@@MrT------5743 Pipes are hollow and transmit fluids. Wires are either solid or braided and transmit force or electricity. . I guess you could make a hollow wire, or use a pipe to transmit electricity, but why would you do that? It just creates extra engineering problems when you use the wrong materials for the job.
@@pseudophori6541 Absolutely! Yesterday, someone told me that the sun is "bright". When I asked for citations, he couldn't come up with a single one! That fool got a hearty laugh from me.
If that happened at a place I worked I would probably just quit because clearly the boss does not understand what they are in charge of which knowing what your subordinates are doing is helpful for leading them in the correct direction
@@thesentry5710 you do know what an archive room is, right? Humidity has to be controlled in an archive room, swap coolers ruin that balance and could damage what's stored in the room because they add water to the ambient. if I worked at an archive and my boss insisted on putting in a swap cooler instead of conditioned air, I too would quit.
I went to a trade school for this, and I’m currently in the air conditioning industry. Just wanted to congratulate you for producing the most efficient, easy to digest explanation of the refrigeration cycle I’ve seen. Your explanation of evaporative cooling is on point as well, excellent job on this video.
Did a general Plant Operator course that pulled us into the loop on the cooling cycle, pretty neat stuff, the even had a "demo board" of a deconstructed AC unit reconfigured and set up so you could see how everything was arranged and working
Right, I know both the HVAC side and the Science side but damn if this wasnt a refreshingly easy way to present this! This should be the 1st thing they show in trade school lol.
No matter how good the explanation is, I'm still struggling to understand it. Maybe that's why people like me keep falling into these scams. I mean, I know there's no free lunch. But a good promise against little money almost always seems worth it, and rarely is.
Ibra Chaka Scam is a good word for it, calling this an “air conditioner” is baloney. At it’s core, the theory behind refrigeration/air conditioning is to take the heat from an area where you don’t want it, and spit it out some place where it doesn’t matter. Swamp coolers are not capable of that whatsoever, and will only work where it’s warm and dry. They would be fantastic in Arizona due to it’s desert climate, less so in Florida because it’s so humid already. In that setting, it’s essentially a little desk fan, and will not do much for you.
@@andydelle4509 And light is a particle and a wave. And my comment was obvious sarcasm to anyone over the age of 5. Don't talk down to me pretending you're a genius.
My parents use a huge swamp cooler (around 64 cubic feet for the actual cooler mounted on the roof) to cool their house here in Colorado. It's so dry here that it does an amazing job of cooling their house. It also adds some good moisture to the air which is quite welcome in Colorado year-round.
Years ago I bought a "cooling vest" for riding on my motorcycle in the summer. You soak it in water and the gel layer inside absorbs water. As you ride you get evaporative cooling. Putting on my gear inside the airconditioned building I was getting fairly cold. Once I got out into the nice Virginia humidity. I did not feel any cooler. I DID however feel... damp. So, I experienced both the best this thing could do in a dry environment and the uselessness in a humid environment. Of course, inside the building I don't need cooling.
There are now "cooling vests" for cosplay/furries (and actual doggies) that are basically slow-release ice blocks that fit into a special vest. They use your freezer, but you might want one if you're still biking in the summers.
@@Adderkleet Those friggin' things are AWESOME!!! My brother (impressed by one he won in a contest) bought me two... and eventually himself a second. I can bundle one in the bag and strap it to the bike, and slip into the other under my riding jacket... Ride ALL DAY in triple digits, and only want (note, "want" NOT "need") to change out in the mid-afternoon or so from hitting the road around dawn... Stay out until midnight and no discomfort!!! Best of all, you can get a LARGE bag of ice at a store, pour a little in the bottom of a cooler and then bury the ice-packs from a vest (now liquid from use) in the cooler with the remaining ice... AND in a couple hours, they're ice again!!! Those bags are pretty friggin' useful thermal containers, too... keeping a vest "ready" for upwards of 10 hours while I'm riding around with it on my sissy-bar or a rack. ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 I personally think these things are the cause of our fires we are having everywhere and the west coast ridge that never goes away blocking storms from our end. Time we ban these evil machines . Note: I never used to believe in Global Warming but now do after enough time and data it's definitely real. Al Gore was right and wrong about it at the same time.
