Swap Cooler Question

[MrFlyTrap2]

Quick question, so swamp coolers need external airflow in order for their effect to work?

I always see them pull air from a green house and push it out an exhaust, but would it work just the same sitting in the middle of the room?

Thanks,
Nathan

for not checking the spelling in the title before posting.

 

[DrWurm]

Are you sure you saw it right? Swamp coolers need hot, dry air fed in. They push out cool, moist air. If the intake air is too cool or too moist, not much water will evaporate from the wet pad, and the cooling effect is reduced. Are you trying to use it to humidify and/or cool a greenhouse?

Jason

 

[MrFlyTrap2]

I'm fighting two effects in my vault at the same time, and my plants are stuck in the middle of the battle. I use a window AC unit in order to cool the vault, however its either not really good or the lights are over powering it. But while it continues to work, it basically makes somewhat cooler dry air 85 at the moment. (I don't even want to take a humidity reading right now)

Since the window unit is keeping my vault from being 100, I'd like to give it a little boost or at least regain the humidity without running a humidifier that will only add more heat.

So while I'm not relying on it to do the entire job cooling, I'm just curious if it would give me a 5 degree push and add some humidity in the process.

Just a thought I was bouncing around,

Nate

 

[DrWurm]

Well, if the air inside is particularly dry, you might be able to do an inside swamp cooler, but as the humidity inside goes up, the effect of the cooler will go down. You should take a humidity reading of the room as it is now. How is the temperature and humidity outside during the day?

Jason

 

[adnedarn]

Once you know your temp and the relative humidity.. You can use this chart... But remember as soon as you start using it the humidity will go up, and effectiveness will go down. I say ALWAYS have a swamp cooler suck fresh air, and always have it exhaust out appropriately. Typically you cannot use AC and swamp together... Swamp cooler works by exchanging air (sucks in warm dry air, puts out cooler moist air) and AC recirculates air (sucks in warm humid or warm dry air) and blows out cooler dryer air (since the moisture condensates on the coils) so if you run both, the swamp cooler will blow the air that the AC has cooled out the vent side of the room (usually opposite of the swamp cooler)
Hope all that makes sense
Andrew

 

[nightsky]

Andrew nailed it. For it to be of any value, you really will need it to intake as dry as possible air from outside the space being cooled.

Maybe it would be possible to install it outside your room, say on top of an elevated wood or plastic box just outside your window with the air blown out the bottom routed into the window. Then you'd be cooling and humidifying the room. Of course it would be a pain to run a water supply to it, unless you could somehow adapt a hose to the task. But if you live in a humid area it won't do much good anyway.

 

[dking]

i have a question on this. im not an expert at all so im trying to understand. if mrflytrap's vault is 85 with low rh with air conditioning on. wouldnt 85deg dry air cool going through the swamp cooler and come out cooler with higher humidity? the ac keeps the air dry so the swamp cooler would continue being effective untill the air was to cool. you probably wouldnt want the ac blowing right into the swamp cooler, mabee on opposite sides of room or something. im probably just missing something.

mrflytrap what is your outside temp and rh?

thanks
darren

 

[MrFlyTrap2]

Last month or so I managed to water my humidity meter, and no longer can take those readings. However judging from how fast water evaporates off my floor... it's pretty dry.

dking has the idea that I'm trying to do, while my window AC unit keeps it at an okay level. (83 right now) it also keeps it really dry.... I get to watch all the water that I'm trying to keep in my vault puddle outside it instead.

If I'm at 85 deg and 40%, the cooler even starts to edge it to 72 that'd be a plus. I understand at some point the two will begin to fight each other, and really I'm just looking for some type of middle ground. The bonus is a temp drop, the real effect I'm after is replacing the humidity that the window AC unit is removing without adding heat into the factor.

My humidifiers currently work by making hot steam, not really the effect I want during summer. I also have an ultrasonic koi pond fogger working, but it doesn't seem to have an effect. Maybe I should add one or two more of those and see what happens. Might be the more cost effective / intense visual effect.

So I'm still kinda debating this situation in my head.

That chart is very helpful though as reference for those types of coolers.

 

[adnedarn]

Once you start running a swamp cooler inside a room you are essentially running a massive humidifier. It won't take long for humidity to go up, and the swamp cooler to stop working. I bet at first it will work excelent! but within half an hour it won't be working anymore to any great extent. So the only way I can think of this coming close to working, would be to have the cooler on a timer? it comes on for 5 mins every half hour or something.... So it will come on, cool it off a little bit, raise the humidity, shut off, the AC will continue to cool and remove the humidity till the cooler comes back on. I have no idea how well that would actually work though. How big is the vault? I wonder if one of those tiny mobile swamp cooler things would work... Since it wouldn't push too much air, maybe the AC could manage to kinda keep up with the humidity it puts out.

Andrew