www.davidwilbur.com

This spring my brother, Steve, installed an above ground swimming pool for his family to enjoy.  Now that the water temperatures are rising, he has decided to build a version of the DIY swimming pool cooler.  His version uses the same corrugated PVC fill material and a similar rotating water arm.  He will have approximately the same amount of fill material in his design as well.  However, he decided on some design changes.

Some of his changes were made of necessity because of the materials he had to construct the cooler,  some were made based on my advice from things I learned building mine and some just happened.

If I were to do mine over, I would not try to create a round "cake" shaped fill block.  A square or rectangular shape is much easier to fabricate.  Second, I would not spend a lot of time gluing all the sheets together.  This didn't add much and was a messy process.  Finally I would have made it bigger to handle "on-demand" cooling (at least do a decent job on a couple hours notice).

Steve designed a "square" system instead of using a barrel.  He came up with some inexpensive pipe and fittings on craigslist and after returning the inordinate number of "X" fittings to the building supply store, he made $20!

He fabricated some "special" pieces for his design.  Most of the fabrication could easily be done with hand tools, but since he has a bandsaw, drill press, lathe, etc.  his parts come out very nicely done.  In the picture you see him removing the stops from inside a "T" fitting that will act as a saddle to support the pressurised plumbing.

Steve also had a great idea to use some of the remaining corrugated PVC material to build the walls of his tower.  The arrangement also held the individual sheets of fill material in place, tightly together, without glue.  Coincidentaly, the rounded corners of the tower happen to fit the rounded corners of the box fan he was planning to use.  It's "square" and it does not need to be glued -- two things I was hoping to test in my next design.  This worked out very well.

My original water distribution arm did not go all the way through the barrel and was suspended by wire at one end.  Steve chose to use the water inlet pipe to not only carry the water, but to also provide support by going all the way through the tower where it rests on two "saddles".  In the close up of the arm, you can see the end of a straight PVC coupler that he cut off and used to provide a stop above the "X" connector.  This prevents any water that sprays out the opening drilled in the "X" connector from shooting up into the fan.  It is normal for some water to leak out of the hole as it acts as the lubricant for the rotating arm.

Here Steve checks on the rotation of his water distribution arm and shows off his creation. The black pan under the cooler is acting as the catch basin. The pan is sold at building supply stores for mixing small batchs of concrete and such.  Steve notched the rim of the pan to fit under his cooler and it helps "lock" the legs in place and makes it more stable.

His cooler ended up being much more compact than mine.  This will prove to be an advantage for him since he has to raise up for use on the above ground pool.  Look at all that cool water he is making!

 

Update (6/23/2008):

Steve has sent me a diagram that shows how to cut the corrugated PVC sheets with suggestions for utilizing the maximum amount of material from each sheet.  He also has told me that his cooler was able to take his pool from 87 degrees to 76 degrees overnight.  The overnight lows in Phoenix have been about 80 degrees the last couple nights so he got to below ambient air temperature!  I wonder how soon his pool dropped to 76 since his cooler is 4-5 time larger, relative to the pool volume, than mine.  This would confirm my last design idea of a larger "on-demand" capability.

Steve also added a post to the forum with additional details.

I have turned over this page to Steve.  He may change it in the future....

 

 

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Dave's original pool cooler post