Keeping your rabbits cool during a hot Australian summer can be difficult, so I had to come up with a 5-star solution for ours.
Version 1
This was a very simple setup. It consisted of 4 parts
- Bucket
- Pump
- PC Fan
- Solar Panel
The principle was to have water splashing up in front of the fan and blowing into the rabbit cage. It wasn’t too bad, but not ideal.
Version 2
This was a bit more complex but could function as an Evaporative Cooler ( or Swamp Cooler for people in the USA ) for other purposes.
- Bucket with a lid
- Empty M&M’s bucket
- PC fan
- Tea Towel or similar fabric
- Pump
- Pipe
- Glue
- PVC Pipe
- PVC 90 degree angle
- Solar Panel
Build Process
- Cut the bottom off the M&M’s bucket
- Cut a matching hole in the lid of the bigger bucket
- Lay the towel around the outside of the big bucket up near the top so you have space for water to sit in the bottom.
- Draw a line either side so you know the width of the towel
- Remove the towel and drill decent size holes between the two lines all around the bucket
- Get your flexible pipe and plug up one end
- Glue the pipe around the top-level of all the holes you just drilled and run the unblocked end down to the bottom of the bucket
- Cut the pipe to size and attach the pump
- Using a pin or similar, pierce holes in the side of the pipe so water sprays towards the middle of the bucket
- At this point, it is a good time to test the plumbing
- Put a bit of water in the bucket to cover the pump and power it either with a 12v supply
- You should have water spraying into the middle of the bucket from all the holes. Adjust any that are not spraying enough
- Empty the bucket and dry it all
- Next glue the top and bottom of the towel inside the bucket. If the towel overlaps, cut it to size, or if it is not long enough you will need a second towel. The key is to make sure there are no gaps so all the air goes through the moist towel
- Attach the fan to the M&M’s bucket, then attach the M&M’s bucket to the lid
- Connect the pump power to the fan power and put the lid on the bucket.
- You can then attach the PVC angle pipe to the top of the M&M bucket. I put screws in the bucket into the PVC pipe to hold it
- Once it is all dry you can put some water in the bottom of the bucket and power it up
- If you want to direct the airflow into something like a rabbit cage, it is easy to attach a length of PVC pipe to the 90 deg angle
- You can either power it with a 12v power brick, or solar. If you use a power brick, make sure the mains power side is waterproof.
- The advantage of solar power is that you don’t need timers for night-time. The sun goes down, the fan turns off. The disadvantage is that it can still be quite hot at night.
Upgrade
An upgrade to the rabbit cooler to fix the night-time problem was a small battery backup.
I purchased a cheap solar battery charger from eBay and a 12v UPS battery.
It was a simple method of connecting the solar panel to the charger, the battery to the charger, and the cooler to the charger.
I chose a small battery so it would only run for a few hours after the sun went down.
This setup worked perfect but I overlooked one key issue, water.
It was all enclosed in a waterproof box with rubber seals, but to get the cables in and out, I drilled holes. That would have been fine if I then sealed around the cables, but I forgot to. After a few months of it working fine, I noticed it was no longer running. I opened the box to find everything corroded and swimming in water. Fail.
So, for now, I have the panel connected back up directly to the cooler. Maybe I will get around to rebuilding the charger.