Scott Hall wrote:
>
> but it occurred to me
> that the water dispenser in a fridge most likely depends on the fridge
> itself (and not a separate chiller) to keep the water cool.
They do, indeed, rely on the fridge itself. My water 'chiller' is just
a plastic bladder hidden behind one of the drawers. If you pull the
drawers out, you can see it.
> or know where I can get a cheap, small (like a few feet
> square) water cooler?
One possibility is a small refrigerator, like we used to keep in the
dorm room. Check your local thrift shops, they likely will have one for
$20-$30. The actual cooling unit usually forms a tiny 'freezer' inside
the refrigerator cabinet, I would guess you could cut the cabinet from
around it, carefully bend the tubing to the shape you need, and dunk it
in a pail of water. Stick the thermostat bulb in the water too. They
usually don't have condensor fans, but adding one will greatly increase
the cooling ability of the unit.
Then of course there are commercial chilled drinking fountains (which
usually have a mechanical type refrigeration unit); as well as the
refrigerated bottled water stands (which usually have adsorption type
chillers, which IMO are finicky and don't work as well. They do have
the advantage of no moving parts and long life).
Yet another possibility is a small window A/C unit. It's not unusual
for the entire unit to be scrapped when only the fan is bad. In fact,
there's one sitting in my backyard at the moment, that I will probably
never get around to trying to fix. It's only problem is bad fan motor
bearings, and if you'd like to come haul it away, you're more than
welcome to it !
One more possibility is a Peltier junction. These are the active unit
in those warm/cold chests that plug into a cigarette lighter. They're
generally a few inches square, about 1/4" thick, and when you run DC
through them, one side gets hot while the other gets cold. ISTR seeing
them in a surplus catalog for around $30 recently, but sorry, I don't
recall which one. BTW, never try to operate one of these without a heat
sink on the hot side. They heat up _fast_ and will ruin themselves
while you're still thinking "Wow, it really does get cold". BTDT, but
the burns don't show at all anymore <grin>
Randall
Lakewood, CA
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