Drastically Reduce Your Cooling Costs for Almost Nothing!!

Ok, not really. But we do have a neat idea to make your air conditioner more efficient. Read on to find out more...

>Jason: This is a pet project of mine, and I'm excited to share with you today. We've all heard of an evaporative cooler, or swamp cooler, but we don't all know how they work. Let me start with an introduction in the properties of evaporation. When any substance evaporates, it becomes expanded, and it uses energy to get this expansion from somewhere, in the case of water evaporating from the air around it. This means specifically that any time a compound becomes gaseous, it cools rapidly. Hence an evaporative cooler works by evaporating water inside an air filter, and the air blown through the filter sheds its heat into the water-vapor. This process allows the air to cool by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The good news with this is that evaporative cooling is relatively cheap. The bad news is that with a maximum of 20 degrees cooling capacity, this method is only effective up to about 95 degrees. Also, if the air is already moist, you lose ability to cool the air. Florida gets virtually no benefit from evaporative cooling while places such as the San Joaquin valley in CA and deserts get a lot of benefit.

>Ken: Don't think that you can get better cooling by using a swamp cooler and the AC at the same time - it won't work. Air conditioners work to cool the air by moving it over cold tubes that have refrigerant running through it. These cold tubes remove water from the air by condensing it onto the coils. Colder air cannot hold as much humidity as warmer air. The higher the humidity of the air being cooled, the less efficient the AC becomes. So by running the swamp cooler, you lower the efficiency of the AC, and make the units work against each other.

What would happen if you used the idea of a swamp cooler to cool the coils on the air conditioning condenser unit? Right now that condenser is using air, not the most efficient way of cooling. Using water is far more efficient, cooling the coils much more than air possibly could. So how could this be done and are there any downsides. Jason?

>Jason: Well I'm glad you asked! That is exactly how you can drastically reduce your cooling bills very inexpensively. Installing a patio mister system around your condenser unit does effectively the same as using a swamp cooler. Heres how: a patio mister creates water mist. That water mist gets sucked into the condenser with the air. The water mist then evaporates off the coils cooling the coils much like it cools the air. With this already-cooled coil, the condenser can more easily cool the refrigerant in the coil, providing you cheaper, colder air. This process can be likened to splashing your face with water and then blowing a fan onto it versus simply blowing a fan on it.

All you would need to complete this revision to you AC unit would be a water source with a patio mister attached. This mister needs to be controlled by an electronic valve that turns on with the condenser unit. Ask an electrician for help on this step, or don't sue us if you do it yourself. If you have hard water in your area, you may need a water-softener. Otherwise the water-vapor will create a calcium deposit on your coils, making it much less efficient than it is now. This may sound complicated, but you can buy all the materials for less than $200, and it will likely save you many times that amount in the years to come. However, just as in the case of the evaporative cooler, the more humid the air, the less effective this revision will be.

>Ken: I know this has been a long complicated explanation for a rather simple concept. Spraying purified water onto your AC coils will make it run more efficiently. There is at least one AC manufacturer that is using this concept now for home use. Freus has a seer rating in the mid to high 20's using the same basic equipment as any 13 seer. I'm not saying that your AC can reach that level of efficiency, but it should help significantly. Remember, be energy smart!