Spraying water on an A/C condensor?

[ewingil]

Anyone ever hear of spraying water from a garden hose on an A/C condensor unit to make it cool more efficiently? A maintenance guy where I work said that it would help. Is he pulling my leg ?

[lee houston]

Yes, it'll help. But you'd get tired standing there, your water bill will go up, and if you do it fulltime, harmful mineral deposits from the tap water will render the cooling fins less effective.

lee

[Joseph Meehan]

Lots of times.

It can under the right conditions increase the effective capacity and efficiency of the A/C. It also can reduce both as mineral deposits build up. In addition there is the cost of the water and equipment.

[Lena]

Back in the dark ages of the 1960s and earlier, some outside units actually had a misting system built in, when water was cheap and plentiful. Given that today's units are designed to cool without water, I'd leave it alone. If the compressor blew up, and you tried to get it repaired under warranty, I'm sure the company would claim you destroyed it with water. (But you could spray the coils a couple of times during the cooling season to clean any dirt off and make the heat transfer more efficient.)

Lena

[yourname]

I have thought about putting a small pump and catching the condensate and misting with that. Key would be misting, any large quantitiy of water will bog the fan, and may not do you any good.

[JefCullen]

Check this out.

[spamTHISbrp]

I think some AC units are supposed to splash some of the condensed water onto the condensor.

D

[samuelnetter]

I have a small hose and a pail to catch all the water that comes out of my AC. I store this water until the pail is about half filled, then I bottle it and put it in the fridge for drinking water. This is pure distilled water, and saves me a bundle at the grocery store, instead of buying bottled water. This actually saves me about $50 a month that I'd normally spend on distilled drinking water.

Sam

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Window unit generally do that. not on central units.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

The other key is "condensate" Regular water can cause a buildup of minerals on the fins and make it less efficient.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I imagine it is very pure with all the air that blows across the evaporator coil, the crud in the pan and the mold spores. I imagine it gives you a good dose of protein with the water.

buona salute !

[Toller]

I thought of doing that for plants, but was told the condensate has metals dissolved in it that will harm plants. If it harms plants, I sure wouldn't want to drink it.

[lee houston]

Please boil it before drinking to kill the nasties. Also, if this is 'drip' from a central a/c, it's likely the overflow line. If so, that means the central a/c normal drain down house plumbing is clogged. Very normal occurrence, but should be cleared or you're risking the evap pan overflow and water damage to ceiling, walls, etc. If a window unit, no problem except health. .

lee h

[Mark]

interesting, ....how do they do that?

Mark

[rantonrave]

Don't try it on any unit not designed for it. In other words, don't try it on any home A/C.

I believe the main problem has been corrosion, whether the condenser precooler used municipal water or evaporator runoff, or whether the water was sprayed or evaporated from a wick. When these devices started to become popular in the mid-1970s, one A/C manufacturer in the southwest, Goettl, expressly warned that the use of any such device would void their warranties. By about 1990, precoolers became rare, and all you'd see left of them were their metal frames with their wicks removed.

[jerry_maple]

Here in AZ it used to be fairly common to see the A/C distributors sell bolt-on "pre-coolers", which were basically small evaporative coolers that pre-cooled the air that flowed over the condensor fins. Don't see them advertised much anymore.

Jerry

[Richard J Kinch]

Water source heat sinking is not uncommon in Florida.

Beachfront high-rise condominiums used well water for this purpose, draining to the ocean. In Ft Lauderdale, the water table was lowered by decades of this practice, resulting in salt infiltration, and now the buildings have to use closed systems circulating to heat exchangers on the rooftops.

Some single-family houses here are cooled with pond water, if available. I have also seen swimming pools used for this, although it is opposite to the season for pool heating.

Your ordinary split-system air-cooled condensers work much more efficiently when rain falls on them.

[mm]

They have what Friedrich calls a slinger ring on the fan that picks up the water and splashes it on the condensor. Despite what Lena posted, they still have them. (The installation manual for this one is dated

10/97, but I think the unit is only about 4 years old)

But something annoys me and I wanted to get all of your opinions. The installation instructions say, in every sketch of each different way of installing this room air conditioner that the unit should slope down 3/8" from the wall or window to the outside-most edge.

But neither the operating or install instructions say why, or give any indication that they use a slinger ring (I only thought to ask because I saw slinger rings mentioned here), or that if the unit slopes too much, the water will overflow out before the slinger ring can get it. That's true, right?

So at work they installed the AC correctly, but after 3 years something slipped and now the outer edge is 2 inches down, not 3/8".

So for more than a year it's been sagging and there seemed no real reason to correct that, because Friedrich didn't say a word. So we were losing out on cooling, and paying more for electricity, also, right?

I wrote them to be sure, and got a dry answer with no apology.

I think they should change the manual. What do you think??

[Shoebox Chevy]

Sam, that's about as far from the truth as you could get. There is more mold, bacteria, dirt, chemicals, and fungus in that water than you realize. Do yourself a favor and quit drinking it, before you hurt yourself, or someone you care about.

[Phisherman]

I hose off my condenser from time to time to keep it clean. I also remove any leaves, dirt, wasp nests, etc that accumulates around the tower being careful not to bend the fins.