*Tent Fan*

By Jaden

Pix by Nerisa

26 February 2004

Do you do a lot of camping? Ever get hot inside your tent? It’d be nice to be able to move the air around wouldn’t it? So, why not? We went camping over the summer and it got a little toasty in there.

I have a bunch of computer cooling fans lying around. Each fan only draws .18 amps @ 12 volts. Figured it’d be a good idea to wire a couple of them up.

Tonight we finally got some free time and consulted the "articles to write" list. Tent fans was on it…ok…we can do that right now. Got the 2 fans, some speaker wire and a cigarette lighter plug…all stuff lying around the house. For what little current these fans draw speaker wire will work fine.

Nerisa got a lesson on DC (Direct Current) and soldering.

Took the fans and zip tied them together.

Then used more zip ties to neaten the wires up.

Then I cut the fan wires to the same length and stripped back about ½ of insulation and set it up for soldering.

When working with DC, black is -. Solder the – wires to one side of the speaker wire. One piece of speaker wire is silver color the other is gold. I used silver for -.

Then solder the red + wires to the other piece of speaker wire.

Starting the solder flow Soldering

Neg wires soldered….working on the Pos wires

Now you need to insulate these joints. Heat shrink would be the best…didn’t have any so I had to use electrical tape. Wrap one of the wires and then wrap the other one. Then you can tape or zip tie them together for neatness and durability.

Now it’s time to put the cigarette lighter plug on. Be sure you know which wire is which because if you hook it up backwards the fans will spin backwards.

Solder and insulate the plug joints the same way.

All done

It works!

These fans only draw .36 amps! That ain’t diddly squat. They’re only meant to move air around in a tent (hang them from the roof or something). All you need is power. You can use about anything that produces 12-volts.

Gel cell battery with a cigarette lighter attached

Battery booster pack

Use your imagination!!

Jaden & Nerisa