen box

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Also hooked it into data.sparkfun.com. You can get a feed at: https://data.sparkfun.com/streams/ZGbRWzl0vocmqpgMa3g7

Currently there is a small daemon running on the vhs-doorswitch rpi which queries the temperature sensor every minute or so and publishes the data to sparkfun. Script is in

/home/pi/vhs_temp_relay. 

It is autostarted using the configuration file at

/etc/supervisor/conf.d/temp_relay.conf

ie.

supervisorctl [stop/start] temp_relay

It is reading a balmy 26 celcius right now.

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If spot cooling is being considered how about the 5 gallon ice bucket cooler?

or this styrofoam air conditioner?

Drawback is that these need to have frozen ice. Could be home made i.e. ice in milk jugs or store bought ice bags.

If everyone wants to stay cool in the space, they should just put on their sunglasses…

In all seriousness, why not an evaporative cooler or two? They’re very easy and cheap to make.

Also, a dehumidifier might be helpful as well, being in a concrete building that close to the ocean on a hot day…

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Ceiling fans and/or scillating fans mounted on walls will make the space more comfortable. I’ve read somewhere that moving air can reduce the apparent temperature by 5 degrees or so. These fans are relatively cheap and easy to install.

Evaporative/swamp coolers don’t really seem to help much. I’ve built a couple in my time and any beneficial effect they had was definitely in the “meh” category.

We’ve been all over the swamp coolers topic and due to air humidity, this does not work here.

Dry heat and humid heat are two totally different types of heat, and need two different solutions…I agree that a swamper wouldn’t be the best idea if it was humid. I’d increase the air circulation around the room and get a dehumidifier in the space.

Also, what about a diy a/c unit? A peltier cooler with vans and exhaust? You can buy some of these components for cheap-cheap…

chinese reseller

lee’s

Chillers, they use them in HK and it is quite humid there.