Tag: Fan

DIY: Portable Cooling Unit

writ­ten 7/14/25; updat­ed 7/14/25

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What

Make your own air con­di­tion­er that’s not real­ly air con­di­tion­ing. This device made from house­hold items helps blow cold air from water chilled by ice. It is high­ly cus­tomiz­able. Best for small spaces.

Why

The use case for this assem­bly can be var­ied. Exam­ples: the top of my town­house that nev­er gets A/C prop­er­ly, pic­nics, tail­gat­ing, my work­place when­ev­er it los­es A/C (at least once a year), etc.

Time and Effort

Time: 2–3 hours

Effort: Easy-Mod­er­ate

Materials and Cost

Mate­ri­als

Sub­mersible Pump USB, 3W/50gph

Arc­tic Zone Titan Cool­er, 16-can

Radi­a­tor w/ Fan, 120mm/DC12V/12pipe

Tub­ing, 3/8″-1/2″ (0.3″-05″; 8–12mm)

Dual 3 or 4‑pin USB Adapter, 12V

4in Dust Hose, sculptable/flexible

4in Bell Noz­zle Dust Col­lec­tion Fit­ting

USB Hub with Pow­er Switch­es, 2.5A/5V

Cost

$6.99

$27.99 (sale)

$20.99

Free (~$6)

$8.99

$15.45

$19.98

$19.99

TOTAL: $120.39 ($126.39)

Owned Sup­plies

Sharpie

Dremel w/Cutting Bit

Dri­ver w/Drill Bit

Screws, Nuts, Wash­ers

Util­i­ty Knife

Ruler/Square

Safe­ty Glass­es

Option­al — the assem­bly is high­ly cus­tomiz­able

  • 120mm Slim Case Fan attached to oth­er side of radi­a­tor for push/pull method (~$10)
  • Replace the 120mm Radi­a­tor w/Fan with a 240mm Radi­a­tor w/Fan ($36.99), Slim Case Fan 3‑pack w/PWM shar­ing ($28.99)
  • Add anoth­er Fan to the end of the Flex Hose for even more pulling pow­er (~$10-$30), by uti­liz­ing a 3D print­er or buy­ing a Duct Col­lec­tor Flange (~$10)
  • If you don’t need the on/off switch­es for pow­er, then just a dual port USB A pow­er block is fine (~$10)
  • You can also get a USB split­ter plus an in-line USB with on/off switch all con­nect­ed to a 1‑port wall block, but that would mean many adapters and could com­pro­mise pow­er deliv­ery if not care­ful
  • Use an insu­lat­ing tape around the base of the Bell Attach­ment

Schematics

This is the orig­i­nal schemat­ic I drew. It has dif­fer­ent com­po­nents I did­n’t end up using like wing nuts, a divert­er tray at the bot­tom, and an added plas­tic sheet/bracket for fas­ten­ing the hose flange on top to.

Process

Planning and Measurements

  • After gath­er­ing sup­plies, try them out to see if they will fit, the best ori­en­ta­tion, etc. Adjust as nec­es­sary
  • Cut Hoses to fit the Sub­mersible Pump and Radi­a­tor w/Fan into reser­voir (orange lin­er buck­et)
  • Decide if you want to use the push or pull method (or both) for the radi­a­tor, and swap the fan to the desired side

Note: Cool­er fans always have a direc­tion of flow and spin indi­ca­tor some­where on there

