Has anyone made a swamp chiller?

[AlexBrown_1]

This heat early next week looks decidedly unpleasant and I don't want the energy bill of proper air con.
I've seen you can get these air chillers from screwfix for about 90 quid but also heard you can do good things with a pond pump running through some copper tubing in front of a fan.

Im not expecting miracles just something a bit better than circulating hot air.

 

[123hotchef]

frozen bottle of water in front of the fan works too

 

[julianthegypsy]

We had an air chiller in Cairo, it worked very well. Just a big centrifugal fan in a double skinned louvred box with straw or similar in between the skins and a bowl of water with a ballcock wicking the water. The fan sucks air through the wet straw and evaporation does the cooling. Since it's only a fan, power consumption is much lower than air con and you can have a really big fan blowing lots of air around.

 

[CompoSimmonite]

We had an evaporation cooler. Sort of worked but not enough to recommend one. I've decided to buy a proper air con unit later in the year when they aren't in demand

 

[fizzy]

Swamp coolers may be ok in Arizona or Egypt where you have a very dry heat but forget it in the UK. They turn the place into a sauna.
Proper portable aircon units with the pipe out of the window are the best answer. I have one for my office and one for the main staff office. They do work very well.
When I was working in IT I went to a government office. Huge open plan room. They had about 30 swamp coolers in there. It was AWFUL. All the staff were complaining. The units were all on hire. I asked the manager why they were using them. Nobody there knew the difference - flipping civil service

 

[Morrisman]

We had an evaporation cooler. Sort of worked but not enough to recommend one. I've decided to buy a proper air con unit later in the year when they aren't in demand

When we built our house in the Philippines we decided against air cons, thinking they'd be stupendous expensive to run. I designed the house so it had through air flow from the general prevailing wind direction. We put the bedrooms at the front of the house facing east, so they got sunshine in the morning, but avoided the hellish heat of the sun in the afternoon.

We survived two hot seasons, with fans blowing everywhere, and lots of sweat, impossible to sleep at night, but the third year we decided we'd had enough and we had 3 spilt inverter AC units installed. One in each bedroom, one in the TV room.

Surprisingly our electric bill hardly increased at all, maybe 10% at the most.

I wanted the condenser units mounted on the roof garden, with the plumbing going up internally, but the guys doing the installation couldn't get their heads around it, so we had ugly pipes running down the outside walls.

 

[julianthegypsy]

Swamp coolers may be ok in Arizona or Egypt where you have a very dry heat but forget it in the UK. They turn the place into a sauna.
Proper portable aircon units with the pipe out of the window are the best answer. I have one for my office and one for the main staff office. They do work very well.
When I was working in IT I went to a government office. Huge open plan room. They had about 30 swamp coolers in there. It was AWFUL. All the staff were complaining. The units were all on hire. I asked the manager why they were using them. Nobody there knew the difference - flipping civil service

Yes, they don't work well where it's humid. My house in Sumatra had split aircons in the bedrooms for that reason. I had the house built with big eaves and relatively small windows. I also had a big covered area outside and put the dining table there. It worked very well. The aircons would easily have filled a bucket every night. It was at least 90% Rh all the time and around 32⁰. Just looking at a spanner would leave you drenched in sweat.

 

[Kayos]

Proper air con is the answer

I have set a few of the portable ones up fixed with a 5" vent cored through the wall. If the duct run is short it will cope even if a 7" is specified

 

[fizzy]

Proper air con is the answer

I have set a few of the portable ones up fixed with a 5" vent cored through the wall. If the duct run is short it will cope even if a 7" is specified

Yes thats what I did with mine.
With an 8000sq feet warehouse and 8m eaves the hot

exhaust makes no difference at all.

 

[Blue Chips]

When we lived in Salt Lake City years ago, we had a swamp cooler on the roof of our house for a few years, which worked fairly well most of the time, as the outside summer humidity was pretty low 'most' of the time. However, even when it was working well, it still made the house interior feel a bit clammy. It was much more comfortable after we upgraded by installing a high-efficiency central air conditioner that utilized the existing furnace air ducts. It didn't raise the utility cost much, partly because the lower humidity inside the house allowed a higher thermostat set point for the same perceived comfort level. Another factor that helped with utility costs was installing a white PVC roof membrane that reflected a good deal of heat (the house had a 'flat' roof, wihch was actually sloped inward to a central drain).

 

[fizzy]

That aircon unit of mine is over 20 years old and has loads of use. Love it. Of course it uses over 1kw though.

 

[Blue Chips]

That aircon unit of mine is over 20 years old and has loads of use. Love it. Of course it uses over 1kw though.

Aircon is the way to go.

Having an existing forced-air heating system made it easy to install a central air conditioner. The condenser coils (hot coils) were installed outside the house in the shade, so no heat had to be expelled from the house, and the evaporator coils (cold coils) were placed in line with the existing ductwork. We had a floor drain in the furnace room that allowed the moisture that formed on the cold coils to drain away by gravity, with no tanks to empty. The other nice thing was that the electronic air cleaner worked year around for both heating and cooling, which really reduced the frequency of dusting and vacuuming in the house.

If one doesn't have an existing heating duct system, it's usually fairly easy to install a mini-duct system without too much invasive work.

 

[AlexBrown_1]

Thanks folks you've probably saved me a bunch of time or a hundred quid on buying something from screwfix. I had heard people say they weren't great for humidity but it's good to hear some real life examples.

I'll have a look at some proper aircon maybe

 

[badabec]

Every year I think of fitting air-con, then the few really hot days pass by and air-con goes back to bottom of the list.
We close all the curtains, open the windows and put up with it for a couple of days.
It won't last long.

 

[selectedgrub]

Put a fan in the fridge and leave the door open.

 

[JimmyS]

Put a fan in the fridge and leave the door open.

I'd the fridge is plugged in the place will get hotter.

 

[Munkul]

A swamp cooler is an evaporative cooler, it needs water spray or mist or wetted surface to evaporate and cool the air while it is being blown into a room/building.

Somehow we got lumbered with swamp coolers for what was supposed to be a very high tech positive pressure heating/cooling ventilation system for a hygiene area of our production plant.
The coolers were worse than useless. But so was the heating side. Oh and so was the positive pressure side

 

[premmington]

frozen bottle of water in front of the fan works too

Yeah that does work - I done it before!

Old 240 volt fan - three two litre plastic pop bottles with water frozen in them overnight.

Not high tech but it does work quiet well....

You really need to stand pop bottles in a washing up bowl to catch the condensed water thou. On a humid day the water this will suck out is unreal.

 

[piman]

Julian,

I saw similar in Saudi Arabia, they do work in low humidity areas but not in high humidity as there is much less evaporation.
The goat skin water bags the Beduins carry work on the same principle, as evaporation from the damp skin cools the contents.

Alec

 

[CompoSimmonite]

Yes thats what I did with mine.
With an 8000sq feet warehouse and 8m eaves the hotView attachment 355730View attachment 355731 exhaust makes no difference at all.

That is what I'm going to do in our bedroom rather than putting hose through the window