Ok, I'll admit I grew up a long time ago, a full thirty years BC (before computers). So of course all us kids figured out other ways to entertain ourselves through the long afternoons when Mom kicked us out of the house and told us to stay out of mischief. Most generally those were summer afternoons, hot and dusty, it was a given if you wanted a drink of water you knew where the garden hose was. And of course, once you'd turned on the hose to get a drink there was water on the ground, and water on the ground? Oh lord, rivers and lakes and, and dams and is that enough dirt in the dam for the Tonka truck to drive over without getting the wheels muddy? The answer to that one was usually no, but anyhow. Spent a lot of hours playing with a trickle from the water hose and some dirt.
Then I grew up and went to work, and you know, from time to time I still found myself playing with a water hose: get the dratted radiator cool enough to get the cap off without getting scalded so we can some water in this rig, and for god's sake keep it running or we'll be sitting here two hours before it will cool enough to restart to where we can add coolant; or lord have mercy that pump is running way to hot, no wonder stuffs boiling on the suction side, get a trickle started over the case and cool this baby down so it will actually pump something instead of just shaking the pipes. That kind of stuff, the kind of stuff we trolls and troglodytes who keep the bottom end of the world running come to take for granted.
(just FYI for them who might not know: NEVER try and add water to an overheated engine that isn't running, you'll get badly burned and destroy the engine. Keep it running and cool the radiator until lifting the little lever on the cap doesn't produce a scream of steam, and then use EXTREME caution and the thickest rag you can find to crack the cap and let it finish foaming off before you take the cap off… then don't add the water to fast, just a couple of good sips, say a pint at a time, and if the engine is way hot it just might blow the first couple right back at you as superheated steam, so don't get your hand/face right over the radiator. Just keep hosing down the radiator between sips, and listen. You'll hear the engine change tone as things start cooling down enough to actually fill things up. Oh, and DON'T forget to find your leak, fix your leak, and get the proper charge of anti-freeze back in your beast of burden or come next winter you'll have an entirely different set of problems… of course, if the fan belt is broken just abort the above procedure and wait, or if you have a front wheel drive rig with an electric fan that adds a new level of things to consider, but I'll let you buy the appropriate book for those)
Anyhow, me and heat and water hoses go way back. Things are hot again, summer and that it ain't happening liberal global warming conspiracy and all, and once again I'm playing with water hoses. And fans. I've discovered if I can keep the garage from superheating it does wonderful things for the air conditioning in the house. So, honoring the ancient tradition of the improvisational engineer I concocted a high volume swamp cooler from what was to be scrounged: my big job site fan, one of those mister snakes intended for lounging by the pool, and a chunk of that green plastic horse hair air filter for the furnace. A bit of tinkering, to get everything sitting just right, and yea, the fan is putting 88 degree air through the door instead of 105, pumping much cooler air in to pressurize the garage to maybe half an inch and help ventilate the attic through the access port left cracked open. Costing about half a pint a minute of water and maybe as much as three hundred watts to turn the big fan on low. Cool and groovy, but still room for improvement. There's drip-drops coming off the fan cage, and that's wasted water and air hotter than it needs to be .
The trick is going to be getting enough pressure drop to evaporate all the water into this miserable Midwest muggy before it gets to the fan. I need more surface area of filter media in a low pressure zone, and something that will hold it's shape against the pressure drop. Lez see here… the filter stuff is five bucks a sheet, plenty at Lowes, and I've got half a roll of heavy gauge rabbit wire and some left over conduit (in the trash, but I knew there was a reason I hadn't sent it on to the dump)… hmmm… tie wire improvisation to form a set of half chord filter baffles inside a cylinder, cover the cylinder in an old bed sheet... get it up snug to the intake side of the fan where the fan can pull a little around the edges, but mostly through the tube, and then get the mister nozzles blowing right at or around the far end of the whole contraption... yea, that should work. Just need to make sure I'm not overheating the fan's drive motor by starving it for cooling air. Adjust the air gap, fan to evaporator rig to optimize output volume to temperature, and let it dig. Sounds like a plan to me.
Think I'm gonna go play in the water some more. Catch ya'll later.
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