New “Swamp Coolers” at Home Depot - Anyone try them?

[Don2222]

Hello
I have seen this evaporator cooling technology around for many years and you can find plenty of Make your Own on you tube.
This year for only $40 bucks you can get one at Home Depot! The checkout girl got one and she said it is definitely better than just a fan!
Do you have one? What do you think?
Here is a good write up.
Fresh Air: The revolutionary new air conditioner
New Home Depot unit called Artic Air!
ARCTIC AIR Ultra 677 CFM Compact Portable Evaporative Air Cooler for 45 sq.ft.-AAU-MC4 - The Home Depot
They say to put the filter in the freezer for extra cooling power!

 

[peakbagger]

Evaporative coolers (AKA swamp coolers) really do not have a lot of use in New England or coastal areas for comfort cooling as they only work in areas with a big difference between the Dry Bulb temperature and the Wet Bub temperature. Great for an arid desert climate, not so good where on hot days the relative humidity is high. The benefit of precooling the evaporator pad is pretty minimal or could be negative if the device used to cool the pad (like a refrigerator) is inside the same space.

Its tough to see how marketers sell crap to poorly educated folks who are desperate for a bit of cooling in hot weather.

 

[blades]

Got A half page shinny tag board ad for something similar in the mail couple days ago , big hype about new tech ect ect. what a crock of sales pasture paddies. Humidity inside right now about 67%- dang near 100% out, side temps rising to mid 80's more rain in forecast, Fields are flooded as the ground can't absorb much more. Could not see past about 50 ft around 3 am no wind, by 4.30 breeze had come up from the west so by 5am a lot of the fog had been dissipated.

 

[coaly]

The Amish have been using this type of cooling for years.
They are not against technology, they are against using power generated by the rest of the world, so the separation of themselves from worldy things starts by no connection to the grid or other utilities. That said, here's how it works.
Most allow generation of their own electric by wind, water or steam power. (this depends on district) It is easier and cheaper to use compressed air driven by a windmill or water power. This is shared between farms and the larger the supply piping, the more volume is added to the system. (normally deep well plastic tubing) Each point of use has it's own reserve tank as well.
Blenders, mixers, fans, anything with an electric motor can be converted to use air with a turbine instead of the original electric motor.
One detrimental feature of this use is water vapor in the air that is compressed must be drained or dryers used in the system to eliminate water at the exhaust. This water is beneficial when used to power a ceiling fan. The exhaust drips on a sponge connected to the fan blades at the center. Centrifugal force moves the water toward the fan blade tips, which moving through the air absorbs heat, making the air driven by the fan cooler.

 

[Ashful]

High school physics: how can it simultaneously consume energy, and remove energy (heat) from the room? This is not that far from folks thinking you can cool a room by leaving a refrigerator door open.

The only difference here is that by evaporating water, an endothermic reaction, there is some small amount of energy (heat) consumed in that process. But generally, unless you live in a desert, humidity is the last thing you want to be pumping into your house in summer.

 

[peakbagger]

If we were talking gas turbine power plants, evaporative cooling makes a huge difference in desert climates. A gas turbine is a volumetric device, at a given rpm it can only move so much volume and warm air is less dense than cool air, so it makes sense to send cooler saturated air into the compressor as it ultimately moves more pounds of air to the combustor. There is even a case for over saturating the air with water droplets as it cools down the compression cycle (Wet Compression) but that's another process. Turbines are moving a lot of air so they see the outside humidity all the time. With a swamp cooler the space is closed up and once the air gets saturated, no more cooling.

I have a project in western mass that has an evaporative cooler on a gas turbine as we ran the local climate numbers and there were enough days with high temps and low humidity's that it made a difference to the turbine. I have another turbine hopefully going in in mass and expect we will run the numbers again and see if its worth installing. I doubt it would be worth installing near the coast.

Fortunately healthy people are equipped with bodies smarter than gas turbines and they already have built in evaporative cooling (AKA perspiration). The old saying its not the heat, its the humidity is pretty accurate within a certain range of temps, if the air is dry folks can cool themselves more effectively than when its damp.

 

[Dobish]

a lot of folks out here use evaporative coolers, but its never humid. We had a few that were pretty much worthless unless you get good airflow.

 

[blades]

Back in the 70's had a shop that was water cooled ac but not a swamp cooler as it was not evaporating the water but using the water cascading over pipes that carried the shop air to carry away the heat. That would not fly now days as the water was pumped from the river and back again. Didn't do squat for pulling humidity out though. 1500 sf- 20 ft ceiling better than nothing. That pump was hard on the electric bill as well. Forced air heat in winter- never really dug into it so I can't say how heat portion was set up. worked though. Downtown Beloit WI, that whole area including all of what was Beloit corp. ( paper mill mfg) has been razed and repurposed.

 

[Sawset]

we ran the local climate numbers and there were enough days with high temps and low humidity's

What do you think a net positive day would look like to warrant one of these "swamp coolers". Right now in WI we have very high humidity. I couldn't see adding more. Sometimes we have droughts here though and the air is extremely dry. Also other states have drier climates overall. Where do you think the break even point would be. On a 90deg day, how humid is too humid to make these things "pay".