Thank you to everyone who answered. I have a lot of new things to look into. However, I am now receiving too many people giving me medical advice for a horrible disease I've survived 17 years of as if it were the common cold, and if I read another comment like it I'm going to lose it. So ending the thread here.
Thanks again to everyone who actually answered my question!
I am the only one with the disease. It's two diseases combined, both of which are rare, and I'm on the extreme end of both. Unfortunately, it is just me. It took 5 years of me working my way up to the literal top ophthalmologist in the country to tell me I was essentially fucked, but that he would spread the word. 5 years later my disease was officially recognized as real. We are now 7 years after that, and nothing has been done, because no one has a reason to fix it for all 4 people who might have it.
Oh man...
Still not sure about how to achieve sustained humidity without degrading your house, but I just saw this video and your issue came to mind. https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1dn76bd/the_most_interesting_chemistry_related_video_i/
Perhaps someone could make you a cooling blanket using this technique.
I have seen this video a few times in this thread. I plan on seriously checking it out when I wake up tomorrow. As for now, I'm going to bed and I'm about to delete this thread because of the amount of people giving me basic dry eye advice and getting angry that I don't appreciate their help when it is the equivalent of a middle schooler explaining physics to a professor. I've seen every doctor under the sun and lived with this for 17 years, and people here think I need to try forcing myself to cry. Sorry to vent on you, you're just the lucky person I'm replying to last. I just can't stand some of the shit people are saying. Like, did I not make it clear that I am not looking for medical advice? I don't even know anymore.
Sorry that it's been such a lousy experience. I wish I could have helped more!
I hope you don't delete it. It is such a fascinating problem. As engineers we get specifications and then try to solve the problem. Your issue is so interesting and challenging.
Not trying to give you medical advice. That said, you may want to work with an engineer to develop a specific medical device that could benefit you.
Most doctors don’t have the background to design medical equipment, nor are they really trained to think that way.
Care to share what specifically you have?
I have severe MGD. The problem is that I also have corneal neuropathy, which makes the pain much, much worse.
nighthawkinlight on YouTube can have several ideas which can actually help you with the temperature issue. the humidity, your probably gonna need a humidifier. your gonna need to control mold ontop of other issues with your situation
The Faroes are very windy though, too windy for trees.
Its too cold outside in the Faroe Islands. When the outside air is 5°C and 100% humid, heating it up to 20 degrees will lower the relative humidity down to 40%
That’s not that dry topping it up is pretty simple, make tea, have a shower etc. Etc.
Azores. Whole year high humidity and ~22C.
But you’ll have to deal with wind time to time
Goggles and AC?
This. Sleep mask for night time.
70% humidity is not good for typical North American construction standards, it will allow mold to form behind the walls and anywhere else cooled by the outside at night time.
I cannot wear goggles. Having anything on my eyes, glasses, a mask, anything at all unless it has ice on it (ice pack in cloth), I am in pain. I don't know why that is part of it.
How about a full face helmet? Could you wear a special helmet since it wouldn't touch your face?
I can wear a motorcycle helmet, but it would not be possible to humidify it. The visor just becomes wet due to condensation.
That sounds like something that someone could take on as an engineering design problem with good success. You'd first want it to be much lighter than a motorcycle helmet, for comfort. Next, you could have the visor gently heated by a transparent conductor coating, so that it won't fog. To prevent it from getting too warm inside, other surfaces could be cooled, or you could supply cool air in the back.
Yup. Call up a local college. Professors love to have real world problems that students can solve and make the world better. It's a far better project than asking students to shave 1% off of manufacturing a device that kills people so the company can profit more.
Actually, after reading more of opie's comments, I kind of regretted making that one and was thinking of deleting it. They are really just asking for advice about air conditioning with very specific and unusual objectives, and are rightfully annoyed by the many comments outside that scope.
You can also just use a hydrphilic coating to prevent fogging
I feel this would make a good capstone project for mechanical or biomedical engineering students.
This was my first thought too. Something like swim goggles or a diver’s mask that seals around the eyes well and can be modified to have (tiny amounts of) humidified air pumped in. Hell, it may be possible to make something quite portable.
BTW, there is a company called Boveda that makes humidification packs for cigars. The packs absorb excess humidity and release water in case of too little humidity. I know they make tiny packs rated at 70%. Check ‘em out.
This is a good fucking idea!
If he's keeping them sealed i would expect the humidity inside the swim goggles to stay pretty high just from sweat and eyeball offgassing.
Op- I'd buy a bunch of swim goggles and see if you can find a set that is comfortable and easy to see out of. There may be some sealed industrial eyewear worth looking at too
snowboard/ski goggles in reverse with a water reservoir
I would personally definitely prefer goggles over 70% humidity over my entire body
Why don't you take at OP's follow up comments:
Ideally, you want the inside air temperature to tend towards the outside air temperature, not your skin temperature. It should work with glass/plastic lenses, copper sidewalls and a thermally insulating seal.
Short term, get an ultrasonic mist humidifer. That will provide a little cooling and humidification. But it wouldn't provide enough cooling and it will drive humidity up too far. So also get bags of ice and pile them in tubs. That will cool and dehumidify without much air movement. Then run the humidifier to counteract the dehumidification from the ice piles.
Long term, you can get panel radiators meant for heating, mount them with a drip tray underneath, and run chilled water in them, produced by a water chiller that sits outside or in another room. That's rare in residential HVAC in the US, but water chillers are common in commercial use--just not used with panel radiators.
Ideally, you'd have the water temperature just above the dew point in the room so you wouldn't get condensation, and the drip pan under them is just in case. But if you don't get enough cooling that way, you can run them colder and replenish the moisture with the ultrasonic mist humidifier. Longer term, you can increase the panel area so that you get enough cooling.
Good HVAC solution. In terms of secondary issues, how would you address the interior of the room to handle the high humidity? I'm thinking bathroom latex on the walls and maybe tile flooring.
Just be careful about the water you're atomizing. If it has dissolved solids in it, you'll be breathing in very fine mineral particles. You'd need to deal with microorganism growth too.
Evaporative coolers. They work by evaporating water so increase Humidity to decrease temperature.
