Swamp coolers

[Bill Senger]

I'm lazy and didn't have the time to build a bucket swamp cooler as described in Instructables and on the Burning Man site, so I just went out and bought a humidifier (the cheaper model that doesn't heat the air and simply absorbs water from the sump with honeycombed sponges, ~$30) at Wal-Mart , then went to Lowes to pick up an 8" diameter furnace elbow and a roll of self-stick foam insulation. Drill a few holes in the top of the humidifyer, attach elbow with zip ties, seal with foam insulation strips, and you're done.

Pros: Quick and easy.

Cons: You'll need 110V to run the fan, so I just hooked up an inexpensive power inverter to a battery and plugged the humidifier into the inverter.

[Chita Jing]

   But how well does it work? Did you check it out? How large a space did it cool and how much cooling did it do? Was there a water-supply problem? 

[ken winston caine]

Wonder if this will work well?

Not clear on the what the elbow is about. Is that for air intake or the mist exhaust?

Would you incorporate a fan to quickly move dry air through the moist exhaust and help circulate the  cooler air that results from evaporation? 

My swamp cooling experience tells me that the blower has a lot to do with the effectiveness. So I'm really curious to hear how well this works. You're BLOWING moist air into the dry air in the room, by drawing fresh dry air tfrom the outside hrough the moist filters of the cooling unit. And the blower creates moving air in the room and helps you create constant air exchange so that old air is moving out of the room and so that some fresh dry air is being sucked in all the time -- to keep the evaporative effect happening and to keep the room from becoming damp, hot and swampy. 

I just wonder if that can happen without a pretty powerful blower.

Points for ingenuity and willingness to experiment. Please share the outcome.

Bill
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[Phil Dirt]

I didn't take any temperature readings, just hooked it up and it blew cool air. It was too much cooling for my 6-ft stretch hexayurt, so we put it in the kitchen shade area to cool ourselves outside. Water supply was not a problem because I had built a sand/charcoal filtration system to process gray water from our camp shower, so it was essentially water that would otherwise have gone into an inefficient evaporation pond.

[Phil Dirt]

The elbow is simply there to direct the cool air from vertical to horizontal. Probably increases the speed a bit because it is going from a larger rectangular inlet to a 6" circular outlet. Air intake is through the sides of the humidifier, where it then passes through the fabric wicks and is blown out by the fan. No need to incorporate a fan because there is already a fan in the humidifier. 

In my yurt I just placed the humidifier in front of a filtered ventilation port and pointed the elbow at the other end of the yurt. The cooler air displaces the warmer air, which rises and escapes from the other filtered ventilation port in the roof at the far end of the yurt.

Some things don't have to be complicated to work.

Bill

[Phil Dirt]

What I used was a Vornado 40 Humidifier, 120 VAC, 0.7A, 60 Hz. About $65 from Amazon I think, and I'm sure cheaper models could be found at discount stores or online, but the key features you need to look for are a wicking action (as opposed to pump) and without heater because there's no point wasting power to heat the air in a swamp cooler, which would be decidedly counter-productive. It runs off 120 V, which I convert from 12V with a simple auto supply store (or Northern Tool) inverter.

By my rough calculations, this could run about 100 hrs off a 12V, 750A battery. (I'd appreciate it if anyone out there can check this estimate.) This year I'll be playing with a solar charger to at least partially recharge the battery during the day. Actually, the only time I really felt a need to run this was late mornings for an hour or so.

The principle is the same as a swamp cooler you could build with a bucket. Water is drawn up from the sump by capillary action, the fan creates a weak vacuum within the unit, dry air is drawn in from outside and picks up humidity when it passes through the wicks, cools and the cooler air is forced out the furnace duct elbow.