  • Take mea­sure­ments and mark them with the Sharpie
Notch­es for cords

Cutting

  • As nerve-wrack­ing as it can be, you just got­ta do it to get it done
  • Start with the notch­es in the plas­tic. I used a Dremel with a cut­ting wheel and it was quite sim­ple. *Don’t for­get safe­ty glass­es when cut­ting plas­tic!!*
Dremels make the plas­tic melt while cut­ting
It’s use­ful for keep­ing things most­ly smooth
  • Now for the cool­er. I decid­ed to trace the inside of the Bell Noz­zle Attach­ment to open up as much space as pos­si­ble for the air move­ment (plan­ning on lat­er using a 240mm instead of just the 120mm). Using the util­i­ty knife, I cut through the 3 lay­ers of insu­lat­ing mate­r­i­al
  • Ini­tial­ly, I’d planned on just set­ting the Bell Attach­ment on top of the cool­er, so next, I drilled holes for the 4 attach­ment points through insu­lat­ing mate­r­i­al and the orange plas­tic (need­ed to stand on a stool to do this on the work­bench) using a 1⁄4″ bit
  • Then, I traced the open­ing on the plas­tic with a Sharpie because now I can see the line through the back­side. It’s time to cut the open­ing! Here, you have options. I think the eas­i­est method is to run the util­i­ty knife mul­ti­ple times around the shape, cut­ting deep­er each time, then clean up with the Dremel (sand­ing bit) after­wards (unless you have oth­er fun tools in your arse­nal). Instead, I decid­ed to get fan­cy and use avi­a­tor snips (tin snips) because they pret­ty much cut every­thing. The prob­lem is that you have to know how to use them oth­er­wise you mess up like I did. Thank­ful­ly, it was­n’t a huge deal. It real­ly does­n’t have to be gor­geous, either.
Right side snips. Not sure where my left one is…
Oops. Tried to the the cen­ter snips

Securement

  • Here, you have to decide how you want to mount the Bell Attach­ment: Under the insu­la­tion? Above? And, even, if you want to secure it on top of the cool­er fab­ric, or under­neath it, just on the orange plas­tic.
Under?
Above?
  • I hap­pen to have a huge box of loose screws orga­nized by size, and some ran­dom wash­ers and nuts, so I chose some 1⁄4″ (M6) screws
  • Ini­tial­ly, I used the 1″ screws, wash­ers, and nuts to go all the way through.
  • In the end, I changed my mind used the 1⁄2″ length screws and attached it all under­neath the cool­er fab­ric because the 1″ screws were too long even through the fab­ric and would impede the fan/radiator place­ment inside

Final Assembly and Testing

Time to put it all togeth­er!

  • First up, replace the orange lin­er buck­et, suc­tion the Sub­mersible Pump to the bot­tom, and replace the tray with the Pump’s cord through the notch
  • Fit the water tubes down into the reser­voir through the tray’s con­ve­nient holes (bonus, this sta­bi­lizes the radiator/fan unit) and attach to the Pump
  • Attach all Pow­er Cords and Adapters togeth­er
  • Attach the Flex­i­ble Hose to the Bell Attach­ment

Time to Test!

  • Move the tray aside a lit­tle, and fill ‘er up with water (make sure it’s always past the top of the Pump… You should nev­er run those dry!) and ice packs. I hap­pened to use ice because I ran out of ice packs test­ing out the first iter­a­tion of this assem­bly (see end of post if inter­est­ed)
  • Plug it all in
Fill­ing up!
Water is drain­ing into the reser­voir just like it’s sup­posed to!
  • DONE! Give it some time to start cool­ing
Hel­lo!!

Result

07/14/25: The pow­er real­ly isn’t as strong as I’d like it to be. End­ed up try­ing all kinds of fans (hap­pened to have) to try and boost pow­er. More mon­ey equals more pow­er, but also more noise… With that said, hav­ing this when it’s about 100F with no oth­er air source, would be a God­send.

The cool­er is insane­ly portable, and every­thing about this cool­er by Arc­tic Zone is per­fect for this appli­ca­tion from the tray with con­ve­nient holes to the zip­per-less clo­sure, to the plas­tic lin­er tray which makes it ful­ly water­proof, to just how nice it looks. It even comes in a 48-Can size!! Tech­ni­cal­ly, you can just scoot the tray aside and car­ry drinks in the reser­voir, too. Even food if you have space in the tray. I’m sure you can 3D print any man­ner of dividers if you’re not using the whole tray for fans. The largest sized cool­er could real­ly have dual fan and vent set­up.

Just store the cords and block in the pock­ets when not using
Lift out and pour water. Easy peasey.

Here is a hose-end fan attached with a 3D print­ed 4″ adapter

When I have more monies, I will try the 240mm Radi­a­tor with push and pull fans, then update here.

