Ventless Portable Swamp Coolers
When you're looking for a way to stay cool in summer but can't afford air conditioning, ventless portable swamp coolers are a viable, low-cost solution.
These units are perfect for anyone living in an area that has a predominantly dry heat if economy and environmental friendliness are your primary concerns.
You have probably seen plenty of portable air conditioners on sale at hardware stores. It could be that you were considered buying one to get some relief from the overbearing heat during summer in your home.
However, you might have stopped short when you saw not just the purchase price, but the energy consumption figures and converted that into a lot of extra dollars that you'd have to pay in higher utility bills.
A Low Cost Cooling Solution
A solution to the problems of high energy usage and cost does exist in evaporative cooling appliances that look similar to those portable AC units, but the similarities end there. They cool the air but use one tenth to one twentieth of the energy that a comparable AC would use to produce a similar amount of cold air!
Let's get one important point out of the way first:
Swamp coolers are not air conditioners!
They do not cool the air in the same way as AC and have several advantages that are well worth learning about. Guess what? You can learn them right here, right now!
What Are Swamp Coolers?
Let's first gain an understanding of what these appliances actually are and how they differ from AC units. This will reveal why they use so much less electricity to do their job and why so many people are changing their cooling systems to evaporative coolers.
AC makes use of a refrigeration process to produce chilled air. That consumes a lot of electricity! This is because an electronic motor compresses a refrigerant gas which is how the coldness is created. Warm, room temperature air passes through the system, is dried and chilled and cold air comes out the front of the unit.
Anyone who grasps the principle of exchange will see that if you take heat and moisture out of the air, that heat and moisture has to go someplace. AC deals with that problem by venting the hot, moist air out the back of the unit to an external fan unit outside the building where the exhaust air is dispersed into the atmosphere.
Smaller portable AC units get rid of the hot, moist air via an exhaust hose that is attached to a convenient window via a fixing kit.
Evaporative coolers, on the other hand, work rather differently.
Just like our skin cools itself by perspiring and a breeze evaporates the perspiration creating a chilling effect, evaporative coolers use the evaporation of moisture to create chilled air.
They do it by soaking a porous membrane that is stretched across a vertical frame inside the unit. A powerful fan then blasts room temperature air through the membrane evaporating the moisture which traps the heat, chilling the air coming out the front of the unit.
Since the only mechanical part is the fan using electricity, you can probably see why these coolers use so little power. A typical swamp cooler is rated at 100-200 watts, that being the consumption of the fan and some minor electrical components such as the control panel and timer.
Compare that to a typical AC unit that is rated at 1000-2000 watts, you can see what a huge saving in energy and ultimately dollars the difference is between the two devices!
What's the Catch?
If such a device is so amazing, produces as much cold air as a comparable air conditioning unit yet does so for a mere fraction of the cost in energy dollars, why doesn't everyone stampede to the hardware stores up and down the country and buy them all up?
The short answer is there are drawbacks to evaporative coolers in certain areas where AC is still king. Here are the three main disadvantages:
Evaporative coolers lose their ability to chill the air as the humidity level In the air rises above around 50-60%
They need to be run with a window left open to allow air to circulate. This is because they put moisture into the air, effectively raising the humidity in the room itself. If that moist air were not allowed to escape, the device would render itself progressively less and less effective the longer it runs because of the rise in humidity.
These device need a supply of water to operate, which is catered for by a large reservoir or tank located at the base of the unit. This needs to be periodically refilled as the water is used up.
The Major Advantage
There is one other very big advantage that swamp coolers have over portable AC units. They do not need to be vented to the outside with a big ugly exhaust hose connected to a window! They are truly ventless coolers.
This makes portable swamp coolers truly portable because the can be moved from room to room quickly without the need to detach any hose from a window. Indeed, they don't even require a window to be accessible as long as a door or other opening can be left open enough for air to circulate.
Where to Learn More
You can learn even more about these cooling devices by visiting my website by following the link below.
Ventless Portable Air Conditioner (intervalinc
Ventless Portable Air Conditioner (intervalinc.com)