Self Evaporating AC

One of the major hassles of owning a portable air conditioner is the periodic need to drain it or empty a tray.

A self evaporating AC gets around this problem in a really neat way.

I know I used to be driven crazy by the alarm sounding and my old AC shutting itself off because the tray was full of water.

It always took a little time for me to figure out why all this was happening and then I had to take action to make the alarm stop sounding.

The Chore of Emptying a Water Tray

Emptying the unit was a royal pain in the rear because it meant physically lifting it up onto a low table so the water could be drained into a bucket through the tube. That's because well, you know, gravity needs to do its thing.

Before I get into how these new models handle the excess moisture and free the owner from that annoying chore, let's first look at why most portable AC units need draining or emptying.

Why Do Portable ACs Need Draining?

To understand what's going on with portable units, we first need to know where that moisture comes from and how it ends up in a drip tray at the bottom of the unit.

The way it happens is that as a part of the refrigeration process that produces the nice, chilled air we love to feel coming out the front of the AC, the naturally occurring moisture in the air gets stripped from the air.

Drying the Air

AC's dry the air as it chills it and before pumping it out into the room.

The moisture must go somewhere and it tends to condense around the cooling coils inside the unit. As moisture condenses and forms larger droplets, those droplets drip off the coils and collect in a tray lower down in the unit.

As the tray fills with water, it gets to a point where it must be emptied to prevent it overflowing and making a mess on the floor.

That's when the sensor trips the alarm and causes the unit to shut off until the tray can be emptied.

Emptying the Tray

With most portable units, there is is a drain hose at the back of the unit that can be unclipped and the end placed into a bucket to allow the excess water to drain out. When it's all drained, the AC unit can be restarted and we're back in business.

Some units need their tray to be physically removed from the unit to be emptied in a sink. That is generally done by releasing the tray and drawing it out the back of the unit.

Either way, the end result is to have an empty drip tray so the unit can happily continue to produce more chilled air for our comfort.

How Do Evaporating Air Conditioners Overcome the Draining Problem?

The new breed of self evaporating portable air conditioners employ an additional sub-process that essentially re-evaporates the condensing moisture and expels it through the exterior exhaust hose to the outside.

That's the simple part of the process.

Some of the cleverer AC units actually re-use that re-evaporated moisture to help to cool the coils before expelling it. That way they are actually increasing the efficiency of the cooling process and using less energy to produce the cold air.

That makes for a more economical cooler and that's something we all should love, because it means using less electricity and saving us some money!

Learning More About Evaporating ACs

There is a lot more detailed information available about these clever coolers if you want to read it, as I have deliberately kept this article non-technical so most of us can understand it without being bogged down in boring tech language!

You can get that additional information in a really well crafted and detailed article I found in my travels here:

https://www.pacifichvacdepot.com/air-conditioning/self-evaporating-portable-air-conditioner.php

It's always a good idea to scope out other info articles about these very efficient and economical air conditioners.

Conclusion

Self evaporating air conditioners make life easy by doing away with the chore of emptying a water tank regularly. While they do cost a little more than regular portable air conditioners, the small extra cost is money well spent.

For the on-going energy-saving feature and the fact that there is no need to perform the chore of emptying a tray any more, I really do think these coolers are well worth the investment!