The day today...

...was good. Got late in errands. Going to bed now. Take care :-)

PS: Was trying to write the shortest blog post ;-)

First shower with Rosemary

A shower with Rosemary

Hey there!

As I turned home from office today, it was evident that weather was going to turn weeping eyes to smiles. Clouds, thunder and a hint of eminent shower. As soon as I reached midway, it started to rain and gusts of wind so strong that they reduced vision by lifting up dust in the air.

For the first time in life I felt the joy of hard earned privilege of enjoying this season, the small droplets of rain from the middle of a blizzard instead of running for cover as I used to do a few months ago. I also empathized with those who still have to run around or wait for the shower to be over because I was so much one of them for so many years. While now, I was enjoying the weather, concealed from all the undesirable effects of the elements.

Rewound a few months and I saw myself covering up, packing up, rain-coating up or just giving in to the weather and try to enjoy being drenched. Now, I saw myself so blessed to enjoy the weather from my small comfortable, temporary haven. Thankful that in that moment of comfort I could spare a thought about myself when my destiny was counting down to bless me with this object of comfort. Saw myself wishing to deserve these amenities and put the efforts in to this effect.

Destiny has a reward plan-for all. Strangely, we do not yet know about how to think in her shoes. The best is to assume that all reward is proportional to earnest effort and perseverance.

I am also thankful that I could wish for the same comfort to those who are putting in their best foot in whatever duties the invisible powers have ordained for them. Some of them I can so much relate to as a person I was a few months back. Some of them whom I just wished a nice day just a few moments ago. Some who by virtue of their innocence, discipline and honesty, deserve much more comfort and luxury than they enjoy. Maybe it is their part of count-down to the rewards.

Good night.

Do It Yourself : Desert Cooler - 8

Click Rebuilding Desert Cooler  for all related posts

Dear reader, Thanks for reading this series so far. Your feedback is deeply appreciated.

All the mechanical stuff is now in place. All we need is to wire it up. I am not that good at electrical stuff and was apprehensive that will my wiring work. I had saved the sticker from fan motor that provided the wiring diagram and after consulting some forums, proceeded to wire the thing up.

My brother had arranged a new front grill because previous grill was of no use owing to corrosion. This one is plastic so I feel it will last longer:

The switches are supposed to be fixed on the yellow panel.

The stuff that is supposed to fit there.

The panel came off by applying some pressure. That was the only way because it did not had any screws anywhere:

Panel came out by applying pressure

 Now next challenge was to make groves for switch and a hole for the rotary speed selector switch:

Speed selector switch. The hole should be large enough to let the threaded part through.

 Like everything else begins, this one also began from markings and measurements:

Step 1: Measure

Step 2: Mark

Next need was to go through that sheet and make a rectangular hole for the switch. I decided to erode the inner portion using a drill. It was supposed to be slow and patience requiring task. And it was:

Drill holes in the sheet to make way for some other tools

Not so accurate but good enough

The drill holes were supposed to be close enough. But when drill is placed too close, bit skidded off on its own path hence the haphazard holes that you can see above. A bench drill would have been a better tool.

The gaps in the holes were easy to snap using a wire cutter. The internal piece then came off leaving an irregular hole where there should be a rectangle to host the pump switch.

The star of the show. Newly purchased wire cutter. You have been seeing its actions in other posts as well.

I had to (painstakingly slowly) use a wooden file to make the way for the switch

Filing, filing, filing...

Taking shape...good!

Phew... took 10-15 min of filing to fix the edges to make way for the switch

Fitting the fan speed switch was pretty easy. Just a 11 mm hole and done. There were going to be quite a few wires and taping them together with an electrical insulation tape was not the most maintainable option. The tape gets hard over time and is difficult to remove. So I decided to fit a connector block for the wiring connections:

These are the connectors readily available at  electrical stores. No tapes and no loose connections!

Connector blocks come with holes and just fastening a couple of screws was enough. Of course had to drill holes first through the panel for screws to pass:

Connector fastened to the panel using screws from the front

Screws holding connector block are visible on the front (Right).

