It’s Getting Hot in Here: Takeaways from OnAir’s No Idling Campaign

I love to make and tinker. I also enjoy finding ways to make my life automagically easier.

While I was in school, I liked taking a good afternoon time-out in between class and work. I used that time to decompress with a catnap or sketchbook inside my car with AC blowing cool air. So imagine my surprise when I started working on OnAir’s No Idling campaign and learned how harmful idling is to the environment. An idling vehicle emits 20 times more pollution than one traveling at 30 miles per hour! The longer I worked with OnAir, the more I felt like I had to do something.

I knew I needed to turn off my car AC, but I also needed to stay cool. “That something” I needed to do was make a personal AC unit that runs on solar charged battery. And so I built one loosely following DesertSun02’s design.

The build was relatively simple for me, but to be fair, I have a background in making and designing. I’m going to walk you through it:

Parts

1. Car battery (about $100) – I recently upgraded my car battery and decided to reuse the old one since it’s perfectly fine.
2. Battery box
3. Power inverter 
4. Solar charge controller ($20.00)
5. Solar trickle charger ($50.00)
6. Velcro sticky back
7. Zip ties
8. Shrinkwrap
9. Small cooler
10. Duct tape
11. Small fan
12. Ice packs – I had a bunch of these from my Blue Apron subscription.

Process: 

Not so hard, huh? Try it this summer and let me know how it works out!