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Make Your Own Air Conditioner At Home Using Household Items

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Necessity can make people create the most amazing things. For example, some people will do almost anything to keep cool in the summer heat. Those of you living in the warmer regions of the world can relate to how frustrating it can be to spend time in a place without proper air conditioning. Well one creative Flickr user created a homemade air conditioner to cool his apartment. Here’s how he did it.

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The DIY air conditioner was made using easily available household items that cost close to nothing. The air conditioner consists of an ordinary oscillating table-top fan, fish tank pumps, copper tubing and flexible plastic tubing.

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The photos show that the copper tubing has been formed into spirals and attached at the front and back of the fan. The fish tank pumps feed water to the copper tubing to ensure that the fan constantly blows cold air while the flexible plastic tubing connects the copper tubing to the cold water reservoir and allows the fan to swing in its regular fashion. The user has to add ice to the cold water reservoir every 6 hours to ensure that the water inside the reservoir stays cool.

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The exact cost is unknown but this is a pretty cheap solution. The only thing you have to be careful about when trying this at home is to make sure the reservoir is placed in a safe place, because electricity and water don’t make the greatest combination.

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35 Comments to Make Your Own Air Conditioner At Home Using Household Items

  1. Great for a dorm or somewhere that won’t allow AC.
    Alternative to the pump is to set up two containers and run the tubing as a siphon.
    If one lives in a more rural area, an underground copper tubing element might re-cool the water. It would still need to be pumped, but a basic solar setup should suffice.

  2. Home made air cooler system are download through internet But these air cooler systems are not sufficient to make cool our home. Try to understand my notion. Now new technology are available in the world.

  3. Hi, great ingenuity and thanks for posting, but wouldn’t it have similar effect to use the fan to blow air over a tray of ice? It would more efficiently transfer the heat from the air to the ice (no tube material to pass through). When air and water temperature stabilise, replace the ice.

    • @74spider It would but then you will have add more ice more often then needed.. heat in the room would cause it to melt faster than if it was in a sealed container.

  4. If you need a machine that makes ice (which is the same as an a/c unit) to make this work, then you might as well just have an air conditioner. Cool project but very impractical.

  5. Awais Hameed

    during the whole process water of tank will also become cold.. we can use this water for useful purpose, keeping every thing clear and rust free :)


    its Very nyc,but its can’t stay cool the room its not air conditioner its air cooleR 😀 and may be it’s make humidity……
    so best way is that…..take the metal box and then make 3 or 4 big holes for entering hot air and then fit fan outside the box, fit copper tubes inside it because in this way the condensation of copper tubes get down into the box and then from box to the tank and in this way its stay cool the room and never make humidity…….

  7. how do u deal with the water condensation in the copper tube? looks very dangerous. people, before u build this thing, make sure to figure out a way to deal with the water condensed outside the copper tube

  8. Muhammad Ehtisham

    Hi ALL !!!
    I did it … I made the damn thing myself. My findings, based on my practical experience, are :
    1. There’s no hazard of one’s getting electrocuted. The electric lines and the water lines are completely passing through separate routes, without interconnection or overlapping with each other.
    2. Its not expensive either. The Copper tubing costed me something like $ 16, a small submersible pump (Chinese made, 25 W, AC) $ 3.5, Plastic tubing (2+2 meters) I already had in my store, some clips and clamps in another $ 1. So in total it costed me around $ 21.
    3. Works good till the time the water is chilled ……. ice cold. The moment the water temperature gets high, the fan starts working like a simple fan.
    4. The biggest drawback is to keep the circulating water ice cold !!!!! Once the water completes its one circle, its temperature rises like 4 to 5 degrees. So one could imagine how long one can keep the water chilled. You’ll have to keep doing the exercise of adding the ice in the box and removing the cold water out (remember cold not chilled).
    5. Consequently, the results are NOT PROMISING !!!! sorry to say.

    • Just remember, in the winter, you must frequently tend to a fireplace as well.
      If you don’t want to pay for electricity as much as possible, you have to do some things yourself.
      AND people PLEASE!!! It’ NOT A FISH PUMP!! IT’S A FOUNTAIN PUMP, AND IT WILL BE IN THE WATER, not heating your house up…durrhh

  9. This, in fact, increases the temperature in your home. Air conditioners transfer heat from one location to another, typically through a vent to the outside. This setup does not transfer the heat from the fish tank or refrigerator to the outside. The fish tank pump and refrigerator are heating up the home more than this fan is cooling it down.

  10. still expensive and not safe!practicallity wise,buy a new air cooler!!!
    price ranges from less than 3T-6Tpesos…

    • Did you think about that there are other countries, where airconditioners are way more expensive and also the electricity needed

  11. surendra Dixit

    Another one improvement we can do that tank can be made up with insulating materials like thermocol or other , so that we can enhance cooiliing time . And another we can add coolent in to water for same purpose.

  12. practically good! just an improvement: place your reservoir of cold water such that the water level is slightly higher than the highest point of the copper coil, to make sure that the cu coil is always full of water even if the fish tank pump is not in operation. connect the fish tank pump at the discharge end of the cu. coil which must also be slightly lower than the highest level of the cu. coil so that the fish tank pump is always primed. make sure that the discharge tube from the fish tank pump is slightly higher than the water level in the cold water reservoir, so that the water head is minimal so the work required will also be minimal. connect the supply line of the cu. coil an inch or two above the bottom of the reservoir and be sure that the volume of water in the reservoir is greater than the total volume of water inside the cu. coil. seal all supply and discharge points and connections then check for water leakage.

  13. I see condensation. condensation and electricity also don’t mix. this experiment is all well, until you a: get electrocuted. b: trip on the wires, face first to the fan. or c: the fan goes inside the bucket, because the top was poorly built.

  14. Fish tank pump pumps air, not water. he used a submersible circulating pump commonly used in water fountains and ponds.

  15. Mohamed Irfan

    It’s a great workout…I would recommend to University graduates to develop this …
    Anyhow I’m going to try with proper calculations & proper construction…

  16. its purely needed! specially for those who does not affort the costly Air Condition and Electricity bills :)

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