Notes

  • Your choice on how you want to ori­ent the fan on the radi­a­tor. You can unscrew and re-screw to the oth­er side, or even add anoth­er fan for a push/pull method instead of just push or pull
  • Many soft-sided cool­ers are NOT actu­al­ly water­proof! Be care­ful!
  • Sub­mersible pumps are eas­i­ly clogged. You do not need a pow­er­ful one. A weak­er one will do just fine
  • Ice packs are prefer­able to actu­al ice, though you can use ice itself, too. The rea­son being tiny ice pieces can enter the pump and poten­tial­ly dam­age the entire sys­tem
  • Very large chunks of ice do not melt eas­i­ly or quick­ly, and can pro­vide longer cool­ing than small pieces
  • This can also be done in a hard­case cool­er. I chose this cool­er because drilling through plas­tic of a hard cool­er would like­ly neces­si­tate some sort of seal­ing to retain the insu­lat­ing abil­i­ties of the cool­er. Like, spray foam or insu­lat­ing tape?

Test Run

If you’re inter­est­ed, I ini­tial­ly test­ed it all out on a small cooler/lunch bag that was free. I’d drawn schemat­ics for 2 dif­fer­ent setups includ­ing the small­er set­up. The result was less than ide­al:

  • The fan and radi­a­tor were much too large for the front pock­et that I’d planned on try­ing
  • Pok­ing holes through the bag to the reser­voir of water is not idea for leak­age rea­sons, yet run­ning the hoses around the out­side along­side the pow­er cords made for a very ugly set­up and high chance for leak­ing, not to men­tion reduced water-cool­ing capa­bil­i­ties
    • The cooler/lunch box end­ed up leak­ing because it’s not actu­al­ly water­proof

Here are some pic­tures!

Orig­i­nal Schemat­ic
Just need a util­i­ty knife to score and break
Mount­ed!
Pump goes in, but has no hard sur­face to suc­tion to
Too tight a fit, so the hoses have to stick up and out
Clos­ing it inside the pock­et kinks the hoses
Pump and radi­a­tor work well!
For ref­er­ence, the counter out­side it was 69F
In the end it leaked every­where and was a bust

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Kairosoft Games Reviews

writ­ten 07/16/23, updat­ed 07/16/2023

Kairosoft, based out of Tokyo, Japan, has cre­at­ed numer­ous sim­u­la­tion games for mobile, Switch, and PC, since 1996.

Big Fan

I am a HUGE fan of Kairosoft games ever since I played my first one, Hot Springs Sto­ry. Here, I am going to list the ones I have played. They’re sim­ple, adorable, addict­ing, fun, wit­ty, strate­gic, and if you’re a fan of sim­u­la­tion games, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. This is a list, rat­ings, and short review for the games I’ve played. To be updat­ed as I play them.

Quick Jump

  1. Games (A‑Z)
    1. Burg­er Bistro Sto­ry
    2. Dream House Days DX
    3. Dream Park Sto­ry
    4. Dun­geon Vil­lage
    5. Dun­geon Vil­lage 2
    6. Epic Astro Sto­ry
    7. Game Dev Sto­ry
    8. Hot Springs Sto­ry
    9. Hot Springs Sto­ry 2
    10. Mega Mall Sto­ry
    11. Mega Mall Sto­ry 2
    12. Oh! Edo Town
    13. Pool Slide Sto­ry
    14. The Man­ga Works
    15. Trop­i­cal Resort Sto­ry
    16. Ven­ture Towns
    17. World Cruise Sto­ry

Games (A‑Z)

Burger Bistro Story

Rat­ing: 2 out of 5

Com­ments: You own a Burg­er Chain and must com­pete with 3 oth­er Burg­er Chains. by cre­at­ing any com­bi­na­tion of burg­ers with ingre­di­ents researched, as well as dec­o­rat­ing and man­ag­ing each indi­vid­ual store, com­plete with staff and sup­pli­ers, and unlock­ing new cus­tomers. I found it to be a bit too loose in burg­er cre­ation and rather dif­fi­cult to enjoy for long. Out­com­pet­ing com­peti­tors is sat­is­fy­ing.

