water-based Air Coolers - are they any good ?

[siam2007]

Just stumbled upon such thing at a local HomePro outlet, where they had one running for promotional activities and I was quite impressed - the Air was really cool and it seemed quite powerful and strong too. Certainly not as powerful as a regular AC, but for example during night time this could be more than enough in a sleeping room. Or even in the living room during the colder season. The electricity savings would be significant. And far better than a fan.

Did anybody buy such thing and are you satisfied with the performance ?

[B1TcoinLife]

Another thread about Humidity makers....

[siam2007]

Another thread about Humidity makers....

HUUUUUH ?

anyway, thanks for your helpful quality-reply. Hope all your posts are as great as this one....

[cyberfarang]

I went into detail regarding these coolers here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/913506-is-anyone-else-finding-it-hard-to-sleep-in-this-horrible-heat/page-2#entry10691897

and here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/913506-is-anyone-else-finding-it-hard-to-sleep-in-this-horrible-heat/page-3

Edited May 26, 2016 by cyberfarang

[Lannig]

I remember trying one of these things years ago and I hadn't been convinced at all

Basically useless IMO. Even filing it with icy water direct from the fridge didn't seem to make a perceivable temperature difference in the room.

It was bringing a lot of moisture too, not something bad in the dry season but annoying the rest of the time.

Again, this was quite a few years ago so they may make better ones now.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Lannig

[NongMalee]

Impressive when they are operating in an air conditioned store.

Other than that absolute waste of anyone's hard earned money.

Will do nothing but pump warm air round your room.

Do not waste your money,you have been warned.

[cyberfarang]

Impressive when they are operating in an air conditioned store.

Other than that absolute waste of anyone's hard earned money.

Will do nothing but pump warm air round your room.

Do not waste your money,you have been warned.

You have no idea what you`re talking about and seems you are confused between what is a regular fan and a water cooled unit.

These coolers come in many different sizes and power amps. Larger the room requires the correct size unit. The 2 medium size models I bought with 18in fans were brilliant during the extreme hot temperatures, as far as I`m concerned they saved the day. They do not recycle warm air around a room, the air and water is cooled by the chiller unit inside and the air and cold water is expelled by the fan, they are not influenced by room temperatures. The medium size units use less than 1 amp of power so they are at least 25 times cheaper to run then a conventional air conditioner, although they will not cool a room as efficiently but they are a good second best.

The only cons is that the water runs down fairly quickly and has to be filled several times a day and they intend to be on the noisy side.

[pgrahmm]

Several threads on this....Totally useless.....And if not cleaned - unhealthy.....

[Eclipse]

A total waste of money as not suited to Thailand's high humidity.

They will only make it worse.

[meatboy]

Several threads on this....Totally useless.....And if not cleaned - unhealthy.....

this is what i thought when enquiring about them. LEGIONNAIRES DISEASE comes to mind.

[daveAustin]

As stated, they work well when in an air-conditioned room, such as the store. Constantly refilling and cleaning the thing soon gets old for little benefit. Finally found a use for mine; a makeshift table for resting drinks on when at the computer station with it blowing right on my leg as a standard fan. There is no real alternative to aircon.

[Henryford]

I bought one and it was basically useless, no better than a normal fan and more trouble. They feel good in the shops of course because the air is already cooled.

[ChristianBlessing]

Impressive when they are operating in an air conditioned store.

Other than that absolute waste of anyone's hard earned money.

Will do nothing but pump warm air round your room.

Do not waste your money,you have been warned.

You have no idea what you`re talking about and seems you are confused between what is a regular fan and a water cooled unit.

These coolers come in many different sizes and power amps. Larger the room requires the correct size unit. The 2 medium size models I bought with 18in fans were brilliant during the extreme hot temperatures, as far as I`m concerned they saved the day. They do not recycle warm air around a room, the air and water is cooled by the chiller unit inside and the air and cold water is expelled by the fan, they are not influenced by room temperatures. The medium size units use less than 1 amp of power so they are at least 25 times cheaper to run then a conventional air conditioner, although they will not cool a room as efficiently but they are a good second best.

The only cons is that the water runs down fairly quickly and has to be filled several times a day and they intend to be on the noisy side.

Can you describe the "chiller unit inside"? I have long experience with evaporative coolers living in the desert southwest in the US, and haven't seen such a thing. If there were such a thing it's hard to imagine that it would be cheap to operate as it would require some sort of refrigerating mechanism (compressor, freon, etc)

[Swiss1960]

A total waste of money as not suited to Thailand's high humidity.