I was not convinced when I saw flimsy wires connected to the rotary switch promising me to bear the load of cooler fan. In normal conditions it is okay. But a year and two down the line it is going to be not so safe deal. Something had to be done about it. Again should be maintainable solution.

Thin wires connected to the switch with tiny soldering joints. I don't buy that!

While I was washing my car next day an idea that struck me had me rush to the nearest motor workshop. I hunted for some used wire from a broken electrical assembly and some wire connectors.

Used wires from a burnt tail light of xyz car. Who cares? Got it for free!

This is a wire connector. Got 4 of these for Rs 10 :-) (Click to enlarge)

The advantage of these connectors is that they are easy to connect to the wires and in my case, the cooler switch had color coded wires. So color coded connector wires allowed me to connect it to the switch without loosing the wiring scheme's pattern.

The wires are pretty thick and now I am convinced that they will not burn out from use or current drawn by cooler fan motor.

Also eliminated the solder joints from the switch. Now wire connectors are connected to the connector block. And connector end of the wires mates with the fan speed control switch. The other end of connector block will receive the wires from Fan Motor. Connections will be tight and no need of using tape insulation.

Connectors to Fan Switch, Connector block for receiving Fan wires.

The red and black wires lead to the water pumps. Switch will make r break the circuit (On / Off)

Taking the panel to assembly location.

In the image above, Red, Blue, and White are speeds of the cooler fan and Black is common. That means, to run the cooler at speed Red, I connect one wire to Red and Black receives the other from the wall outlet. Other two wires remain idle while Red is being used. 

The speed switch just switches between Red, Blue and White while Black is hard-wired to Neutral end of the wall outlet.

There is another Earth wire (green) in the wall outlet. It is to be connected to metal body of the appliance. The purpose of this wire is to protect the handler of the appliance from any short circuits. Click here to read how Earthing mechanism works.

Another connector for earth wire

Have to sand off the paint to expose metal for connecting the ground wire

All the connections are almost completed and I was apprehensive if all will work. So before assembly, I decided to test the electrical wiring. Set up and ad-hoc wiring to test the connections using fan at various speeds to see if it works. I was expecting fireworks now!!

Ready to test

All wired up

Ready, steady, Test!

Test Run: Succeeded!

That was first time cooler showed any signs of life. I did not cry though. He he :-)

Then came the remaining components, the Pumps, Filter for water, water supply hoses from Pumps to water distributors etc etc. All was fitted together with no effort at all. Hoses went perfectly in place and pump wiring was already waiting to receive electrical connections. Water filter was also a perfect fit.

Almost there

View from the top. Pumps and filter are visible. Hoses and electrical wires are also visible

Another view. Still on the floor.

About to be fired up. Waiting for water to be filled in the reservoir

View from the pumps towards the top. Click to enlarge.

Up and running!!

Water sprinkles naturally from the holes in drop pipes. Two holes can be seen at the tip of each finger. Click to enlarge.

 

A view from the inside of room. No splashes of water and no vibrations. Cooler fan is running at the moment

Finally, the cooler is online! Three weeks of work and about Rs 2500 later we have a brand new Desert cooler in place.

This series of posts had become talk of the day with my colleagues and some friends. Dear all, the wait is over now. So are your jokes on the project deadline which was extended from one weekend to almost three. happens! :-P

As of now, it cools pretty well and we no longer need to use air conditioners. The living room and adjacent bedrooms are cooled to a comfortable level by this machine. So much so that we have to sometimes avoid the airflow. Hopefully, the cost will be covered in 2-3 months of electrical expenses due to reduced use of Air Conditioner. Market price of similar cooler is more than Rs 8000. So it has been quite a deal and fun too.

A good metric could be to use a thermometer and measure the difference between outside and inside temperature with cooler running. Another point is to see if any faults crop up in due course of use.

To build your own desert cooler, feel free to follow the posts with label: Rebuilding Desert Cooler. Or look-up the blog archive section from 1st of May 2011 onwards. If you want to receive all future content from this blog in you inbox then just click here


Finally, thanks for reading these intensely uninteresting and long instructional posts and thanks for pondering upon the geeky calculations in some of my posts.

