There's nothing like a refreshing dip in a pool during a hot summer day. But what do you do when the water gets too warm?
Michael Bruvel, a homeowner in Australia, was haunted by this dilemma. Jumping into warm, bath-like water, he reasoned, just wasn't the same.
His solution: invent his very own water cooling system.
As Bruvel told ABC Radio Darwin, "Of course, there are refrigeration systems and air conditioner-style processors to cool your water, but they're very expensive and very energy intensive."
To begin, he studied the biggest factors that contribute to his pool's heated temperature: sunrays and ambient temperature, both of which mean the surface of the pool water will be hotter than the water underneath.
His solution was to pipe the cool water from the deep parts and spray it onto the surface during the coolest parts of the night, between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. As the water is sprayed into the air, the droplets are cooled off by the chilly night air and evaporation before reaching the pool's surface.
"It's basically a low-energy system for cooling medium to large bodies of water like swimming pools and aquaculture facilities," Bruvel says.
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Bruvel has been perfecting the system for two years — as ABC Radio Darwin's Jesse Thompson writes, it took a lot of tinkering to get it just right:
"The size of the droplets the jets spray are like a Goldilocks formula; too small and they risk being carried away by wind, too large and the relationship between volume and surface area becomes skewed so heat transfer is less effective."
Bruvel says the system can cool water by as much as 6 degrees Celsius (about 11-degrees Fahrenheit). Bruvel has begun installing the system for friends and neighbors, who have seen similar results. Currently, he is seeking a patent for his invention.
