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Make Your Own

SNOWBREEZE AC
For Rs.1500 ($30)
Can be converted into an energy saving and humidified room heater in winter
You can now assemble Snowbreeze, a mild air conditioner in your house with materials costing you just Rs.1,500. It is sleek 90% energy saving, 100% green and can run on ice produced in your family refrigerator. This achievement has been possible after numerous twists and turns lasting five full summers and running through over 25 different models of Snowbreeze, leading to a total transformation of its technology, which is now simplicity itself. All earlier models of Snowbreeze were priced between Rs.5000 and Rs.10,000. Briefly explained, it works like this: If you pass room air through a set of open ended aluminium pipes loaded with ice, it comes out of the unit 8oC to 10oC cooler in a fast and thick jet-like stream which is quickly distributed in the room by a ceiling fan. Ideally, this unit is designed for a 120 sq.feet room to make you feel relatively cool and comfortable. In a bigger room you can keep it near your bed or study table. This unit gives the room air concentrated exposure to about 2500 square-inches of chilled aluminium and consumes a fixed 2.5 to 3 kg ice per hour. Larger units can be designed for bigger spaces. All you need to make this air conditioner for cooling and dehumidifying your room is to collect the following materials from the market and assemble them in the prescribed manner: 1. A plastic bucket 17 to 23 high with a base of 11 diameter. 2. Two 12 feet long aluminium pipe rods of 0.75 diameter. 3. Two aluminium plates, one of 12 and the other of 14 or 15 diameter. 4. A thin aluminium sheet, four feet long and two feet wide. 5. A 4 exhaust fan. 6. Sundry items 7. Fibre sheet Extension Total (Manufactures can get these materials in bulk 20% cheaper). Put all these things together in the manner described in the following (attached) pictures, and you have the perfect mildair conditioner to cool and dehumidify your room. Rs.350 Rs.100 Rs.175 Rs.1500 ($30) Rs.100 Rs.250 Rs.360

Caution and Benefit


The present unit is a mild air conditioner designed to conserve ice so as to run it solely on ice produced by the freezer of the family refrigerator. It can give you about 10kg ice in 24 hours and it comes to you free since the fridge is running anyway. Its intensity of cooling and dehumidification can be increased by adding more aluminium pipes in an improved design provided you have more ice to consume. On 10kg ice you can run the new model of Snowbreeze for nearly four hours, and it will save you at least Rs.1000/- in a month in power bills, since this unit consumes only 25 watts per hour through its 4 exhaust fan, against 2000 watts an hour used by a wall AC. The situation changes dramatically if a group of people or an office, nursing home or dorm, use it by getting ice directly from the factory at the bulk rate which is a third of the market rate. Then you can run Snowbreeze AC all day. For mild cooling you can do with much less ice. For related information please visit our website www.greenair conditioner.org.

Two Versions of this Model


Given below are pictorial descriptions of two versions of this model of Snowbreeze that cost between Rs.1500 and Rs.2500 to the manufacturer and are as effective as the previous models which cost at least twice as much to make. The first of these models, without a drum, cools more but consumes 2.5 kg ice per hour. The second model cools one to two degrees C less than the first and is costlier to make by Rs.500. But its merit is that it consumes only one to 1.5 kg ice per hour and with seven or eight kg ice from your refrigerator can enable you to sleep comfortably through the night. The alternate model also offers you the advantage of mild cooling with only cold water in place of ice in the drum. The second model can be converted into an energy saving and humidified room heater as shown in the last six pictures of the following illustrations.
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The Bucket

Height: 17 Diameter: 11 at base 14 at top

Air entry hole 9 above the base 2x1

Tap for draining out water

Water Tank

A steel or aluminium plate, placed inside the bucket 7 above the base, divides the bucket in two parts. The lower segment is a water tank to receive melted ice through a hole in the plate.

Extended Bucket

To increase the capacity of the unit to take more ice (upto 12 to 15 kg) we have extended the bucket height by seven inches by inserting a fibre sheet in it and also increasing the height of the aluminium sheet surrounding the ice.

A 10 high three feet long aluminium sheet is lined around the lower part of the bucket to transfer the coldness of the chilled water to the upper part of the bucket.