They will only make it worse.

Not all of Thailand is humid. In Pattaya / most sea places, they will be mostly useless, i agree. But I bought one for MIL in Roi Et and they are very happy with the night time cooling of the bedroom.

[pkspeaker]

i was dumb enough to buy one years ago when i lived in a room that had no ac..they are useless, the oce melts, there is no reason to think that air blowing over the ice trey would cool significantly..and a normal fan has way more power..maybe if they made one of these things so that the ice melts into a radiator and the air passes through the radiator it would cool the air a

ittle, but even then it melts so much ice, and you will constantly be opening the fridge door to make more ice, and your fridge heats the air around it because the compressor is outside the fridge..so the entire process is probably makeing the room even hotter..it is way to hot in this country for such a weak appliance.

[seancbk]

Another thread about Humidity makers....

HUUUUUH ?

anyway, thanks for your helpful quality-reply. Hope all your posts are as great as this one....

What he means (I think) is why would you want to add more moisture to the air (humidity) which would make the air feel more 'sticky'.

Yesterday there was a review of these type of coolers (DIY versions but the principle is the same). They decided they are practically useless.

https://youtu.be/tsIh1A2eB8s

The reason the one you saw in HomePro seemed good is that it was in a shop which itself would have been heavily air-conditioned.

[glassdude007]

Several threads on this....Totally useless.....And if not cleaned - unhealthy.....

Agreed total Rubish..

[koo]

Impressive when they are operating in an air conditioned store.

Other than that absolute waste of anyone's hard earned money.

Will do nothing but pump warm air round your room.

Do not waste your money,you have been warned.

You have no idea what you`re talking about and seems you are confused between what is a regular fan and a water cooled unit.

These coolers come in many different sizes and power amps. Larger the room requires the correct size unit. The 2 medium size models I bought with 18in fans were brilliant during the extreme hot temperatures, as far as I`m concerned they saved the day. They do not recycle warm air around a room, the air and water is cooled by the chiller unit inside and the air and cold water is expelled by the fan, they are not influenced by room temperatures. The medium size units use less than 1 amp of power so they are at least 25 times cheaper to run then a conventional air conditioner, although they will not cool a room as efficiently but they are a good second best.

The only cons is that the water runs down fairly quickly and has to be filled several times a day and they intend to be on the noisy side.

Can you describe the "chiller unit inside"? I have long experience with evaporative coolers living in the desert southwest in the US, and haven't seen such a thing. If there were such a thing it's hard to imagine that it would be cheap to operate as it would require some sort of refrigerating mechanism (compressor, freon, etc)

I was wondering the same. If you have a chiller unit, then it needs to discharge the heat from the chilling process somewhere. It doesn't help if this heat is expelled into the same room that is supposed to be chilled. My suspicion is that there is no chilling unit, the evaporating water just feels colder, which is exactly what this machine relies on.

If you really want to experiment with this matter, just get a wet t-shirt and hang it on or in front of your fan. While the shirt dries, the evaporating process may give you some feeling if it helps or not. The truth though is (as mentioned above) that Thailand's air generally is so humid that using these evaporators just makes the problem worse in the long run.

Edited May 27, 2016 by koo

[RBOP]

You would get the same effect by hanging a bunch of wet towels in your room and then direct a fan onto the towels. Plus your in a small enclosed space so the humidity would be quite high if not near saturation. It feels cool in the big air-conditioned stores because the those big aircons are sucking moisture out of the air.

[smccolley]

Here is the deal about evaporative coolers. We called them swamp coolers. I lived in Arizona for a while (too long) and they are great when the relative humidity is low. In AZ the weather reporter would tell you the dew point, which is some magic relationship between the temp and the humidity level. Well around july every year, we had to shut them off and use AC. The reason was the amount of water in the air was more than the swamp cooler could overcome and they became ineffective, all they did then was raise the humidity and not lower the temp. I am pretty sure there is no day anywhere near the gulf or adaman sea that the humidity is low enough for these to have any effect.

Now if you are FAR from the gulf then during the dry season they might help, but they are not worth the money. In AZ if you ran them when the relative humidity was high, your carpets would just rot and the temp felt no different than a fan.

Either get a fan or get AC. Here these are a waste of money.

