The only problem with a huge AC system or even having several portable aircon units with one in each room is that it can be very expensive to run. These days when costs need to be watched more carefully than ever, it makes sense to look for cheaper running alternatives to keep cool.
This is where the vent free, portable air cooler, better known as the evaporative air cooler or swamp cooler comes into its own.
Wetting Dry Heat to Keep You Cool
As long as you live in a relatively dry heat area, these swamp coolers are amazingly effective at cooling a room at a fraction of the cost of comparable air conditioning systems or individual units. They are so cheap to run because they don't have the complex mechanics of an aircon unit, no refrigerant gas to keep cool and circulate internally and no heat exchanger to power.
In fact swamp coolers use little more energy than a regular fan, because their main internal working part is just a fan! In these pages, I'll explain how these amazingly effective cooling units work and how they can be used to keep you feeling cooler when the temperatures are high.
How They Work
Here is a brief overview to how these machines work (more will be said on this subject as I expand on this in later articles here on this blog). If you think about how your body keeps itself from getting too hot through perspiring, you have the basis of the way in which these devices work.
They simply draw hot, dry air from the room into the unit, force it through a damp membrane with a powerful fan and what comes out the other side is chilled air! As long as the air inside the room stays relatively dry, with a humidity level below around 40-50%, you will experience the chilling effect of this process.
As with many things these days, there advantages and disadvantages to them and these coolers are no different. Here is a quick break-down:
Advantages:
The costs of purchasing and more importantly running these units is very low when compared to portable AC units with similar outputs. They are eco-friendly in that they contain no mechanical parts aside from the internal fan and there are no ozone-unfriendly refrigerant gases in there.
The other major upside is the fact that there is no vent hose. Since these units do not work on a heat exchange system like true AC, there is no hot exhaust air. So there is absolutely no need to vent anything to the outside.
That means no ugly vent hose trailing out the unit and no need to site it right next to a window or other external opening in the house. This makes them truly portable because they can be put anywhere and they will make cold air for your comfort!
Disadvantages
The main problem with this type of cooling device is that it will not work when the air humidity level is high. That's because the chilling effect of the evaporation of moisture becomes nullified when there is already a lot of moisture in the air.
Putting more moisture into already saturated moist air results in less (or no) cooling effect. You can get around this to a certain extent by keeping a window open a crack to allow the humid air to pass outside, but if the outside air is also humid, there will not be much of a difference.
But this is just an introduction post on the best vent free air cooler around. So please take some time to read through the other topic focused and detailed articles published here that explain the several aspects of these devices more thoroughly.
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