This is a follow up on my last post about cheap air conditioning. I started looking for a whole house fan but the ones I found looked fairly expensive. About $200 to $900 depending on what I was looking for. I didn't want to cut a hole in the ceiling and most of them wouldn't fit in my back window. I started looking at regular fans and finally box fans. A typical 20 inch box fan has about 2,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of air flow. A typical 16 inch fan has about 1000 cfm. So, I decided to pick up a couple of $24 box fans from Canadian Tire. The same fan in the states at Target has been seen for $12 or so.
I cut some plywood to fit the back window and cut holes in it to accommodate the fans. I took the front faces off the fans and used the grill as a template to mark the size and screw holes.
I cut the hole about 1 inch smaller all around than the grill. I used zip ties to hold the fan to the plywood by using the front face screw holes.
Here they are in the back window. The top one is upside down so it is easier to turn off and on. You have to have both running at the same time or it does no good. If just one is on, then the air just goes in a small circle. Both these fans blow out and that causes air to come into the house through the windows.
It is really nice. I turned them on and every window I opened had a really good breeze blowing. It completely refreshed our house air in about 2 minutes at a whopping 4,000 cfm. As soon as the sun set we actually started to get cold and had to shut it down.
The above picture is from a website for whole house fans. You can see what kind of savings can be accomplished based on where you live. I checked the wattage with my trusty kill-a-watt meter. It showed 142 watts for low, 153 watts on medium, and 164 watts on high. And that is both fans together. A window mount AC (that would only cool one or two rooms) uses about 1000 to 1500 watts. A full house AC can use 10 times that.
Cooling off this summer is becoming a priority for most. Not so much for me because I live on Vancouver Island. A heat wave is 85F and it only lasts about one week every year. Most people don't have air conditioners here but the new house we are renting looks like it might get a little warm this summer, so I'm thinking of options. In the past, I've talked about using solar to cool the house. But I can't do that here because I rent. There are a few cheap options though:
1) Whole House Fan - A whole house fan is a powerful fan that is designed for ceiling mount and it sucks air from the house and pushes it into the attic. That, in turn, causes the attic air to be pushed out. So, if the windows in the house are open, then fresh air is sucked into the house and goes out through the attic. This has a cooling effect on the house.
But, being a renter, I can't cut a hole in the ceiling. Another option is to take a piece of plywood and cut a hole in it to mount the whole house fan in. I can size the plywood to fit in a window at one end of the house. Then with windows in other rooms open, the house will cool down. And I can take the fan with me when and if we move.
2) Swamp Cooler - A swamp cooler is designed for places that aren't humid. In fact, they only work in 60% or less humidity. Vancouver Island is very humid most of the year. But I checked some weather data and it turns out that during the summer, almost every day, the humidity drops to about 30 to 50% during the hottest time.
So, I could build a swamp cooler, many people do. All it is is a water reservoir with a wicking material and a fan that blows air across the wick. As the water evaporates it cools the air. But the other day I saw a humidifier in a thrift store and it was a only $8. I don't think I could build one for that cheap. It was the kind with a big cylindrical wick. (it has to be that kind, not just any humidifier) I'm guessing that it would easily cool down a medium size room. I'll do some tests over the next few weeks and blog about it.
One thing to think about it mold growing on the wicking material. So people have to clean them constantly or put a little bleach in the water. The bleach sounds a little harsh. A better idea is to add some homemade colloidal silver to the water reservoir. This will keep the water nice and clean. Although, the water will have to be added everyday, the silver doesn't need to be added every time. Just once a week is probably fine.
If you live in a place where lightning is a problem, then protecting your equipment is a must. You would also need a lightning rod at the highest point near your house. Maybe this is your house or it could be a windmill or some other structure. But either way, you would need a metal pipe or rod at the highest point and pretty big wire going straight to a ground pipe. But even with a lightning rod, if lighting strikes on your property, then a huge static charge would still be in the local area. This could travel through your shortwave antena wire or power cable from your windmill and fry your expensive circuits.
The trick with lightning is that it hates to change directions. If it is traveling along a conductor to ground and the conductor changes direction, then lightning will want to jump to the next nearest conductor to ground. In the below picture, the copper power wire (it is insulated) from a windmill is wrapped around a metal pipe that is driven into the ground. The wire is wrapped several times and then loops up and back down again before continuing to the charge controller. It is just clamped to the pipe with a zip tie. Lightning will jump through the power wire's insulator and to the copper/steel pipe and go straight to ground.
I've been looking more into the Beck Protocol since learning to make colloidal/ionic silver. I will be talking more about these technologies in the near future. It is important for a few reasons. First, I believe in independence. I don't want to rely on big pharma to get drugs that will probably do more damage than good anyway. Secondly, an economic downturn is happening and this technology makes treating yourself and loved ones very easy and economical. Thirdly, I just don't trust big pharma.
Today I will be talking about the magnetic pulser. In theory it is used for treatment of pain and also to kill off pathogens that are in lymph nodes and not in the blood. In other words, this is to be in conjunction with blood electrification. In fact, the pulser causes blood electrification during the 2.5 ms pulse. Actually, you get four jolts of microamps in the tissue for each pulse.
As the first pulse is rising, current flows. Then on the downsize back to zero volts at the coil causes a reverse current in the tissue. Then the back emf from the collapsing field generates a current in the tissue but at the opposite polarity as the initial pulse. Then a reverse of that when that field subsides. It happens each time the magnetic field changes or moves.
The trick with the strobe light is to turn it to the lowest setting that it will still pulse at. This takes longer between each pulse, but they are waaaayyyy stronger. So, do that for deep penetration. For more shallow treatments, use a higher or faster setting.
All you do is find a strobe or a camera flash. Take it apart and use a resistor to short out the capacitor.
BE CAREFUL WITH THIS CAPACITOR. IT CAN HAVE 300 VOLTS STORED AND CAN STOP YOUR HEART. If you are unsure, ask someone qualified in electronics such as a TV repairman or an electrician to help.
Once you discharge the capacitor, then you can cut the line to one side of the strobe light and connect the two wires going to the coil. To make the coil, get some coated copper wire, called magnet wire. Try to use 15 or 16 gauge. I used 15. Make a jig like in the picture below and hand wind or you can stick a bolt through it and use a hand drill. I used electrical tape on it before I took the one wood plate off to remove the coil. You need to secure it somehow, because it will try to unwind slightly.
Also, when running, the flash tube gets hot after about 15 minutes. Take a break and let it cool down. As it gets hot, it offers more resistance to the coil. I put electrical tape on the front to block some of the light. But I kept the cooling vents on the top and bottom alone.
I also added two capacitors in parallel to the existing capacitor. Just make sure positive to positive and negative to negative and that the voltage rating is good. I used capacitors from two more camera flashes, so the voltage rating was about 300 volts. I have 450 MicroFarads now instead of just the 8 MFDs that are standard with this strobe light.