They will still move some air to work, but I guess you could just put them eg blasting in a different corner or room so the moving air doesn't affect you
I looked into "swamp coolers". I was thinking about making one and having the air go through a sort of maze to slow it down. But is there a way to make something like this without having to fill it up with ice constantly?
Also, thank you. Scrolling from top comments down, this is the first comment both serious and not telling me to put something on my face (as if I did not think of that during 17 years of suicidal levels of pain and low QOL 😅, my fault for not mentioning it though).
A standard swamp cooler doesn't use ice, it uses float (similar to a toilet tank) on a tray and absorbent pads to blow the air across. Also the device to slow air down is called a "baffle" but you need airflow to get the humid air in there in the first place. It should be possible to program a controller to trigger off of humidity instead of temperature as well.
If you have a local university, you could sponsor a senior design project, give them your requirements, and see how it turns out.
Sorry if I replied to this already, I have replied to so much. I've saved your comment and I'm going to investigate it further. Thank you very much.
Swamp coolers need a new source of water constantly since the water is evaporating, but it doesn’t need to be ice- but I’m willing to bet there are tons of models out there that hook up to a water line and it would work great hooking directly up to your water line.
You would never have to add more water or do any maintenance - potential occasional maintenance for whatever media filter you are using to absorb the water. You will want something that won’t grow mold - due to the insane humidity. (But will need to replace it every few months due to the dirt accumulating)
OP, I should have mentioned, swamp coolers will help some but mainly because they just cool and humidify at the same time. Since you are already running a humidifier and keeping it cool they will have significantly reduced efficacy.
They are most effective in very hot very dry conditions and can lower the temperature by 20°.
In your room, you might be lucky if it lowers the temperature by 5°. (This is a random guess) it will be more than nothing and is a very easy affordable solution to try out first but just so you’re aware
To add to this, the resulting temperature of evaporating water can't be any colder than the dew point of the air in the environment. As you increase humidity, you raise the dew point and decrease the cooling capacity. So for a room filled with 80F air at 70% RH, the air coming out of your humidifier will no no lower than 69F.
It's actually worse than that, the lowest temperature you can get to is the wet bulb temperature, which is higher than the dew point temperature. To approach the dew point temperature you need a multi-stage indirect evaporative cooler.
The temperature difference between wet bulb and dew point is larger than I realized, so thanks for the clarification.
This page has a helpful plot:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/dry-wet-bulb-dew-point-air-d_682.html
Surprisingly enough you don’t want cold water for swamp coolers, the closer the water is to phase transition the more efficient it is(ie the more water that will transition and add to the cooling effect) so you can either use a tap or fill a bottle with water and use it the same way as a dog/cat bowl(you can choose between having a wicking material to bring the water up or having a pump to drain down the material depending on your needs)
If you design your own system you can either 3d print it yourself(if you own a 3d printer) or go over to one of the many 3d printing sub reddits, there’s usually a few people that will print it either for free or close to cost and send it to you. There are also lots of free cad programs you can use to design it to your specific use case, I personally use fusion 360 but the learning curve is pretty steep with that one.
Granted that all this kinda requires you to enjoy designing and tinkering but you can buy regular sized swamp cooler pads and cut them or buy replacement pads for humidifiers and a small aquarium pump for most of the working parts, and fans for pc’s are really cheap, you can also buy ones that are already wired for ac use. I’d also recommend designing it so it sits close to your roof, this will allow the air to move around without really bothering you and the cool air will “fall” keeping you cool
Just buy a swamp cooler honestly. They make ones you can hook up to a tap. Ice is not what is supposed to cool the air, it might help, but it's the fluid evaporating that does the real work. Benjamin Franklin documented the evaporative cooling phenomenon with a sling and a wet cloth ball, and saw huge temperature drops down to at or nearly freezing when rapid sling speed was maintained.
That and a conventional air conditioner, with the ratio between the two adjusted to maintain the right humidity, no more. The evaporative cooler alone could push the humidity up to dangerous levels, in terms of mold and rot.
A professional could also set up a cooling system that removes less humidity, but that combo is something OP could buy off the shelf, plug in, and be comfortable tomorrow.
They don't move "some air". They move a LOT of air. If the air movement of a traditional AC is a no-go here, an evaporative cooler is right out.
Not necessarily?
I agree, they move a lot of air and this will cause problems. But I think you could do something.
For example - divide the room in half, have all of the evaporative coolers on one side, constantly humidifying and cooling- and for 12 hours of the day (while OP isn’t in the bedroom) there is circulation between the two, cooling the room and circulating air, but while sleeping there is no air circulation.
I think you tackle cooling separately as well while sleeping. OP could build out some form of heat exchanger - lots of coils, that help keep the room cooler Without air circulation.
I’m not sure how you treat the rest of the house but this has to be either a massive remodel or a custom home build
There are passive ones (basically a wet sheet by the window)
Peltier is not efficient.
What you want is a traditional AC where the interior unit is a fanless cooling panel. These are often used in commercial buildings to avoid the draft. They are typically large panels mounted in the ceiling. Without a fan to move air quickly, the panels have to be larger to provide the same amount of cooling.
Water will likely be condensating on the cooling panel continously, so that water needs to be collected. And you will have to run a humidifier to make up for it.
As others have pointed out, you may have to redo parts of the room with materials that do not promote mold growth.
For OP, here are some practical examples of fanless radiative cooling HVAC systems
Radiant cooling panels are mounted on the ceiling or walls and use the process of radiation to absorb heat from the room without moving air. These systems can be very effective in maintaining a comfortable environment without creating air currents.
Zehnder Radiant Cooling Panels](https://www.zehnder-systems.com/radiant-ceiling-panels.html) - These panels are designed to absorb heat through radiation, ensuring no air drafts. They can be installed in various settings, including residential and commercial buildings.
Chilled beams are a type of convection-based cooling system where chilled water passes through a heat exchanger (beam) mounted in or on the ceiling. Passive chilled beams use natural convection and do not require a fan, thus avoiding any air drafts.
-TROX Chilled Beams](https://www.troxtechnik.com/product/radiant-chilled-beams) - TROX offers a range of chilled beam solutions designed to provide effective cooling without air drafts.
