Has anyone tried cooling the person (not the air) to save juice, especially at night?I found this product but wow it's pricey! To add one to every bed would cost around $4000. It does however only use 80-100W vs 1800W or so for our roof unit:ChiliPadI'm thinking, could something like this be put together ala an Instructible?* Put some ice/salt/water in a cooler* Use a variable speed pump to circulate water through tubing on a mattress pad; Use multiple zones for multiple people* Run a remote to the bedside so each person can control his temperatureSince it'd be a closed loop, the head pressure wouldn't be very high and you could probably get away with an aquarium-sized pump, and only use a few watts, maybe around 25W. As a bonus, you don't expose the person to EMPs. (My wife and I had weird dreams with an electric blanket and stopped using them. Found out later it was the EMPs.)I am purchasing an ice maker anyway, so the only add would be the pump, remote, and cooler. Ice makers are more efficient than refrigerators for the same reason: You're cooling water, not air, which is an insulator. They usually use around 160 watts.Portable ice makers produce around 1lb of ice per hour. I'm ballparking a bed cooler to need around 5 pounds? So 5 hours x 1.3A = ~6AH for the cooling, and for the pump 9 hours x 0.2A = 1.8AH. Call it 8AH total per person when including inefficiencies. Our RV can sleep 8 people, so we could keep everyone comfortable at night for 64AH. That's one battery.However, to produce 5 pounds of ice per person x 8 people = 8 ice machines going, or at least 4 machines keeping a person busy for 10 hours. That's a lot of work. Maybe my estimate of 5lbs per person is high? Maybe there's a reason the ChiliPad is so expensive? :BYour thoughts?

do you now use a mattress electric heating pad to save on LP cost? if not, why not, if you are considering spending this kind of money. I'd just get a $400 mobile/roll around air conditioner unit to cool the bedroom. there must be lots of markup in that unit?bumpy

Another possibility: One of those 12V peltier coolers like this:Wagan EL6224 Wagan Tech 12V Cooler/Warmer - 24L CapacityCosts $82, uses 40W, has a 24L capacity. Fill it with water, pump that underneath you all night using a DC pump, no DC/AC conversion. Not sure how much cooling load that can handle though. Someone know more about peltier coolers?

cdevidal wrote:Another possibility: One of those 12V peltier coolers like this:Wagan EL6224 Wagan Tech 12V Cooler/Warmer - 24L CapacityCosts $82, uses 40W, has a 24L capacity. Fill it with water, pump that underneath you all night using a DC pump, no DC/AC conversion. Not sure how much cooling load that can handle though. Someone know more about peltier coolers?This commenter states that peltiers on average remove 1W of heat for every 2W of input power, and are much less efficient than conventional cooling systems with pumps and refrigerant.http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?101918-Peltier-cooled-high-power-LEDSo (spitballing here) the average person produces 100W of heat. If we only need to remove half that heat -- not trying to make them frozen, just cooler -- that's 50W that needs to be removed. 100W of peltier is needed, or 8.3A x 9 hours = 75AH for one person.Clearly peltiers are no where near as efficient as say the ice machine in the opening post.Would be interesting if someone could somehow run water tubing through the roof A/C and utilize that cooling power. It's already installed, and is more efficient than a peltier. If it cools you enough you'd only run it a little bit every night.I'm just tossing out ideas at this point.

I think I would just buy am AC and be done with it

I just read the reviews. don't waste your money.bumpy

Cool the person, not the air | Good Sam Community

SlowBro
Explorer III
Mar 10, 2015
tatest wrote:
Cool the person?

Even in the tropics (Malay Peninsula, Barbados) and Southwestern desert the night air is cool enough that I can sleep well enough outdoors in a lightweight net hammock.

See the post directly above yours. Florida is very humid.

tatest wrote:
I don't think my body needs to be brought down to the freezing temperature of water for me to sleep. But I lived 30 years before A/C was the norm (my parents 60 years, my grandparents never saw it) and that includes living in the Deep South.

I wish my wife had your endurance :B
tatest
Explorer II
Mar 10, 2015
Cool the person?

Even in the tropics (Malay Peninsula, Barbados) and Southwestern desert the night air is cool enough that I can sleep well enough outdoors in a lightweight net hammock. Cost me about $8 forty years ago and rolls up into a package about the size of a baseball. Most often the difficulty is finding two places the right distance and strength to tie the ends.

I don't think my body needs to be brought down to the freezing temperature of water for me to sleep. But I lived 30 years before A/C was the norm (my parents 60 years, my grandparents never saw it) and that includes living in the Deep South.

I do admit sometimes sleeping in a tub of water. Evaporation takes away the heat well enough, even when air temperature is in the 100s F.
SlowBro
Explorer III
Mar 05, 2015
Well I didn't see anything in their FAQs that gives any promise of being able to replace the A/C at night.
http://www.swampy.net/faq.html

Nighttime temps are in the mid-upper 70s and humidity is about the same number. Thus, a 4-5 degree drop should be expected.
http://www.swampy.net/humevap.html

I can take that kind of heat, but not my wife.
SlowBro
Explorer III
Mar 05, 2015
rockhillmanor wrote:
Only one thing wrong with your design.
""he "Ice Water" models are not normally used for camping as they use about 12 pounds of ice PER HOUR at night and almost twice that during the day. This is generally not practical while camping,"

Right. They're cooling the air, not the person. When you cool the person you need less ice.

Even so, if you need 5lbs overnight to cool the person (as I ballparked it) that's still a lot of ice.

rockhillmanor wrote:
Here is what campers use:
http://www.swampy.net/camper.html

Been around for years and works.

Hmm ordinarily I'd pass on swamp coolers because they only work really well west of the Mississip. But they claim these work well even in high humidity situations. Not sure how?
rockhillmanor
Explorer
Mar 05, 2015
I'm thinking, could something like this be put together ala an Instructible?
* Put some ice/salt/water in a cooler
* Use a variable speed pump to circulate water through tubing on a mattress pad; Use multiple zones for multiple people
* Run a remote to the bedside so each person can control his temperature

Only one thing wrong with your design.
""he "Ice Water" models are not normally used for camping as they use about 12 pounds of ice PER HOUR at night and almost twice that during the day. This is generally not practical while camping,"

Here is what campers use:
http://www.swampy.net/camper.html

Been around for years and works.
CC_Crabman
Explorer
Mar 05, 2015
4 glasses of wine and neither the heat nor the humidity bother me till morning.
SlowBro
Explorer III
Mar 05, 2015
Nevermind. The units I saw on eBay are all cooled by ice and water. Same as mentioned in the OP.
SlowBro
Explorer III
Mar 05, 2015
Interesting. Do you know the wattage? How was the noise?
Halmfamily
Explorer
Mar 05, 2015
I had to have both knees rebuilt in the summer of 2012 and the doctor put a cryotherapy unit on my knees right out of surgery and they stayed on for six weeks. The unit is a cooler that holds ice water with a pump that ran to a pad that is 18" long and wraps completely around the knee.
Running one unit I would have to have a blanket on me as it would drop my body temperature quickly. It was amazing I could sit on front porch in 90 degree heat and be cold.
So, yes you can cool youself down very quickly with a unit like that. You might want to see if you can find a used cryotherapy unit and try it. The only power it uses is a 12 volt pump.
dave54
Nomad
Mar 05, 2015
I just add more ice to my drink. Cool from the inside, not the outside.

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