anyone read Rex Robert's book? "Your Engineered House" advocates natural air flow. Low vents and high exit vents to promote the natural air flow as heat rises. We love ceiling fans too. And a light color for the roof. the garage sports a wind turbine. Cool!
Swamp coolers only work in LOW humidity areas, and they rely on cheap access to water.
Desert Southwest is one such place.
The way to make them work better is to invest in a 1000psi to 2000psi water pump and pump the water thru very fine nozzles to create a fog of ultra fine water drops. These drops FLASH over to vapor phase when they touch almost anything. Restaurants in the Desert Southwest use this technique to allow patrons to eat dinner outside in the summertime. Water quality is a concern as the nozzles are so tiny. Reverse Osmosis filtration helps greatly with this issue, and minimizes the mineral residue (ultra distilled water would work even better, but is more costly)
I just ran across this refrigeration AC unit last night:
-tm
Answers
About $5K for the base unit. Plumbing to the house is very very similar to a Swamp Cooler as there is only a 1200CFM fan that blows air across the refrigerated coils. Low power, runs off 120V 7amps peak, averages about same as 100W light bulb. RUNS WITHOUT POWER for up to 3 hour, longer of an optional solar panel is attached. SEER is calcualted at 983, YES NINE HUNDRED EIGHTY THREE!!
Homeowner is resposible for distribution of the refiregerated air. In low humidity climates (less than 40% RH is the quoted figure), one unit will cool about 1000 SQ FT. In high humidity climates (80% RH is quoted) one unit will cool about 500 sq ft
Right now, I am sitting at 91F and for us a lower than normal RH of 44% Heat index is 94F
Thats fine as long as the temp doesnt get too high.
Doesnt work anything like as well as a decent swamp cooler when you have 10 days over 40C/105F tho.
Not when you have 10 days over 40C/105F tho. Fucking hot in fact.
The Solcool unit sounds like the two-stage evap coolers that were promised five years ago. For one reason or other none of the systems ever made it to large scale manufacturing. I see one big drawback for SoCool - the $5K price tag, which is about 10X the cost of a similar evap unit. I don't see them getting much demand on the retail side with prices like that.
One wholesaler told me the HVAC companies hate evap coolers because there is so little profit in them compared to regular systems. Maybe with the the higher price point, they'll start pushing these Solcool systems.
Agreed, in the Desert Southwest, where swamp coolers work well, they both cool the house and add needed moisture. This thing expands the envelope of applications outside the region where swamp coolers are sold.
The more valid comparison is to traditional AC units with which it is price competitive. It adds refrigeration to a swamp cooler. This is a very small refrigeration system, only about 1 pound of refrigerant is used, versus 7-15 pounds in most residential refrigeration AC units.
1200CFM is a typical fan volume in refrigeration AC systems of the same overall size class as this, they just do not recommend installing it in a ducted house for some reason. Efficiency is very high, exiting air temps are very low, air volume matches refrigeration, it looks better and better.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.