TABS use the building’s structure to store and transfer thermal energy. Pipes embedded in the concrete slabs circulate chilled water to cool the building mass, which then absorbs heat from the space.
Uponor TABS](https://www.uponor.com) - Uponor’s TABS utilize the building’s thermal mass for cooling, providing a draft-free and energy-efficient cooling solution.
This system involves running chilled water through pipes embedded in the floor. It works similarly to radiant heating but for cooling, maintaining a consistent temperature without air movement.
Ya these solutions. It's actually not that difficult to get 65deg @ 80% humidity with an air conditioner and humidifier. The challenge is not living in a box of mold and lichens.
I think you need to get a house made of stone. Maybe cement, or stucko or limestone or brick.
If your already doing this. You could have a water feature in your living room. That would be dope.
Do your eye doctors have a plan? Must you be in 70% humidity constantly?
Can it be something like a cross between this self-contained breathing mask like this and an ultrasonic humidification setup like a CPAP?
Since this would be humidifying the atmosphere around your eyes, this probably needs to be a medical device, rather than something MacGyver-rigged, though.
I saw the top doctors in the top eye facilities in the country. They don't take insurance. They were so confused by my disease that one of them dismissed me and insisted it was "in my head". The others took me seriously, but had no idea what to do. All treatments I have come up with are just "What does and doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out". My doctors just help me achieve what I ask for, because they don't have any idea and there is no payoff for discovering how to fix one person's insanely unique issue. The 70% humidity is just 1 of 20+ things I have to deal with.
I cannot wear anything on my face.
The closest thing I have come up with is something called a "Peltier Module". But I know nothing about it.
What is this condition called? Why can’t you wear things on your face? If you must have a certain environment around your eyes, decreasing the amount of 70%RH atmosphere that must be created is the simplest plan.
a peltier cooler is just a device that cools a surface when electricity is supplied to the device.
It will be impractical to use a peltier cooler to cool anything very large. In which case, you’re back to making something roughly the size of your head.
I have severe MGD, but the pain is severely amplified by a neuropathy. Corneal neuropathy was originally not a thing, and doctors turned people away saying it was in their head. The only claim to fame I have is that I am the silent anonymous reason that Corneal Neuropathy is now a legitimate condition that is recognized by eye doctors.
Why can't I wear things on my face? There is no answer other than my eyes go crazy with pain.
70% humidity is the minimum, by the way. The higher the better. The colder the better. It prevents the small amount of oil and tears I have from evaporating.
So the humidity and wind blocking to prevent evaporation, not pain or confort.
To put it simply, I have done tests while using a computer. I had my mother lower the humidity to certain points without me knowing. Each time it got to a certain point, I would experience an increase in pain and discomfort. From this, we discovered that once the humidity gets to 69%~70%, there is no added discomfort as a result of humidity. 68% and below, I will eventually be able to call out that humidity is too low as a result of increased pain during a time when it should not be there.
So basically over the years, 70% has been determined for ME to be the humidity level that is good for my eyes. Higher is always better. Additionally, I can go as low as 60% if it is 60 degrees or lower due to the cold numbing my eyes, I assume.
My guess is that wearing normal goggles on your face increases the air pressure slightly, adding pressure on your eyes and so, pain. If so, since goggles are such a good solution otherwise, you could include a pressure equalisation valve to avoid the extra pressure.
This could be as simple as a hole with a rubber glove finger glued over it.
I cannot wear anything on my face
How strict is this?
I assume goggles might hurt due to added pressure, but is the same true for full face masks or helmets?
What about a fishbowl that rests on your neck or shoulders? Don't forget air tubes of course. But to me it seems that you need some sort of environmental suit that ensures the perfect conditions you need in all situations. Congratulations, you're an astroenvironaut now.
As far as im aware there is no disease that requires such precise control. Im sure the doctor gave her paperwork that said something like "for minimizing flareups, keep your eyes around 70% humidity and minimize fans blowing on your eyes that could dry them out."
I'm not aware of any either, but since I'm not an ophthalmologist that really doesn't mean anything.
Operating rooms also have a minimal air current requirement. Might want to look into how they cool those? Also, you could use a regular AC unit and put a turbulent baffle on the output, it will mix the air significantly and reduce the velocity of flow. Turbulent baffle could just be a towel, wadded up tshirts, or a sheet of sponges.
You can divert your AC outlet so that it's not blowing down on to you, or route it through an outlet filter that slows/diffuses it. Having no moving air in a room is a requirement for some lab conditions (very sensitive equipment) so solutions do exist!
What I am considering is poking a very small hole in my A/C and putting a tube in it, so that I can direct the air in a way that it will not be blowing near me, but still cooling the room, and then increasing the hole until i hit the point where my humidifier can't keep up, but I wanted to explore other solutions. Preferably something more... sophisticated. I thought I would ask some engineers before embracing my Georgia redneck heritage.
You need a HVAC engineer. Air flow velocity is very important to how it all works.
And then add a humidifier.
One way to do it is to have two rooms. You stay in one room until the other is cooled off and humidified with an AC and a humidifier. As soon as your current room is unbearable, you turn all the AC and humidifier, and immediately move to the cooled off room, turn off all devices there, and stay until it is uncomfortable.
What do your doctors recommend?
My doctors could not even figure out my disease over the course of 7 years and $100k+ as the top facilities laugh when you mention insurance. If you're seeing them, you're screwed.
They couldn't figure out what my eye disease was. It was only through my detailed explanation of how I have to live and my own personal research that they were able to fully realized what was wrong with me. This is unique to me. They cannot help. I have seen them all.
Additionally, my doctors do not know how to build cooling units.
What’s the name of the eye disease if you don’t mind me asking? I’m curious as I’ve never heard of anything like this
It's MGD. I am on the very severe side. Though people who have it can still function with eyedrops, I also have a corneal neuropathy. As a result, the pain is amplified to the point that it's crippling, and eyedrops actually cause immediate pain. The only things that help are
Pills: Cymbalta, Gabapentin, and unfortunately 4mg of Xanax (we do not know really why the Xanax helps, but neither I nor my doctors give a shit, because we only found out by utter accident during a time when my condition got so bad I couldn't open my eyes anymore).