Dream House Days DX

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Com­ments: You man­age a hous­ing com­plex through 3 types of expan­sion, tai­lor­ing each indi­vid­ual room with spe­cif­ic fur­nish­ings to cer­tain groups or ten­ants. They will grow up, get jobs, get mar­ried, have kids, retire, and die from old age right inside your rooms. Kind of Sims-like. I per­son­al­ly was shocked when my favorite ten­ants got old. I helped them get jobs! Coun­seled them through dates! That put a damper on the game…a lit­tle too much real­i­ty, a lit­tle too much God-play­ing.

Dream Park Story

Rat­ing: 5 out of 5

Com­ments: LOVE THIS GAME. Then again, I’m par­tial because one of my favorite video games of all-time is Sim Theme Park and I’ve yet to find a suit­able replace­ment for it. This game is the clos­est so far on the sim­plic­i­ty and fun side. It’s exact­ly that: a sim­u­la­tion theme park. Small rides, big rides, sideshows, shops, eater­ies, bath­rooms, trash­cans… Expan­sion, research, hir­ing, sea­sons, con­tests. Love it.

Dungeon Village

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5

Com­ments: Neato mechan­ic where you build a vil­lage that attracts adven­tur­ers itch­ing for bat­tle. Inns, eater­ies, weapons shops, leisure, and if/when the adven­tur­ers like it enough, they will stay, giv­ing you a nice amount of cash! Dur­ing the day, they fight mon­sters and ven­ture through dun­geons, gain­ing lev­els and stats, and at night, they either sleep in their hous­es or go back to whence they came. Even­tu­al­ly there are boss fights! Great idea. Good game.

Dungeon Village 2

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Com­ments: Just like Dun­geon Vil­lage 1 except with some steps forward…and some steps back. I was real­ly hop­ing for a blow-away-bet­ter game. It does have expan­sions which is cool and allow you to car­ry over some of your favorite adven­tur­ers to new towns in new lands right away. I just wish it was a bit…better. I played it less than the orig­i­nal ver­sion.

Epic Astro Story

Rat­ing: 2.5 out of 5

Com­ments: You build a set­tle­ment that gets vis­its from aliens for space tourism. You grow things, expand, get sup­plies and resources. All for econ­o­my! You can even send your set­tlers on voy­ages! Unfor­tu­nate­ly, while it sounds good, I found it to be a tad frus­trat­ing. Alien tourists only had a set area they would go out­side of a space sta­tion which places con­straints and makes build­ings repet­i­tive. All in all, I found it rather tedious and dis­ap­point­ing.

Game Dev Story

Rat­ing: 5 out of 5

Com­ments: One of Kairosoft­’s orig­i­nal games! What makes this game extra spe­cial is that a video game soft­ware com­pa­ny released a game about mak­ing video games! You have cre­ative license to com­bine dif­fer­ent ele­ments togeth­er to try and make a stel­lar game with your team, while under­tak­ing small side gigs all in the name of pres­tige and fame! Expand, research, and cre­ate to either explo­sive suc­cess, or dis­mal fail­ure. Extreme­ly fun.

Hot Springs Story

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5

Com­ments: My very first Kairosoft game. Played as a demo and was hooked. One of the ear­li­er entries, it has some frus­trat­ing ele­ments like being unable to move things around eas­i­ly as you expand. Oth­er­wise, you are man­ag­ing a hot spring! Con­tests with mag­a­zines for pop­u­lar­i­ty, make com­bos, and give clients what they want!

Hot Springs Story 2

Rat­ing: 4.25 out of 5

Com­ments: Def­i­nite improve­ment on the orig­i­nal! Added out­side ele­ments for the inside of the hot spring, dif­fer­ent hot springs, lots of com­bos, many more stores and dec­o­ra­tions. I found it to be great except some small details like for some rea­son very few of my clients ever want­ed to go enjoy the out­door attrac­tions, and even when I placed stairs to access them, no one ever used the steps, rather walk­ing through walls. I also found the game to be too con­fin­ing for all of the new ele­ments added. I found I want­ed it to be dou­ble the size after ful­ly expand­ing the facil­i­ty.