Should anyone need any help on such activities I am ready to join the fun!


Operation Desert Cooler hereby concludes with exit code 0 :-)

Good night!

Do It Yourself : Desert Cooler - 7

Click Rebuilding Desert Cooler  for all related posts

Last time we were trying to figure out how to supply water to those PVC conduit pipes we were to use for  supplying water to the sides.

Naturally they were supposed to be holes. Big enough to let the hoses form the pump through. There was also a nice accessory available at the shops. A small plastic bend that is used in coolers. That worked to make a better connection for the hoses:

Made 12 mm holes in each side. That was the size of hoses that accompanied the pumps

This is the plumbing unit mentioned above. Cut it to obtain two sockets from each.

The holes were large enough to let these small plastic sockets through.

They were then fixed in place with some quick setting M-Seal:

Quick setting M-Seal sets in 15-20 min flat. Saving time.

By now, a set of 4 pipes was ready to go into their respective locations in the cooler.

All the needed pipes with all work done.

I wanted someway to place them so that they are maintainable. There is a chance that I will have to clean some sediment or open a clogged hole sometime or when setting it up for the next season next year. Also, it was not a good idea if anything had to be broken to get them out. So I used wire-ties to fix the pipes in respective places:

A 100 of these for Rs 15.00. Used around a dozen and rest are for future maintenance :-)

They fit really neat and no hassles of twisting wires, or screws etc

Some adjustments to make way for the hoses

Then came the hoses. Another distributor for second pump was added by making, yes, more holes :-). Each distributor had three outputs from one pump so I made two input holes in each of the longer side and one in the half side so that each longer side gets exactly two thirds of the pump's water and the half side get the remaining one third. So water for one and half side per pump will be distributed fairly on all sides.

Step 1: Make holes

Step 2: Fix

Step 3 : Attach hoses

So far we have the Shavings, Water supply system in the frame and it looks really nice with all that fixed. Nice to see all that work taking shape:

Only drip pipes attached

Supply hoses and drip pipes attached to two distributors

View from the underside. Water pumps will be at the viewer's plane. Fan towards the right.

Now we were left with one last challenge with the water supply. The clogging due to falling Shavings sue to continuous wet and dry cycles and also due to air flowing through them, there is a chance that some lose Shavings will fall into the water reservoir and end up in the water supply circuit.

A simple water filter was needed. Steel wire mesh seemed to be a good candidate for making the same. It is the same steel wire mesh as used in Indian homes for making the wire-mesh doors. Readily available. This item was also on my original shopping list.

A simple idea was to make the filter with as much surface area as possible to allow enough flow even when pretty clogged.A cuboid sort of design sounded good enough and a plan was made based on measurements, cuts and bends to be made. The dimensions were so chosen so that the pumps are at equal distance from the walls of the filter and from each other (approx3 inches):

The plan

Marked the mesh with a permanent marker. As the wire mesh is still new, all the markings were pretty visible to me at least. Camera cannot capture them as much. The wire mesh is pretty tough to deal with and making sharp bends was achieved by wedging wire between a wooden plank and floor and then lifting along the edge of the plank:

First few bends

More bending

I order to hold the filter in is shape, a wire was borrowed from the mesh itself to make ties:

Extract a wire from the mesh

Cut into small pieces

Bend into U shapes

Pass a tie through layers of mesh where they meet

Tie up tight

Done!

 Tying up at various places on need basis achieves a rigid and shapely cuboid for the filter

One corner bent and tied up

A complete room for the pumps to keep the Shavings out

Another view

 Warning: The wire mesh is quite edgy when cut and it is springy also when you try to bend it. I accidentally left the hold of it on once instance and it springed back and struck on my hand. Bruised me.

That was the only bloodshed during this project :-)

Shavings, water supply and water filter is there. Now for the electrical and wiring. Only one step behind cool breeze of home-made cooler :-)

Lets see that as well in a later post.

Good night for now!