External: Ice packs. Ice packs in a cloth on my eye freeze the nerves. I do much better in cold weather as a result. If I had the financial freedom to do so, I would simply find a basement to live in very far north with my humidifier.
Direct eye treatment: Capsaicin. Yep. Cayenne fucking pepper. I put drops from a tincture that has beneficial eye herbs, as well as cayenne pepper in it into an eyewash cup and essentially pepper spray myself. This was the first treatment we discovered while doctors were slowly escalating us past the "Try Restasis!" drones. I can't live without it. It sucks during treatment, but it and Xanax are mandatory for me to see as of now.
Thank you for sharing, I’m sorry you have to go through that. It sounds truly awful.
Thank you for being respectful and not giving me basic dry eye tips 😅
It is awful, but what can I do but hang in there and hope for bionic eyes, eh? Either that or die. Bionic eyes sound cooler than dying.
Ski goggles where you keep the mesh damp, safety goggles with a silicone or rubber liner to keep eyes moist from sweat.
Mould from 70% humidity won’t be good.
Edit : forgot about the large swim goggles for scuba divers. Was thinking of the little tiny ones for swim races
Well then take a look at OP's follow up:
Sigh. Posts that leave out crucial details ……….
I’m looking at a forum about escaping from an underwater vehicle. Laminated side windows, rescuers afraid of the 440/800volt traction battery, cutting tools that don’t work underwater….. and training to discover that no one can keep their eyes open from the toxic soup inside the vehicle (no one thought of wearing sealed swim goggles)
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1bcowii/us_billionaire_drowns_in_tesla_after_rescuers/
I cannot wear anything on my face due to the nature of the disease, unfortunately.
Basically stuck with wearing a hazmat hood with a method of adding moisture into it ?
You really don’t want to have a mouldy house
That suit would be miserable. I've tried it. Also, we already have the mold situation covered. Plus, it's only this one small room.
The hood, not the entire suit.
Perhaps some kind of high volume low velocity air handling system connected to a swamp cooler?
Ice blocks.
Ice maker outside.
Yup, the simplest solution would be to bring "cold" in.
Dumping ice in an ultrasonic humidifier should work.
Don’t cool the air, cool things. The floor would be great co cool but also your bed, furniture, even making heat sinks that can be cooled will make you feel cooler. Cooling increases relative humidity but most humidifiers also cool so there’s an option.
At 70F and 70% humidity, dew point is 59F. Keeping your cool source over 60F is going to be critical to avoid dehumidification.
I’m imagining an apparatus involving a cooling unit (mini fridge, whatever) in an adjacent room, cooling a reservoir of water, pumping slowly into a copper pipe through the adjoining wall into your room. Then, through lots of copper coils.
The most critical piece would be the controls. The copper coils in your room would have to be maintained at 62F or so. So accurately calibrating that fridge or having the pump modulate based on return temp or both will be important.
Why not pump refrigerant through them instead? Now you just described a ductless heat pump.
You can basically do this exactly by removing the fans (or more practically) reducing the fan speed in the wall unit. Efficiency will tank but I don't think that's a real concern here.
Expensive but the absolute best thing to do I think would be to have an under floor radiant cooling system installed. It can be designed to provide heating and cooling.
Also you shouldn't seal the room and use algae to remove CO2 and make oxygen. I guess it is technically possible but it is extremely impractical and also dangerous. You could design something that allows air but through high resistance like air filters.
Cooled panels are a good idea, but wall and ceiling is usually better than floor, because if you accidentally get a little bit of condensation, the floor becomes slippery.
Live in a greenhouse or sauna? I'm really not sure how you'd solve this practically. You can't function with a face mask on 24/7 that guarantees 70% humidity.
You’re not going to like most of the solutions. You effectively want to live in a wine cooler. There are wall chillers you can get installed that will cool one room without fans. Example below.
https://www.variotherm.com/en/heating-and-cooling/wall-heating-and-cooling.html
But more practically, how can you go anywhere without moving air? You can’t possibly move yourself around without air blowing past your eyes, can you? Based on other comments, you can’t wear goggles - so how you do deal with that issue? Answering that might inspire some more creative solutions.
To answer the questions in order:
I can't go anywhere outside walking distance. And only if there is no wind or a fan on.
Walking is fine, running is not. That is the level of sensitivity we're working with.
I don't run unless I'm on a treadmill, and I can't leave the house except under special conditions, really. If I go to get a haircut, I'm incapacitated the rest of the day.
The way I survive is I sit in a room with no A/C, no moving air, and a mist humidifier keeping me at 70% humidity.
I am very confused by a lot of these comments I'm getting. I stated that I was looking for a solution to cooling a room without any moving air, with bonus points if it also increased humidity. Why is everyone ignoring that and so hyper focused on shit like "Wear a mask" "Put in eye drops" "Well, why CAN'T you wear a mask?" Why would anyone assume that if I had a disease that I couldn't have thought to put in eye drops or wear a mask? Why is anyone focused on my disease at all?
Only about 10% of the content here is related to the actual question and I'm really confused why. Did I word it in a way that is confusing? I really don't understand lol
Haha. It’s because engineers are the most obnoxious, irritating people you will ever meet. This is how I know this sub is full of real engineers.
Real answer- cut two holes in the door. Run ducting in a U shape between the holes, with good sealing. Put a pusher fan in one hole, and a puller fan in the other (think computer case fans), with no gaps around the fan and fans as powerful as you can find. These fans will force the cool air from the rest of the house through the ducting, which will act as a heat exchanger with the air in your room. The longer the ducting the more effective because of more heat exchange area, but the harder the fans have to work to get decent air flow. Might need multiple fans one after the other. Also, the cooler the air you are drawing in, the better, because heat transfer rate improves with larger temperature difference. Dedicating a window AC unit or a split AC unit to this task would let you get even cooler inlet air.
Another option is that they sell water chillers which can be more effective. If you have a water chilled bed you're probably already familiar with these. They cool the water and pump it at the same time. These are widely made for chilling aquarium water, but I'm betting aquarium chillers are too weak for you. Googling around it's hard to see cheap chillers with listed cooling capacity, but you might be able to find one. Again, the idea would be to place the chiller outside your room, then run the cold water hose into your room and cause heat exchange between the water and the air of your room.
