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Evaporative Cooling: From nature to your living room

Evaporative coolers have harnessed nature’s own cooling power and made it available for your home, office, or commercial applications. Do you remember the chill feeling after getting out of a pool on a hot summer day, and then feeling the water evaporate from your skin, leaving a slight cooling feeling? Or how about being on the beach on a blistering hot day as a cool breeze tumbles into shore and washes over you?

Those are examples of natural evaporative cooling. Evaporation leaves behind cool air as the water undergoes a phase change from water to gas, it undergoes a latent heat exchange and the warm air rises out with the water vapour, leaving cool air behind.

It is this very principle behind the operation of every evaporative cooler. These coolers work by sucking in hot air from outdoors and then pulling it through a set of damped cooling pads where the hot air undergoes the same effect as mentioned previously above. The air is then pushed out into the room you need to be cooled, creating a lovely, fresh, cool airflow throughout.

How can evaporative cooling change my home or office?

Great question, with an interesting answer that you might not expect. Evaporative coolers and their operating efficiency, save thousands on your cooling bills over a hot season, especially in large areas, or outdoor applications. In fact; evaporative cooling, while it may be a principle as old as time itself, is far more efficient than air-conditioning which is a modern technology that revolutionised air environments in buildings all over the world.

Save on power

Since evaporative coolers rely on nature to do the work, they require no advanced cooling coils or cooling circuits to do the work for them. Their entire composition of components consists of a plastic housing with an inlet and an outlet containing a fan that pulls and pushes the air around as mentioned above as well as a reservoir to house the water, a drip system and a water pump to push the water over the cooling pads.

As the water is poured over the porous surface of the cooling pad and the air passes through the material, it is cooled by the same principle as the air tumbling over the ocean. The warmth is absorbed by the water in the latent heat exchange and then evaporated, the fan then pushes the cool air into the room and the water is returned to the pump reservoir where it is recycled into the same process.

This effect leads to incredible savings on energy, thus making your end of month utility bill a lot smaller. If we consider that cooling our home can be as expensive as running all other appliances for the month, then you can expect around up to 60% knocked right off the top of your bill, all thanks to using evaporative cooling.

The environmental benefits

The evaporative coolers that have been developed using modern design and technology, have become marvels to behold. Units that have few working parts and advanced user interfaces allowing for a multitude of settings, fan speeds, and memory’s that remember sleep mode, time of day, preferred climate settings and air-ionisers, all running off so little energy, your average toaster or kettle costs more in a month.

One of the coolest things about evaporative cooling is the fact that because you are consuming less energy with your new cooling system, you now can have peace of mind knowing that not only is your monthly bill going to be significantly lower, but you are giving back to the environment that is helping you cool your home, by becoming more carbon efficient as reducing your carbon footprint and your impact on the environment and the planet as a whole.

low maintenance

An evaporative cooler doesn’t fall apart as easily as an air-con does and when they do, they usually don’t cost much to get back on track. Catastrophic failure in an evap cooling system would be the fan or the water pump failing, thereby causing the system to shut down until the repair is completed. Most good dealers will have service centres that can get you back in control of your hot home or office quickly at little expense.

If you choose a ducted system that is linked to your existing HVAC system at home or at the office, then it should just fall right in with your existing maintenance schedule.

If you have a larger unit that serves commercial purposes, the cost savings can be enormous and there is also something to be said about linking it with your current HVAC systems, it’s pretty easy to do the conversion and the savings will pay themselves off in a matter of a few seasons.

What environment suits an evap cooler?

If you live in a hot, arid environment, they you need and evaporative cooler in your life. An evaporative cooler pulls in the hot dry air and then pushes cool, fresh air that isn’t dry but has a very slight moisture to it as opposed to traditional air-con systems. The air feels more natural as the relative humidity in it is higher than traditional aircon systems.

With a traditional aircon, you need an enclosed environment to operate the system in order to achieve maximum efficiency from the unit. The excess moisture in the air is removed and expelled by and outflow drainpipe. In an evaporative cooler, the moisture is elevated in the air, increasing the relative humidity. This isn’t a problem at all, you just crack a window, or a door and the exhaust air escapes back outside.

It only becomes an issue when you live in a humid environment such as the coastline. This will make the cooler run ineffectively and increase the humidity in your home. There are various 2stage systems that can solve this issue, however, they may be a bit pricey but consider this; the savings on energy could easily offset the extra costs in a few years of homeownership.

Consider a portable unit

With evaporative coolers advancing in technology breakthroughs, the portable units now on offer are incredible marvels of modern ingenuity and design. You are now able to purchase a portable unit that will cool a bedroom and even larger units that can cool rooms of a fairly decent size quite easily.

You have the ability and the choice to simply wheel the unit, that’s about the same size as half an ottoman couch, anywhere in your home or office that needs a quick cooldown. The units require next to no maintenance, apart from a quick wipe-down of the grille every so often and a quick rinse of the cooling pads and filter buts that’s it really, a simple and easy way to cool a room that saves power and money.

Portable units are inexpensive when compared to traditional portable air-con units. They offer convenience and a level of user-friendly operation that make them a must for anyone that has to suffer through a hot, dry night in the long summer months.

Taking the plunge

When you decide that enough is enough and you want an evaporative cooler to get your living or working environment back under control, in your heat of desperation so to speak. Before you rush to boot up the laptop and buy the nearest one online; consider that just like any other appliance in the home, you need to find the right make and model of evaporative cooler that comes with good user reviews as well as a solid warranty from the manufacturer that’s backed up by the dealer.

They should accept any sort of malfunctions within a 2-year period and have a good level of customer service that speaks to the way they do business. In short, you want to buy your cooler from someone you can trust, preferably with a national dealer and service network that you can rely on and has solid testimonials behind its name from their past clients.

Units come in different sizes for different size applications. You should be able to find the unit that is right for your home, office or even commercial application with no issue at a quality dealer. Email their consultants with any questions you have on if an evaporative cooler will work effectively in your application.

The conclusion

While evaporative coolers may not be the one-fits-all solution that traditional air-cons are, they still offer a good deal of cooling power and efficiency over their air-con counterparts when you take into account the impact on energy consumption and reduction in emissions and environmental impact.

Provided that you select the right cooler for your application by properly researching the dealers and products that are available to you, you can enjoy a home that is filled with cool, fresh air that increases your quality of life while improving your standard of living and cutting down on your costs of living and consumption. It just makes good sense to check it out, don’t you think?