[blemley]

Yes, There must be quite a difference between the demo and the application in the tropics. When these units are used in an air conditioned area, there is a larger temperature dew point spread so the room air can readily accept more water vapor due to evaporation, releases energy and causes the cooling. The dryer the air, the more the temperature drop because there is more evaporation taking place... more energy released. A lot of houses in the dessert southwest US have two systems in their homes. The residents generally turn off the evaporation coolers when the relative humidity rises above 55% and use the freon sytems. When the humidity falls below 10%, they switch over to the evaporation cooler (In Arizona, they call it a swamp cooler) and enjoy a 35 deg temperature drop.

[LONG JOHN SILVER]

Absolutely useless in Phuket . Worked great in the air conditioned store and as we discovered on our next visit was conveniently positioned directly beneath an A/C vent .

[Emster23]

Laws of thermodynamics should come into play, I would think. If using in a closed system (like a room) the thing takes energy, which converts to heat due to motor etc. If anything swamp cooler would also add to humidity. There is a reason compressors are on balconies: to take heat from room and dump it outside, and drain the water which needs to be dumped due to lowering of temperature in the room.

[charliebadenhop]

I have a different take on these coolers than a number of other folks here.

I have a fairly small unit made by Midea.

No heat whatsoever comes out of the back.

I use it with the windows open and I have it blowing on me. For this purpose it works fine.

Not at all sure how they would do with all the windows closed, and I am guessing they would not be great.

The air comes out much differently than a fan. I get a small "wall" of air.

For me it has solved my problem of my small office being a bit too hot with only a fan.

It is not particularly hot these last few days, and I have been using only the cooler without the fan.

Also the humidity coming out means that I don't need to drink as much water as I did with a fan blowing on me.

I cannot say that I notice any extra humidity, but of course it IS evaporating water.

Also, when using the freezer packs that come with the unit, I can't notice that much of a change in the air temp coming out.

And my unit was cheap. About B3,600. I don't remember the exact price.

Edited May 27, 2016 by charliebadenhop

[NongMalee]

Impressive when they are operating in an air conditioned store.

Other than that absolute waste of anyone's hard earned money.

Will do nothing but pump warm air round your room.

Do not waste your money,you have been warned.

You have no idea what you`re talking about and seems you are confused between what is a regular fan and a water cooled unit.

These coolers come in many different sizes and power amps. Larger the room requires the correct size unit. The 2 medium size models I bought with 18in fans were brilliant during the extreme hot temperatures, as far as I`m concerned they saved the day. They do not recycle warm air around a room, the air and water is cooled by the chiller unit inside and the air and cold water is expelled by the fan, they are not influenced by room temperatures. The medium size units use less than 1 amp of power so they are at least 25 times cheaper to run then a conventional air conditioner, although they will not cool a room as efficiently but they are a good second best.

The only cons is that the water runs down fairly quickly and has to be filled several times a day and they intend to be on the noisy side.

Seems your in the minority with your love of these useless coolers.

To each his own.

Edited May 27, 2016 by NongMalee

[Pepper1959]

Use one all the time in the living room, no a/c. Keep it clean. Wouldn't be without it. Keeps the room cool, extremely effective. Dog sleeps at the base of it. Contented. So if he is ok, then I know it works!. Without it, the room would be up many degrees. Use air con in the bedroom at night, and of course a fan, having a Thai partner, the two have to go together.

[Taffyfromflint]

A total waste of money as not suited to Thailand's high humidity.

They will only make it worse.

Quite correct on this one. In arid areas such as the inland regions of Australia these are a godsend as these area are dry and hot with zero humidity. What these units do is add humidity in the form of cool water vapour so as far as Thailand is concerned the above thread is spot on.

Edited May 27, 2016 by Taffyfromflint

[MobileContent]

Bought once such as a Air Cooler a few years ago. Price was around 7000 Baht and it was an absolute waste of money.

[Cake Monster]

You are better off using a DIY Redneck Air Con if you really need too.

Not pretty, but really work well, and cheap as chips.

Expanded Styrene box, large block of ice inside, small fan in lid and a 1 inch piece of PVC water pipe as the outlet.

[F4UCorsair]

Useless in humidity, not bad in dry heat.

They rely on evaporation, and in high humidity, there is no evaporation.

Don't waste your baht.

Edited May 27, 2016 by F4UCorsair