The heat exchange with the room air will be a real problem whether you go with chilled water or chilled air. It takes moving fluid to effectively transfer heat- on both sides of the heat exchanger. In the absence of moving air inside your room, you have to give the heat exchanger more surface area to work with. So that means bonding sheet metal “fins” to your ducting. The upside of this is that you could shorten the ducting and wouldn't need as powerful fans. If you did water, you can buy pre-made water to air heat exchangers. These are what cars use so that's why they are widely available. Even with a radiator, gentle air flow might make a huge difference.
Also, I see that you've said this is primarily for your computer room. It may make most sense to run a water chiller hose from outside the room directly to your computer and water cool the thing, since that will be generating the most heat.
Happy to help you out via DMs if anything I'm saying is not clear. This probably isn't going to be that successful unless you have some engineering or physics background and can determine the cooling capacity of various solutions, so you'll probably need some help.
This sounds extremely interesting, but I confess I am a bit confused. How does cold air get forced into the ducting if there isn't an opening?
Or am I misunderstanding which side the ducting goes in... Are you saying to make the U shape on the INSIDE of the room with cold air being blown through it, essentially cooling the air around it?
A peltier will dehumidify and it will need a fan blown over it to actually cool any significant amount of air.
Get a water chiller, or make one by running a bunch of copper tubing thru a small fridge. It would be best if the water chiller was outside your room. Run the chilled water line inside, and into a spray nozzle that sprays into a sink. The finer the spray the better. The small droplets will increase the surface area causing lots of the water to evaporate, which will cool the room and increase humidity. Have the water collected in the sink pumped back out into some kind of tank where additional water can be added to maintain a constant level. Have that water from that tank go back into the chiller... May have to put some kind of thermostat to turn this system on and off, I think it will make your room way too cold. Also you'll have all the other problems that come with cold humid environments.
Why not use cooling pads on the rest of your body. Firemen when working in intense heat with full gear they dunk their forearms in ice buckets or wear a cold wet ice pack around their neck. It cools down your own body. So maybe instead of cooling down the whole room (which I believe will anyways conflict with the high humidity?) cool down your body.
This is a very tough problem or else you wouldn't be here asking. The mold problem is a huge one. From what I can gather, you are just trying to make one room habitable. If so, the first thing that I would do is to coat the walls, ceiling and floor with an impermeable paint such as the kind use to waterproof basements to prevent humidity from getting into the walls and causing mold. You could then paint over that paint with something more aesthetically pleasing if that paint is ugly. Make sure to put mildewcide in both layers of paint. You could leave the floor painted and put some area rugs on it or perhaps put in a continuous layer of a linoleum,or cork flooring, no seams. Then, I would attach a mosquito netting type fabric to the ceiling going all the way to the floor to basically make a room in a room. The normal house air conditioning could condition the space between the walls and your "interior room" and you could put a humidifier inside the netting to achieve your 70% requirement. You may have to experiment with the netting fabric if the humidity inside will not reach the level you need. You may need to install a very small mini-split heat pump to help you control your room differently from the rest of the house. Hope this helps.
I’m not an HVAC guy but imagining a water pipe or something like that that acts as a heat exchanger?
Almost like turning the room into the AC unit rather than blowing air past the cold side of the heat exchanger.
There's some serious hvac considerations to be had, not the least of which is having enough air exchanges per hour to keep the room habitable. OP needs to get this professionally sorted.
This might be a little too silly but what about an indoor waterfall feature with really cold water?
Idk how much air turbulence that might induce and if it’s too much for OP and also how much money and renovation OP is interested in doing, but if the air can’t move, make the water move past the air?
No air movement is a non-starter if your trying to maintain those conditions in a built environment. heat must transfered via conduction (air is a poor conductor of heat), radiation (radiation heat transfer is neglible between surfaces at temperatures that humans can tolerate), and convection (heat transfered as fluid passes over surface). Heat transfer requires movement of air at the temperatures ranges that humans tolerate.
Ventilation is required to provide fresh air and remove odors. This means air movement
Humidity levels you are specifying will increase risk of mold and fungal growth which can impair the health of occupants and damage the structure itself (e.g. dry rot). Lack of air movement will increase the risk of mold
Head/face in a closed environment will reduce the volume of air to be conditioned but ventilation and air movement will likely remain challenges
Changing the temperature of the air causes air flow. Instead, make a bodysuit so you can go out of the room. Paint it like Ironman and slowly become famous.
As others have pointed out, 70% humidity is really bad for your structure.
What I'd suggest is look into a CPAP or BIPAP machine with a full face mask and a very low air flow rate. That will let you keep your face in a 70% humidity with minimal airflow. I don't know what sort of baffles or filters are available to reduce the airflow across your skin to negligible levels.
If you go that route, I will strongly suggest you keep on top of the filter changes for the machine itself and any accessory filters that attach on the hose. 70% humidity and warmth is a good recipe for fungal infections of the sinuses. Keeping the whole system clean and using distilled water exclusively is your best protection against that.
A cool mist humidifier? Or perhaps pumping in cooling water?
Goggles would definitely be the most efficient method, but if you're building something permanent, you could try pumping water around the walls?
If it's DIY, maybe even a big rack of PVC/metal pipes would work. Ofc there is a large danger of leaks.
If it's a small room, a big pot of water with ice in it may even work. But basically you want to maximize surface area between the cold water and warm air.
Get a big block of ice. Change it out daily.
South Florida has indoor humidity like that 8 months out of the year
Am I the only one that thinks he should be living in conditioned pool room that conditions the water?
Air + humidifier
Any kind of air conditioning will likely move air.
What you want is to have the distribution spread out over a wide enough area so the movement is minimal. Look up "displacement ventilation" for diffuser theory on the subject. You can also look up "laminar flow diffusers for the types of diffusers used in hospital ORs, but I think that would be overkill)
That or you get into a case where you have a cooling coil in a vertical stack and the cold air draws the air downward in passive convection.
