Self Evaporating Air Conditioners

A solution to needing to empty the drip tray or water reservoir is to own self evaporating air conditioners in place of regular models.

If you're planning on buying some new cooling equipment for your home or office, this could be an important consideration especially if it's your plan to but one or more portable air conditioners.

Opting for fully self evaporating AC instead of the slightly cheaper but non-evaporating units can save you a lot of time and hassle down the road and prove to be well worth the small additional investment.

Let's look at what these devices are, how they work and why you should seriously consider choosing one or more.

What is a Self Evaporating AC?

Without going into too much of the technical detail that might bore you or even send you to sleep (I wouldn't want to do that!), I'll describe what these devices actually are so that you'll have a better idea of what we're dealing with here.

I'll highlight portable AC units as an easy-to-visualize example.

Self evaporating simply means this: As a part of the cooling process, a portable AC unit produces a lot of moist hot air that is exhausted to the outside via its flexible hose out of a window.

However, a lot of the moisture condenses inside the unit on the cooling coils. That moisture then drips down and is captured in a drip tray or water tank at the base of the unit.

This has to be periodically emptied to prevent it overflowing. Most AC units have a fail-safe built in that will shut down the unit and emit an audible alarm when the tank becomes full.

Self evaporating units, in contrast, make use of that condensing moisture to aid the cooling process before re-evaporating it and exhausting it all out of the hose.

That means no dripping condensed moisture and no drip tray or tank to empty!

How Do Self Evaporating AC's Work?

If you're interested to know how these clever cooling devices work, here is the most uncomplicated explanation I can come up with:

As already mentioned, as part of the cooling/refrigeration process going on inside the unit, "under the hood" that produces the cold air, warm moist air from the room is taken into the unit and forced through cooling coils that chill the air as well as being passed through a dryer that removes a lot of the moisture to be exhausted out of the building.

However, it doesn't get it all. Some of that moisture condenses on the cooling coils before it gets to the dryer. Instead of allowing that condensed water to drip into a catcher, there is a re-evaporating process that captures the moisture and uses it to enhance the cooling process.

This actually saves some energy, making this type of cooler more economical to run than a non-evaporating unit of similar capacity and output.

After using the evaporated water vapor, the unit then expels it through the exhaust hose. So there is no need for a drip catcher, because there are no drips!

Why Would You Want a Self Evaporating AC?

Let's tackle the question of why you would want one of these units instead of a regular one.

First, it means there is no need to empty a drip catcher, tray or tank.

If you have ever had to undertake this task, you'll know it is not something you'd jump at the chance to do! It can be fiddly, messy (if you upset the tank) and often you need to raise the AC unit off the floor to get the tank out or get it to drain through a hose into a bucket.

AC units are heavy! They're portable in that they can be wheeled across the floor easily enough. But not so portable when they need to be lifted up onto a coffee table or something raised high enough to support it and allow it to be drained.

Next, self-evaporating AC's are more economical to run than their water-catching siblings. The best models for economy are the dual hose models, but single hose models work well enough.