An evaporative cooler, often known as a swamp cooler in certain areas of the nation, is an energy-efficient solution to keep your house cool without breaking the bank on your summer power bill. These devices operate on a simple scientific concept that has been known for centuries: when water evaporates and turns from liquid to gas, it cools everything around it.
Sweat is effective because of evaporative cooling. When your skin is wet, the extra moisture evaporates into the air, leaving behind cooler skin and allowing your body to keep cool in the heat. However, if you’ve ever experienced a hot, humid day, you’ll know that your body’s cooling power is limited. When the air is excessively humid, there just isn’t enough area for the air to absorb extra moisture, so your perspiration doesn’t evaporate very much if at all.
What Is An Evaporative Cooler And How It Works?
Consider an evaporative cooler humidity to be a machine that aids in the cooling process by causing your home to “sweat.” The machine works by hastening the evaporation process by using a simple fan to suck in hot, dry air and expel more humid, chilly air. A carefully constructed pad collects water from a reservoir in an evaporative cooler. The pad is made up of numerous layers to enhance its surface area and allow water to drain faster. A fan blows air directly across the pad, causing water molecules to evaporate and convert to gas. This process produces cold air, which is subsequently blasted out of the unit, making your house more pleasant. For persons who live in dry areas, the more humid air that comes out of an evaporative cooler may also be beneficial for comfort, since the skin and nasal passages normally perform better with some humidity for good health.
Do you want to know if an evaporative cooler will be a wise investment for your home? The ideal setting for an evaporative cooler is determined by both the air temperature and relative humidity in the area where the cooler will be used.
Mother Nature may provide a broad range of air temperatures and humidity levels on any given day. Changes in any type of air will affect how well your evaporative cooler functions. As you can see in the chart above, there is an ideal range for coolers to have a significant influence on lowering temperatures in your house. To comprehend what you’re seeing on the grid, you’ll need to first learn some fundamental weather terminology.
The Temperature Of The Environment
The temperature of the air is probably precisely what you believe it is: how hot or cold it feels based on a typical thermometer measurement. To be more explicit, air temperature in this context refers to what scientists and engineers refer to as “dry bulb temperature,” which is the temperature recorded by a thermometer without taking into consideration any other elements.
Knowing the ambient temperature alone will not tell you if an evaporative cooler will function properly since it does not account for humidity, which is a critical element in fast evaporation, as stated above. Engineers may occasionally measure a “wet bulb temperature,” which entails wrapping a thermometer in wet cloth, to account for humidity. As water evaporates from the cloth into the air, it slightly lowers the temperature around the thermometer, and you obtain a reading that considers humidity. If the wet-bulb temperature is much lower than the dry-bulb temperature, it indicates that the humidity is low and evaporation is occurring ideal circumstances for the use of an evaporative cooler.