The next part of your question is considerably tougher. To control humidity and temperature at the levels you discuss, normally I would go to water cooling because I can control the discharge off the coil more tightly than DX cooling.
I would have the valve on the cooling coil modulate to control the discharge air temp so both the space temp and the space humidity is controlled.
The control loop would loop something like this (This is off the top of my head and has not been vetted):
IF SpaceTemp is above TempSetPoint AND Humidity is greater than HumiditySetPoint, modulate control valve open (or just turn cooler on).
IF SpaceTemp or Humidity is above their respective setpoint than modulate control valve shut (or just turn cooler off).
NOTE: Most residential and commercial AC is geared toward delivering a room that is 70-75F and 50%RH.
If you are going to use something like peltier cooling - Find heat sinks that can be attached to them (use chip thermal paste). and angle the fins to allow for natural convection to get the most out of the cooler.
IMPORTANT POINT: The hot side of the peltier cooler needs to be rejecting heat into another room, so you want to build this peltier cooler into a wall so the heat is rejected into a another space; otherwise you are just heating the space up with the energy spent on the peltier cooler.
Then get some help (find the arduino subs) to set up a control sequence like I described above. They will be able to help you pull together the hardware you need.
If the humidity is high enough in your space, you still might condense water out of the air in order to control the RH, so keep a bucket under the cooler.
I would add humidity through a basic ultrasonic humidifier you can get at a department store.
Run the ac like crazy in the room next to yours and keep the doors open if possible.
Reading what you've written, OP... Honestly, my suggestion would be to move somewhere that has a basement. That clearly worked for you and I seriously doubt that anything else will be affordable. You need an environment that is naturally at a comfortable temperature that you can pump humidity into.... A basement with concrete walls is the only thing that I can think of. Even better would be purchasing an old mine somewhere.
I unfortunately do not have a choice. I've had this disability since I was 17, and since I started college full time at 17, they say "Well, you've never worked and you're not dead so why should we give you disability?". Also, there is nothing visibly wrong with me, as it's two conditions. One that is visible only with a microscope like tool that is a disease that really sucks, but is doable, compounded by invisible neuroapthy amplifying it. I have no choice on where I live. I was in a basement and it was perfect, but my parents had to move to retire, and this is my reality. So either I figure it out how to lower the temperature, or I'm just fucked.
Even if there were other options on where I could live, I need to be cared for as I can't be in wind, i can't drive, and functionally can't leave the house.
Could you wear a fishbowl helmet to make the problem smaller?
A fishbowl helmet would allow me to wear something without it triggering my eyes, yes. But humidifying it would cause too much condensation. I've actually tried it. I've even tried materials that are supposed to prevent condensation, but all that does is turn my vision into a cloud.
Apart from the radiative cooling systems mentioned in another post below (I’ve responded there with specific manufacturers), you could also use a cooled mattress pad to aid comfort while in the bed
Have two sealed and insulated rooms available with traditional A/C and humidifiers.
Go back and forth between the rooms and disable the system prior to entering.
We recently helped a library build out a archival room where they had a very similar issue. We wound up having a HVAC company install a heat pump and then we ran the forced cold air into the room, but built plexiglass false walls about a foot from the real walls and about a foot from the ceiling.
So the room within the room has absolutely NO air movement (which was important as some manuscripts could have molds or other contaminants and needed to be inspected) but the cold air in the between walk area keeps the room quite chilly.
Creating a desired high humidity level is easier than dehumidifying, as you could spritz the air with a handled sprayer, use a mister in an area of the room, or even boil water, or use a humidifier.
Hmm...You kinda HAVE to move air to cool with any sort of efficiency - thermoelectric coolers really suck. What you could do is have a typical air conditioning unit that sucks air from your main quarters as per usual, but only pushes cold air into a corner of walls away from where you'd normally be. Having exit "cones" should decrease the speed of air flowing significantly and reduce felt air. From a little distance away, you shouldn't notice any air flow, at least no more than you'd feel simply walking.
Worst case, have air flow tightly controlled with special o-ring sealed dampers and run the air conditioner in rooms where you are not present. Switch rooms every so often to let the other cool, closing the damper of the room you will be in. Heck, go crazy and use swamp coolers for the humidity AND cooling in rooms you won't be in to help manage the overall house temp.
I can design a light weight helmet for you that will allow you to be absolutely comfortable and also germ free and meets all the requirements of your disease.
So this gives me an idea. I once tried riding my dad's bike with a motorcycle helmet. It was great. It didn't hurt my eyes wearing it, and I could ride a bike for the first time in 14 years... until I almost passed out from lack of oxygen and steaming up the visor 😂.
I need a full helmet with a tight seal to be in wind. If it's open around the neck, it will get in there. But then it becomes an issue of sweating and breathing. If you have ideas on how to work around that so that I could ride a bike... Wearing a helmet won't work for me inside, but if I could ride a fucking bike again... It would change my life.
Not commenting on anything related to your health as Im not a doctor (as opposed to about half of the other people here). You could look into a floor cooling system. I have one in my house which uses a geothermical source for heating and can be reversed for cooling. Cooling capacity in unfortunately just 2 or 3 degrees (celcius). If you combine this with a industrial chilled water unit (essentially an AC that Cools a waterflow) rather than geothermical pump you could cool your floor severely. You need a moisture regulator along with it ofcourse and a way to get rid of the condensation.
When you say no moving air, you can't mean absolutely no moving air, as there are currents around you all the time - with that said, how much can you tolerate, because any temperature gradient will induce circulation.
Walking for 10 minutes when the air outside feels completely still, no leaves moving, etc. is perfectly fine.
A light jog for 10 minutes in the same circumstances would cause discomfort.
The amount of times I have asked people if there is a breeze outside and they say "no", followed by my stepping out, saying "There is absolutely a breeze, I have to stay inside", and them pause... really focusing... and going "Oh, I guess there kinda is..."
Really it's all anecdotal.
Radiant cooling is the answer. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/radiant-cooling
To make sure I understand the criteria-
Maintain humidity at a minimum of 70%.
Maintain temperature of ~70F.
Nearly immeasurable airflow within room.
Retrofit onto existing room.
Location is Florida.
Purpose of room is PC gaming.
