What do you think about Evaporative Cooling?

[CoolerNowJustin]

Pretty simplistic question here. What do you think about evaporative cooling (aka swamp cooling) as a whole?

Would you consider evaporative cooling over other cooling products? Or is there another type of cooling product that you overall prefer?

thanks for anyone who responds!

[enervac]

For evaporative cooling to be effective you need wet bulb depression i.e. difference between dry bulb temperature and wet bulb temperature . Higher the difference(wet bulb depression evaporative cooling (adiabatic cooling ) will be effective.

Where the ambient is having Low relative humidity the evaporative cooling is better and economical. The Indoor air quality is also good as the evaporative cooling is 100 % Fresh air system.

[enervac]

Limitations of evaporative cooling are it cannot be used where the relative humidity level is high like in most of the coastal towns.

[genduct]

Actually. in the super commercial world, the lower temps of evaporative cooling are being used with the latest generation of ERVs like Munters Pretty clever stuff

[Tool-Slinger]

Pretty simplistic question here. What do you think about evaporative cooling (aka swamp cooling) as a whole?

Would you consider evaporative cooling over other cooling products? Or is there another type of cooling product that you overall prefer?

thanks for anyone who responds!

I grew up with it. It works. Even in high humidity, you just need to be in the air flow and the temps are cooler anyway with rain/clouds.

Not good for books over a long period of time. Pages turn yellow.

[mrbenz7]

I hate it! Swamp coolers will make all fabrics smell musty and moldy after time, bugs will be attracted to the cool damp humidity of your house, coolers on the roof are a real bad idea since leaks and tinkering are constant problems, dirt getting into the pads has to be cleaned out regularly and your water bill is going up up up!

You also have to leave your doors and windows open to let the humidity out meaning you cannot leave your house or you're subject to burglary. Any strenous activity leaves you sweating and when it feels like bugs are crawling all over while sitting on your sofa watching TV, they are! They're call dust mites and the only way to get rid of them is to get AC and run it until your house is cold and dehumidified!

Not to mention that continous swamp cooler use will permeate gypsum wallboard and weaken it making ceiling sag and your paint job hard to redo when the moisture drives insects like termites into the paper used in gypsum wallboard.

I think they work great for outside spot cooling where AC is not practical.

[Tool-Slinger]

I hate it! Swamp coolers will make all fabrics smell musty and moldy after time, bugs will be attracted to the cool damp humidity of your house, coolers on the roof are a real bad idea since leaks and tinkering are constant problems, dirt getting into the pads has to be cleaned out regularly and your water bill is going up up up!

You also have to leave your doors and windows open to let the humidity out meaning you cannot leave your house or you're subject to burglary. Any strenous activity leaves you sweating and when it feels like bugs are crawling all over while sitting on your sofa watching TV, they are! They're call dust mites and the only way to get rid of them is to get AC and run it until your house is cold and dehumidified!

Not to mention that continous swamp cooler use will permeate gypsum wallboard and weaken it making ceiling sag and your paint job hard to redo when the moisture drives insects like termites into the paper used in gypsum wallboard.

I think they work great for outside spot cooling where AC is not practical.

I don't disagree with anything you just said.

I think they are perfect for a screened in porch, garage, or workshop.

Important point made: those things move lots of air, so the air has to have an exit point to work. Location is important in order to manipulate the air stream.

My grandparents did not even have keys to the doors, lost years and years ago. My, how times have changed. And I was in the habit of shaking my boots out before putting them on. I am not sure the latter had anything to do with the water cooler though.

[HVAC Teacher]

Personally I think they are disgusting because who knows what is growing in that water?

The ones I've seen have not been treated (I even walked away from a few or returned later after bleaching it out).

[Retread]

They work well in very dry areas. I have seen them work in El Paso Texas and in the dry SouthWest. They used to work in Oklahoma and I remember them growing up. After the dust bowl the government started to pay for putting lakes and ponds on farmers land. The humidity in the state doubled as the surface acres of water did the same. Now they are not effective.

Lol I remember puring water on the pads at grandma's house when the pump went out.

[myngos211]

They work well in very dry areas. I have seen them work in El Paso Texas and in the dry SouthWest. They used to work in Oklahoma and I remember them growing up. After the dust bowl the government started to pay for putting lakes and ponds on farmers land. The humidity in the state doubled as the surface acres of water did the same. Now they are not effective.

Lol I remember puring water on the pads at grandma's house when the pump went out.

I've lived in OK for 32 years and never knew that about the humidity levels since the dust bowl days. Very interesting!

[BethAir]

I used to take care of a couple schools here in Colorado that had big ol' swampers on the roof. They were pretty effective for the most part. The occasional days when the humidity would creep up were always a problem. And when some of the schools switched to a year-round schedule, they weren't nearly as effective with the high summer temps.

I can't remember now how much cooling we could get out of them... maybe around 20 degrees?

[CoolerNowJustin]

Wow some wonderful replies! Thanks everyone

P.S. I would also like to say that I have found some wonderful reviews about the Evaporative Coolers at a website called CoolerNow (hence my name) it's actually the website that referred me to HVAC-TALK.com You can find it at

[RoBoTeq]

I recently read in ACHRNews about a new type of evaporative air conditioner that uses a desiccant to enhance it's effectiveness. It's called a DEVap and claims to solve the problem of needing to be in a dry climate by; "relying on the desiccants' capacity to create dry air using heat and evaporative coolers' capactiy to take dry air and make cold air."