Residential Cooling Tower??

[Shophound]

'Splain this one, Lucy...






The umbrella was flapping in the breeze put out by the condenser fan. So...the idea was to shade the unit...or deflect water droplets back into the condenser intake while simultaneously providing shade for the unit, or cool the recirculating air...what??

Harebrained scheme if I ever saw one. Waste of water during a severe drought we're under right now, also. Here's a close-up of the nozzle interacting with the fan discharge:




I'd be curious what head pressure this rig was running...it was over 100 degrees when I took this shot with a telephoto lens clear across the street.

[ac in fl]

awesome we should patent that idea and sell it to a manufacture.Thats great they should put on brochure for comfort maker "so cold it feels wet" lolololool

[Miller257]

We have done that, temporarily, when a fan or blade is unavailable, say a weekend service call, come back and fix it on Monday.

Works pretty good.

on a second look, we usually point ours at the coil, not the fan :-) and our techs don't carry umbrellas.

[Rcb2875]

So what is the water supposed to be doing? It looks like it is just hitting the fan and being blown out. didn't you tell them they might actually achieve something if the water was being drawn through the side?

[AtticAce]

the unit works fine. What you got there is a misting system to cool anyone who might sit under the umbrella, the guy just invented a dual purpose outdoor cooling unit.

[Shophound]

So what is the water supposed to be doing? It looks like it is just hitting the fan and being blown out. didn't you tell them they might actually achieve something if the water was being drawn through the side?

I fear I would be too generous thinking that there was actually any engineering thought that went into this. Strikes me more like "let's try this...and this...and see what happens...oh look, it's got to be working!".

Let's see...air leaves unit, only to be met by stream of water and an umbrella overhead. A good portion of this air is shunted back through the unit, along with some evaporating water droplets. So maybe there's some evaporative cooling going on via water striking the umbrella, walls, slab the unit sits on, and the occasional drop that enters the coil, but the recirculation factor likely offsets all of it. Super hot, humid air is still hotter than just regular hot, not as humid air. All the refrigerant in the condenser wants to do is reject heat...while they might have been trying to achieve a better delta with this crazy rig, I doubt it got them there.

And no, I wasn't at this house to service the unit, thankfully. I was across the street at a friend's and took this pic with a telephoto lens. Once I stopped shaking my head long enough to hold the camera steady.

[eliteair]

Maybe the water was turning the fan blade.

[Shophound]

Maybe the water was turning the fan blade.

The umbrella was flapping in the breeze made by the fan. The close-up photo shows lots of water splashing around. I don't think the water was coming out of the nozzle very hard, because there wasn't any discernable loud sound of water striking the fan blades from where I snapped the pic, unless of course the water was shooting with the rotation of the blades vs. against it.

[jurban10]

At least they were thinking about drainage. The unit is on the same level as the window sill.

Good ole redneck engineerin' Works like a champ!

[anthonyac1]

I think he used to use a pressure cleaner to the coil, until the last tech told him not to use so much pressure against the coil. so he cut down on pressure and applied into the unit. the purpose of the umbrella is the last tech told him its good to have sum shrubs to provide the condenser shade, he didnt want to wait for shrubs to grow so he planted an umbrella. i think he is a brain......

[HuNGRYTeCH]

We have done that, temporarily, when a fan or blade is unavailable, say a weekend service call, come back and fix it on Monday.

Works pretty good.

on a second look, we usually point ours at the coil, not the fan :-) and our techs don't carry umbrellas.

A better idea is to rent a big box fan and put it on top of the unit, I have done that to keep a server room running when I got a call at 11pm on a satruday.

[fridgitator]

Look how well the grass is doing around the condenser. It's a miniature rain forest in the midst of a drought.

[allan38]

He must have been desperate after high utility bills.

Here is a misting system, a more polished example of the same idea.

http://www.mistcooling.com/acprecool.html

It does lower energy bills, until the hard water coats the condenser coil with minerals.