Low budget.
Can you explain more about how your room is sealed off? Is does it receive air from the home’s central AC? How is it maintaining a reasonable temp today?
Have you tried wearing goggles? 💀
Hydroponics room. I assume you work in a home office given your condition. Learn how hydroponics growers wrap a room in plastic and humidify it. Since plastic sheets do not insulate you can set the home A/C to whatever is needed. And everyone living there can adjust their clothing accordingly until they are warm/cool together in the home.
Humidifier w 1L distilled water and 1tbsp peroxide to help prevent fungal issues.
You will have a mold nightmare and the eyes will be the least of your problems.
What you really need is a way to unseal the room but keep your eyes humidified.
The most interesting thing about this is the distinction between people offering solutions to the requirements and the people arguing that the the requirements are not valid. I work with both of you and one of you is way better
When presented with requirements that effectively disagree with each other, this is the result.
70% is right at where glycol is hygroscopic, so either turning your room into a giant humidor or turning a ski mask into a tiny humidor might be feasible.
A swamp cooler might work for you, Though admittedly not super well. Your best bet may actually just be a normal window/portable AC unit. Find one that has a drain hose for the collected condensation and run that to a humidifier, that way you don’t actually loose any humidity.
Small addendum, lowering the room temperature will also naturally raise the humidity of the room a little bit. Not as much as the AC unit would remove but enough so you shouldn’t have to add much water to whatever humidifier you have. Also from some quick googling I found just a massive swamp cooler that isn’t too expensive either. At least in my area. Wish you the best with all this! cooler
Ice water yourself on neck armpits etc
Use phase change materials to keep cool? Cheap efficient and (almost) no impact on the humidity.
A/C would still work without the re circulation fan. This, and with any method, is going to be incredible slow.
Hyaluronic acid supplements?
One of the drawbacks of over sizing an AC is that it cools the room too quickly to adequately dehumidify the room.
If you have one already use piezo humidifier to adjust humidity level.
Assuming you have already seen this video, but dropping it here since you are talking about algae to remove CO2 from the air. https://youtu.be/xWRkzvcb9FQ?si=doBs1ePQe2H2_C1Z
If you need to add humidity swamp cooler would work well, but couldn't be in the same room I guess
You're way overthinking this. Just get a humidifier with a sensor and set it to maintain 70%.
Move underground.
Are you sleeping with your eyes open? I’d think closed eyes would be a pretty good solution for ac breeze.
Please state the name of the disease
MGD with the pain amplified several times over by some sort of corneal neuropathy.
Lifelong sufferer of MGD, localized treatment is the key. Makes zero sense to try to engineer an entire room around a localized ailment. Wear goggles or wear a bubble
Can you use some sort of moisturizer contact lens for this? Surely there’s something for dry eyes that could help. I suggest looking into these, as they don’t touch your face.
If you gotta change the room, I think the cheapest way is the use a humidifier that you can set to 70% and will adjust to hold at 70%. Though idk if this is sustainable in your home, this is a bit moist and you might see mold over time.
If you give us the name of the disease, we can understand you a bit better and help out.
see the follow up comments. I expect if the disease was named, OP would effectively out themselves.
How about something like this bed cooling device? https://www.eightsleep.com
There was a recent YouTube bout using phase change materials to make cooling vests and pads. See below:
Ice box.
Get someone to deliver bags of ice and you can catch the water for drinking.
Your cold air is going to settle on the floor, so you may want some light duty fan pointed in a direction up that doesn’t bother you to get some circulation. Which I hear you don’t want.
Ice. Just bags of melting ice. They'll absorb a huge amount of heat and increase the humidity. It would be more effective with a fan but if you can't have one you can't have one.
Can we direct the air away from you or is it literally no movement in the room?
I've got an autoimmune thing that means I've been locked in my room since Covid. I'm not as bad off as you, I can have AC, but I know how much it sucks being locked up. I'm sorry.
I wonder if you could use an ultrasonic humidifier with ice water?
What about a custom ceiling vent that sucks the warm air from the room? That will at least cool to an extent and then you could have floor vents that blow across the ground, hopefully that won't hurt your eyes.
Not really commercially available, but just throwing it out there: A project at a place I worked was to run chilled water through these large plastic panels that would effectively replace or go over top of drywall. It took a little while to cool the room down, but once it was cool, it stayed at a constant temperature without airflow (and with blown air AC, the temp is constantly going up and down as the air turns on and off). They built it into a large shed on wheels and it worked great, even when sitting out in the sun. Unfortunately I think the project shut down but perhaps a similar thing could work, like the old hot water radiators, but one with chilled water.
So forget water cooling my PC, water cool the whole room?! 😋
It wouldn't be very efficient but if you built a metal chamber with heat sink fins on the inside. It would need to be a very heat conductive material like copper or maybe aluminum. I'm thinking maybe 20 cm thick and like 1 meter wide and 2 meters tall. Then you connect an AC to cool the inside of that chamber and vent outside or to a friend who wants free AC. The whole metal chamber would get very cold and might cool your air a little without any air exchange. If you laid your body on the surface it would cool you down a lot.
Do you own or rent? Is construction an option?
Own, and HOA dependent. Unfortunately we have tight neighbors.
You might also ask over in r/HVACAdvice
One or two big ice blocks in vats, honestly. I dub this the ”ice fan without the fan”.
Or moving to Ireland/UK where humility is naturally in this range.
Build yourself a giant terrarium, glass walls, foggers, plants, the works.
Install a underfloor heating system on a inverted heat pump. In the winter you heat your house and in the summer you can cool it. Not as well as a regular ac but stil you should be quite comfortable.
Buid a tent in your air contitioned room, as an alternative to cooling all adjanced rooms. I suppose to make it of transparent plastic foil - cheap and replaceable. The tent can small, maybe just a 'phone booth' around your chair and desk. A foil hanged on some poles + foil roof. That should minimize the airflow. Put a humidifier and CO2 meter inside to not suffocate. Humidifier is necessary because cooling air reduces it relative humidity significantly. Leave small hole to get rid of CO2 (or leave it on un-sealed seams). I hope this will work.
Can you wear something more akin to a helmet that contacts your neck and shoulders, rather than your face?
