Hacking an air conditioner
Interesting technology - take a standard air conditioner and make it drive a walk-in cold room.
From
CoolBot:
Looking for an alternative to an expensive walk-in cooler compressor?
The CoolBot turns almost any brand of off-the-shelf, window-type air conditioning unit (purchased separately) into a turbo-charged cooling machine. Transform an insulated room into a walk-in cooler to keep your vegetables, meat, flowers and other products fresh and thermostatically controlled cool down to 35F!
CoolBot will not only save you on installation and repair costs, it will also help you save electricity, reducing your operating costs when combined with new Energy Star air conditioning units engineered to much stricter environmental standards than standard walk-in cooler compressors. CoolBot uses new (patent-pending) technology that just became available in 2006.
Performance varies based on the size of your room and the size of the A/C unit you have. As a guide: Here in Southern New York, a $400 Home Depot 18,000 BTU window A/C unit keeps produce in a 7' x 12' insulated room at the 38 F we set it to during the summer with plenty of cooling power to spare.
They hack the circuitry of a standard air conditioner allowing it to be run as a walk-in cooler.
Very clever!
Posted by DaveH at April 3, 2014 4:47 PM