The two Aluminium rods are cut into precisely measured pieces to leave half inch space at each end for the air to travel freely. The two aluminium pipe sets are arranged in layers on the 12 diameter plate, one end facing the fan and the other facing the air entry cut at a height of nine inches from the base

The second layer of precisely measured aluminium pipes is placed over the first to leave room in the middle for every layer to be in direct contact with ice

A wind breaker alumininium sheet 11 high is placed above the aluminium pipes to force the air into the open-ended pipes

Ice blocks are placed above the pipes

Ice blocks are placed above the aluminium pipes inside the wind breaker. The wind breaker sheet is divided into two parts and each joins the other on both sides of the bucket in a manner to seal off the air in either half of the space between the sheet and the bucket, so that the air is not sucked by the fan directly from the air entry hole.

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The 14 to 15 aluminium plate tightly covers and seals the circular wind breaker aluminium sheet around the ice and also touches the rim of the bucket to seal off the inside air and thus drive it into the pipes below.

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A 4 exhaust fan is fitted on the bucket

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A 6 long funnel is placed around the fan to direct the cool air stream

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The bucket is sealed with its lid

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Alternate Model
In this model there is no fibre sheet extension. Everything is contained within the 17 high bucket.

Height 17 diameter at base 11 at top 14

1x2 Air entry hole 6 or 7 above the base of the bucket

The Empty Bucket

Hole for a 4 exhaust fan to be made 10 above the base

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The main components of Snowbreeze AC


A 9.5 wide aluminium drum

An aluminium sheet

9 long open-ended aluminium pipes

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A hole is bored through the middle of each 9 long open ended aluminium pipe to tie them all together with a steel wire before tying them around the drum

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A plate with 15 open ended aluminium pipes is placed in the bottom of the bucket

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9long open ended aluminium pipes are tied to the drum

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An aluminium sheet is inserted in the drum to extend its height by 5 to accommodate more ice

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An aluminium sheet being wrapped round the drum

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An aluminium sheet is wrapped around the drum and the pipes tied to it

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A strip of the aluminium sheet is cut in the space where the air enters the bucket.

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The drum is placed in the bucket and filled with ice

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The drum is sealed with its cover after putting the ice inside it.

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Part of a plastic pipe that will seal the space between the fan and the air entry hole circularly.

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A thick plastic pipe covered by a layer of thermocol sheet seals the space between the fan and the air entry hole so that the air is forced to enter through the lower ends of the pipes as well as pass through the chilled pipes below the drum and comes out through the upper ends of the pipes.

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An aluminium plate seals off the air being sucked by the fan from the pipes tied to the drum

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The bucket is finally sealed with its lid

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For Extra Cooling

Open ended pipes are fastened to an aluminium plate of 8 diameter

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The inverted plate is placed over the ice in the drum so that the pipes face the lid and not the ice. In this case the drum is NOT sealed with its cover.

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Snowbreeze as an Energy Saving Humidified Room Heater


This model can be converted into a room heater by putting a 500 watt halogen bulb over its drum
Heating: One thing leads to another. It would be only natural to assume that the inventors of Snowbreeze would not allow their favourite hobbyhorse to hibernate during the long winter months. The result of their ruminations was to convert it temporarily into an eco-friendly room heater which reduces energy costs by at least fifty percent and humidifies hot air before blowing it into the room, establishing once again the greater efficiency of home-made Snowbreeze over factory produced conventional domestic cooling and heating appliances in conserving and distributing heat. Perhaps this is so because air is a poor conductor of heat and much energy goes waste while heating it directly inside a blower. On the other hand, Snowbreeze compresses and splits the air into 40 foot-long aluminium pipes fitted around the heated drum before releasing it into the room. Simultaneously, surface water inside the drum, when exposed to a halogen bulb, evaporates in moderate quantity and humidifies the air as it comes out of the pipes.

A 4 high fibre sheet is fixed on the bucket to extend it. 32

A 500 watt halogen bulb in its frame

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The drum with 2 litres of water in it

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The bulb is suspended over the drum

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The bulb is lighted

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The lid is placed over the bucket

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