Evap Cooling 101

I've been doing a little tinkering and jury rigging to come up with the first stage of a two stage evap cooler for the dungeon. I'm far from finished, but what I've done so far helps in here immensely as is. I'll probably add a stage II thread to this later on.

Most of you living in houses or Apartment more than likely have refrigerated air in them because it works anywhere. It can get expensive though because it uses a large compressor to pressure up freon and then meeter it through an expansion device going in to an evaporator coil inside where you live. An Evaporative cooler works about the same way with out having to use a compressor (Which draws high AMPS (Electrical current) which in turn runs the electric bill up. The evaporate cooler just blows air through a medium that is soaked with water. The water evaporates and cools the air without compression. It also operates much more cheaply because of that. Now there is a problem with this and that is if you live in a very humid area Evaporative cooling doesn't work and can also add insult to injury by adding even more humidity inside making it feel hotter than it really is. In areas where there is very little humidity an evaporative AC really shines. They can almost freeze you out even on a hot day. In the case of this one I've chosen to make it a pull through rather than forcing air through the cooling pad because I'm limited on space on the outside in case I ever want to close the dungeon doors and go out of town visiting. The way this work is by pulling air across the damp pad which works the same way and most of it will be inside rather than outside. The way I have this first part setup is that it also sucks the hot air off of the sealing and pushes it outside at the same time. (Hot air rises, cool air falls) So... the cool air being sucked through the dampened pad goes down and the hotter air goes up and is removed. On an Evaporative AC this is a must or the air just keeps getting more and more humid and the cooling effect drops off a bunch.

I've taken a cheap plastic mixing bowl and cut the bottom out of it to mount the fan where it will blow through it. I cut a hole through the upper part of the dungeon front (the part I built and without modifying the container in any way) for it to discharge through. This sucks fresh air through the blue pad (which is an evaprative cooler pad) which I dampen every so often. I used another cheap plastic mixing bowl on the outside with the side cut out of it and facing down to allow the discharged air to escape, to keep rain from coming through the hole and to keep direct wind from hampering the fan.

Next step will be to build an enclosure with a pan in the bottom to mount the evap cooling pad in and add a pump which will drip water through the top of the pad to keep it wet. Then it will run down through the pad and the water that doesn't evaporate will be cooled by the water that does. That cool water will be circulated through something like a car radiator and air will be drawn through it to further the cooling effect of the cooler.

I'll also be adding a second fan in front of the cooling pad and radiator to force more air through the system. For now this is running off of the solar battery charger only so it isn't draining any batteries or costing anything to run. At night and on cloudy days it will have to be switched to battery power. but the fans draw a very small amount of current so no big deal.

Hope I didn't loose anyone here?

UPDATE

  Had another neighbor visit today (Buddy Crawford) and he brought along a 55 gallon water barrel so my storage capacity just jumped by a bunch ! He said he has another one he will bring the next time he comes this way so that will make it even better. Buddy reads this and John's blogs, but I guess never posts. Thanks much Buddy!