Mega Mall Story

Rat­ing: 4.75 out of 5

Com­ments: Fan­tas­tic game! You’re man­ag­ing a mul­ti-lev­el mall. Uti­liz­ing com­bos, esca­la­tors, ele­va­tors, place shops eater­ies, and attrac­tions while work­ing with trans­porta­tion and com­mu­ni­ties to out­per­form com­pet­ing malls! My only gripe is that there’s not enough space!

Mega Mall Story 2

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Com­ments: Rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent flow and graph­ics style, I was dis­ap­point­ed in this game. The core is the same, but things are so dif­fer­ent that I quit play­ing after about 3 total lev­els attained.

Oh! Edo Town

Rat­ing: 3.75 out of 5

Com­ments: As a lat­er install­ment, this has fea­tures that make mov­ing things around easy. You’re cre­at­ing a town in the Edo peri­od of Japan’s his­to­ry. Roads, store, hous­es, attrac­tions, cas­tles, tur­rets, hot springs…there’s a lot to design with! Some­how, I found I was­n’t ter­ri­bly fond of the game. Per­haps the his­tor­i­cal set­ting was too con­strict­ing? It was fine, just I pre­fer Ven­ture Town despite hav­ing bet­ter game ele­ments.

Pool Slide Story

Rat­ing: 5 out of 5

Com­ments: Fan­tas­ti­cal­ly enjoy­able! I hon­est­ly did­n’t think I’d enjoy it as much as the oth­ers because it’s con­strained to just pools, but WOW! You get to design both indoors and out­doors ele­ments. Food, shops, tables along­side, well, pool fea­tures! Slides, cur­rents, streams, plants, water col­ors and fra­grances??? It’s just awe­some! I only wish I had more space to make even big­ger and bet­ter pools!

The Manga Works

Rat­ing: 3.5 out of 5

Com­ments: This is just like Game Dev Sto­ry but for Man­ga. Instead of work­ing in an office with team mem­bers, though, you are the man­ga­ka, her(him)self. You work at home and suf­fer through cre­ative blocks, bare­ly mak­ing dead­lines, enter­ing con­tests, try­ing to ful­fill spe­cial requests for pub­lish­ers… all the while try­ing to pay rent with oth­er odd jobs. It’s a good game for its real­ism, but I did­n’t last because the real­i­ty was so depress­ing that it became dull.

Tropical Resort Story

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5

Com­ments: You are the man­ag­er for a set of islands where you are try­ing to cre­ate the ulti­mate get­away com­plete with accom­mo­da­tions, shops, sight­see­ing, and FISH. Lots of fish and ocean flo­ra! There are SO many ele­ments to place and research! You go fish­ing for more fish! Pro­gres­sion on this game is amaz­ing, but I found the ter­raform­ing to be con­strict­ing. It’s hard to cre­ate the com­bos giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of space. Do you focus on under­wa­ter life? Or the shore? Why is there no path? Why can’t peo­ple walk around trees?

Venture Towns

Rat­ing: 5 out of 5

*NOTE: This is the 2nd game I played of Kairosoft and is the rea­son I’m hooked to the games. How­ev­er, it is old now (unless they updat­ed, and I don’t know). The 5 out of 5 is based on when I orig­i­nal­ly played it*

Com­ments: Great city builder! A lit­tle dat­ed now as it lacks the “rearrange” option, and is a tad dif­fi­cult, but lots of fun and pro­gress­es well. Use com­bos to boost sales and attract res­i­dents to your town! Five dif­fer­ent loca­tions to attempt!

World Cruise Story

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Com­ments: Design an irre­sistible cruise ship and become a famous cruise line! Con­trol rooms, games, ameni­ties, dec­o­ra­tions, gyms, out­side and inside ele­ments! Expand the num­ber of decks! Appeal to rich­er and rich­er pas­sen­gers! The begin­ning was fun, but then it start­ed get­ting stag­nant after more ship lev­els are added. Being con­fined to a cruise ship is tough on the design-side! And VIPs are too crit­i­cal!