Cooler or Fooler??

[Love MACs]

My Wife found this and likes the idea as it can be used when away from the dock. I have not seen it reviewed here before and wonder if anyone has tried it? Also just interested in the opinions of "those that would know".




Here is the link to read about it.

http://www.redlinecooling.com/

[Capt Sully]

Now that's Cool

[extreem]

I imagine you would use alot of ice with that. Would probably cool things down a few degrees though.

[csm]

Depending on your latitude, could be a winner. South Texas days would burn thru ice, but may be good for sleeping if you could stock with fresh ice after sundown. Probably won't buy one, but may play around in the garage to test concept. Thanks for posting the link.

[ChuckieTodd]

It takes 144 btu to melt one lb of ice into water. From that, we can calculate that 5000 btu (small air conditioner equivalent) would be almost 35 lb of ice. And that's just for one hour!

[vizwhiz]

I've checked some of these out before, and played with some ideas myself...but have not tried to use one in a boat or car yet.

There are some...no, lots...of YouTube videos about how to make one of these cheaply, which I would personally suggest doing and testing on your boat in your weather before investing any significant $$ into a "production" model. Here I've included a link to another "production" add-on for your existing cooler, plus you can search for "ice chest air conditioner" or "cooler air conditioner" or "DIY air conditioner" or "homemade air conditioner"...you get the idea...in YouTube and you will find many people who have made these out of regular stuff...
Check out this one for the basic idea... http://youtu.be/D4Pyr5YJfew
Here's an official one: http://www.kooleraire.com

It takes 144 btu to melt one lb of ice into water. From that, we can calculate that 5000 btu (small air conditioner equivalent) would be almost 35 lb of ice. And that's just for one hour!

This may be true, but what matters is how much cooler the air in your boat gets by taking that many BTU's of heat out of the air to melt the ice! That's the main point anyway...removing some of the heat from the air. You don't have to make it 68-degF in the boat to improve the comfort level...changing the air temp from 92F (here in Florida) to 85F can feel like a North Wind when you're hot and sweaty and sticky!

So if you use frozen water bottles (which, by the way, more smaller bottles will work better than fewer larger bottles), and you keep the air flow low so it stretches out to a little bit of cooling for a couple hours, that can make it nice enough to get to sleep and sleep long enough comfortably that you don't notice that it isn't cooling much anymore... I think using something like this might work fine for one night out, but you can't carry enough ice for this to be feasible for many nights.

Also, for better results I would suggest a centrifugal type "blower" (like the one in the pic in the first post which is a squirrel-cage fan or other centrifugal blower) rather than the axial-flow "room fan" types used in many of the video's...may not be cheaper, but you need a little pressure, and axial-flow fans don't do that very well. Just some random thoughts...

[Russ]

Fill it with dry ice for extra cooling.

[Divecoz]

Consumer Reports among others saw its a fooler, not a cooler.. LONG in depth discussion here awhile back..
Among other issues it will add a LOT of moisture to the interior of your boat.. If your in a arid climate Not so bad . If your not ? Not so good

[Freedom77]

Here on Lake Mead Ice in cooler would last about 5 minutes and I haven't seen any icebergs floating around to restock. Looks like a novel idea. Fair Winds and Full Sails...Old salt...

[csm]

Divecoz,
The unit MAY add moisture, depending if the air chamber is isolated from the ice chamber. Pulling cabin air across the condensing coils will dehumidify. I'd think an insulated barrrier between the chambers, with a small drainhole to flow condensate into the icechamber should do the trick.

[DaveB]

I agree, I still have a Airecooler/ with 12volt fan that goes over ice box and used it once. Worst joke of a product out there. Like you say it just adds more moisture and does not drop the temps.
Fans work much better.
Dave

Consumer Reports among others saw its a fooler, not a cooler.. LONG in depth discussion here awhile back..
Among other issues it will add a LOT of moisture to the interior of your boat.. If your in a arid climate Not so bad . If your not ? Not so good

[Divecoz]

CSM: As I mentioned the topic was discussed and a couple units IIRC , were made and 1 or more was bought.. In The End? Consumers Reports ( and DaveB ) Nailed it.. Fooler Not Cooler.. But Hey.. give it a shot... its your money.
As for the idea of separating the Ice from the blower? Another word for separating can be ??
Insulating..you would accomplisdh just that .. reduced effect at best.. The Direct Contact with the Ice... shows little temp drop and High Moisture Gain.
We at times have enough issues with moisture and condensation etc etc ..Why add to it..?

[vizwhiz]

Divecoz, I'm with CSM on this one... running air over either the ice or frozen bottles will cause the air to cool and the moisture in the air will condense on the colder surface, which will be the ice or the cold surface of the bottles. The resulting air will actually have less moisture in it, essentially dehumidifying the air just like your house air-conditioning system does (which is why the water there drips into a pan and drains out the pipe to the outside of your house).

HOWEVER - the air coming out of the "foolercoolerbudooler" will be colder than the air in your boat, and cooler than the air outside, and as it cools the air down in your boat (or the cabin wall it's blowing on) it will cause the moisture in the air to condense on the nearest "cool" object (as soon as the air temp drops below the "dew point", which can be pretty high down here in FL). This is exactly the same phenom that happens if you were to put ice in a glass of water and set it on the table in the middle of your boat. The outside surface of it gets cold, the moisture in the air around it condenses on the outside of the glass, and it becomes wet. The glass of ice water did not ADD any moisture to the boat, just made the moisture in the air that was already there condense into water - makes it wet instead of a vapor you can't see or feel.

It wouldn't matter what system you use to drop the temperature of the air - once you cool something down in the boat, the moisture in the air is going to start to condense and make things wet - didn't add any moisture, just condenses what's there and now you see/feel it. I realize that this can be undesirable...I'm not arguing that point...just pointing out that those coolers don't add moisture to the air in your boat.

Add to that the fact that our boats aren't sealed well from the outside, and you will continuously exchange air with the outside, drawing in more "moisture-laden" outside air, which will also condense, and the water continues to show up.

For those who want to approach this technically, if you knew what the dew point temperature inside your boat was at any time, and you could evenly drop the temperature of the air down (with any kind of cooling system) to just above that point, you would not see any moisture form inside your boat, and you would have the benefit of that temperature of "cooler" air available to make you feel better. However, that temperature difference is not always enough to make us feel better, and the dew point temperature changes relative to the outside air temp and the humidity, and trying to manage that is very very difficult because it would take determining the dew point over and over and over continuously in order to adjust the cooling system to be sure you don't drop the temperature too much. This is why air-conditioners were made to just make the air as cool as possible and just pipe the water away...because it's much easier to do.

[seahouse]

Actually...

The original post was about an apple, and it looks like some of us are talking about oranges.

LoveMacs was asking about the Redlinecooler which has it own circulating pump and what you might loosely refer to as a "condenser coil". This unit will actually condense moisture from the air (exothermic reaction-heat is produced, BTW) and somewhat lower the humidity in the airspace.

Of course the other units that don't have the ice isolated (or is that ice-olated ) from the circulating air will contribute to the humidity of the interior space.

Obviously you will have no net cooling gain if you use ice from your on-board refridgerator because the heat produced to make the ice will heat up your cabin space (in most configurations).

- Brian.

[Hamin' X]

Moisture, or not, there simple are not enough BTU's available in a bucket of ice to do the job. The technical details are available via the forum search, or using common sense. But then, maybe you should ask me about lightning protections scams.

~Rich