Obviously controlling a smaller environment is more likely to bring success, however, whether that brings any relief is what matters.
70% : exactly, or can it be higher or lower?
How about ice? Freeze Tupperware full of water and place them in a cooler in the room. Get hot, lay on cooler.
It will also help humidititty
Sound horrible. What I did to tolerate the heat was to put my feet in a bucket of water while working. Cooled me down quite a lot. Not sure I can come up with something for your house that would work or be efficient otherwise.
Samsung has the “wind-free” mode integrated (basically a lot of small holes in its flaps) they close and the ac continues running? Some years ago we got a humidifier consisting of a bowl(you put water inside) and a top mounted cover with an electrically driven rotating pin touching the water. The top cover had holes and that water would come out as some kind of mist iirc Connecting that to a hygrometer and a small circuit board somehow that it sends RPM data to the motor and pin, thus varying the mist output? Op thoughts? Anyone else thoughts? Didn’t read much of other comments and details sorry
Well other comments pointed that you would fuck up your house with humidity.
You pointed that you cannot wear googles or diving masks, but a motor cycle helmet was fine.
The peltier module is not usable to cool a room. Howewer, it is the correct size to cool down a helmet.
Maybe you could design a helmet that is cooled and sufficiently humid. You would be able to put it around your head whenever you are in pain. If powered woth a battery pack, you would achieve some autonomy.
There are small wine cellars that have controled temperature and humidity. Check these products to see how they work?
Sorry you have to deal with people giving shit medical advice. Next time it's probably good to be up front with that and explaining your condition a bit clearer to avoid worse quality answers.
Not an expert of ac but as far as I know all method will require you to move some air, but can you use like an astraunaut suit or mask during the times you are using ac and remove the suit when it's not on? Alternating between AC and no AC, it might not be the best solution but I cannot think of anything else.
Is it exactly or at least 70% humidity? Bathtub and snorkel will get you to 100%!
Why don't you wear swiming goggles?
Essentially, if you cool something down, the humidity decreases. It is just physics.
Don't come to a bunch of engineers, and don't expect them to fix you... 😎
Technically you can cool a wall of the room, like a big fridge. I am not sure if this is commercially available.
Cooling the room would be difficult but I have an ice pack from my ACL surgery that could be beneficial in a way. Instead of cooling the room you may need to just cook yourself instead. It’s called a polar care cube but it’s basically an ice cooler with a cooling pad attached with some water tubes to cool the pad. May be able to just fill that with ice and just put it on your chest or back intermittently.
So, it might sound dumb, but you could probably still use A/C, but you might just need to slow down the speed of air and let it slowly fill the room with cooler air, and equalize with the warmer air.
This would require fairly good insulation in a room to start. But other than that, if you could use multidirectional fins/blades that change the direction of the air coming out of the a/c unit several times, causing it to lose lots of its kinetic energy and essentially just slowly fill the room with cooler air.
Like I said though, it'd be a slow process because you'd be relying upon the natural equalization with little to no mixing of the air, so it'll be "layered" for a lot longer. But maybe you could also run it through some pvc pipes overhead with small holes in it, to allow it to diffuse slowly from top to bottom after you've slowed down the overall speed significantly past the fins.
When you cool the air in one spot it will change density and create a pressure difference that will move it.
When you cool the air it will condense when below the dew point.
What you’re asking is impossible.
But what you CAN do is to make air conditioner output diffuse the air in a way that doesn’t create drafts and you can re-humidify the air going out of the unit so it won’t be too dry.
Daikin Ururu Sarara other than letting you select humidity levels (it umidifies if it goes too low) has a mode that moves the air the lowest amount possible and can see where you are and avoid you in the room
That or an humidifier with an humidity sensor and a vornado on the lowest setting pointing towards the ceiling to have the humidity spread out but no moving air feeling. You could also avoid ventilation all together if the room isn’t very big (your occasional movements will mix the air up)
Would some sort of goggles be a good solution? Something that could maintain the needed environment for your eyes without sacrificing the environment of the room?
Eye drops and swim goggles?
I'll let an opthalmologist dictate which eye drops.
I don't have an answer for you, but I do have a question: Are you now or were you diabetic prior to getting this disease? Just curious to see if there is any correlation.
If you had a heat pump, those can be used in cooling mode by cooling down the infloor pipes / radiators just above the dew point. This would mean the only movement would be convection currents.
But that's a very expensive solution. Alternatively, would it be possible to install an AC, keep it on low and away from you while also using an ultrasonic humidifier to compensate for the ac's dehumidification. That would be the best solution if you can install such that the slight air movement would be away from you
Why not use an AC with the inside blower fan disconnected? It would cool with convection.
Likely the coils would ice over though, so you may need to humidity the air a bit. Or if they don't ice over, just direct the drain hose to a baking pan on the floor.
Sounds shite.
Don't really have enough details about your housing situation or the amount you're willing to spend but consider researching passive heating and cooling for temperature control.
Here is another potential starting point for humidity control in passive buildings.
My limited experience is with aircraft environmental control systems so I'm no expert.
Could you build a room within a room (kind of like a sound booth)? Air condition/heat the outside room. If the inside room is completely encompassed by the outside room, won’t they be at close to the same temperature and there would be no moving air in the inside room. I don’t know id this would work
Goggles
Can you A/C the rest of the house? It may not keep your room the temperature you want, but having adjacent rooms cooler will help. If your room has an attic or roof above you'll gain a lot of heat from those, you can get some relief if you can move your room to a lower floor. If you have a finished basement, that could be an option too.
I mean you could make your walls out of a conductive material and have a water cooling system cool the walls with some cold head. Then you just let the convection slowly cool the air in the room.
I saw an episode of grand designs where they had some weird infra red heaters built into the ceiling which heated up the objects in the room rather than the air between. Maybe a cooling version idk.
Honestly a cooling vest is probably a better idea than trying to cool a room. It can follow you and it’s much cheaper.
Blow the air up and on low. Use defusors.
This is such an interesting problem.
The best solution is to move to the Faroe Islands, which are cool and humid.
The second-best solution is to find an online community of people with this disease and ask them what they have tried.