@@kylehill3643 It's a bit more complicated than blaming me and my motorcycle... I get 60 miles to a gallon of gas... Meanwhile, on the order of 15,000 gallons of gasoline are burned in around 3 or 4 hours doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING every weekend from the first break in cold weather to the first hard frost for Nascar alone... Go ahead and attack people like me who take a ride TO SOMEWHERE and enjoy THE lightest use of fuels to do it while you neglect the monsters that get 1 to 5 miles per gallon of gas or diesel and populate the roads by the god damn hundreds of thousands EVERY DAY ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT... I'm not denying my carbon footprint... I'm pointing out that while your precious Hybrids brag about 30 mpg like their owners are somehow saints, YOU are attacking a guy who gets DOUBLE THAT on a plain old simple engine going down the road... I simply use the right tool for the job... I don't have to have THE BIGGEST BADDEST motherfucker in the whole god damn lot just to make up for dick size. I get along just fine and get to go and see sights and not waste money or gas or atmospheric problems to do it... SO please, just TRY to make some god damn sense about where your crusade is going... Take on the actual problems, instead of people who avoid an idiotic waste of gas at 1 or 2 mile per gallon going in circles to end up EXACTLY where they started 500 miles ago... Yeah, me parking my bike or going electric is REALLY going to help... Right? ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 non biker people don’t get the idea of being on the road on your bike on a long trip in the interest of recreation lol. I been runnin fat camping trips on my GS for years now and getting 60+ mpg the whole time and somehow the enviro-posers don’t like that LOL We aren’t the problem. Period. Cars are literally 2000+ pounds and my bike is 400. They aren’t thinking about how being alone in the car is making them use 10x the energy to be transported the same distance as myself, and usually at lower speed. It hurts to watch stupids run the planet.
Given the evaporation cooling effect of this wondrous product in non saturated environment I think the term you are searching for good sir is "blowing tepid air!" 🤨 🤔😁😂🤣🤣😂
@@josephgaviota I'm currently on a one man crusade to bring it back! Step one, is being witnessed right here and now. It shalt reinstate its self to the normal vernacular. Prise it from the mouths of the verbose, reclaim it with me and you get to say. I was there, I was there at the start of it all!
they work better in hot and dry places. especially if you have the water evaporate outside to cool the air inside with some sort of heat exchanger thing; then you could actually cool your house with that at the expense of water consumption
When I ended up in an electric outage in a heat wave, I turned myself into a evaporating cooler via suggestion from my mom. I doused my clothes in water and as it evaporated I was cooled, it kept me from heat stroke and might be helpful for others in an emergency.
@@unggrabb yeah, that would be very difficult, I live in high humidity area but not the tropics! Would have to find some wind, shade or cold water to sit in.
past days i did this by taking a quick cold shower and sitting in my room without drying myself. i would be completely dry in 30 minutes. rinse and repeat and for the last fase dive into bed while still mostly wet. sleep like a baby.
@G Galilei So, you are saying that because they work well in arid or semi arid places, they don't work in very very arid places? That doesn't even make any sense. The performance of a swamp cooler is dependent on relative humidity. The lower the humidity the better they perform. They work best when the relive humidity is as low as it can get, like when it is less than 1%.
@@Battalionkitchen No, my comment only implies what I said, that they were used in Death Valley where the humidity is really low. Also. swamp coolers work best in low humidity. They don't work as well in high humidity. That is just a fact, it isn't an insult.
Ahhh but they also realized productivity improved as well. So while employees' comfort wasn't really the goal as back then they didn't know it would also help the employees be more comfortable - it did help their bottom line and the employees were not as susceptible to heat exhaustion thus less issues of employees not showing up and more dedication. It's easy to look at things back then by comparing to what we have now. Over half the countries on earth still don't have air quality measures in place for employees in production facilities. Every country was third world at one time
I'm comfortable, the wife and kids are being baked and steamed, job accomplished - assuming a divorce is one's goal - with massive payments to said ex-spouse and children. Rightfully so.
I've known a number of Burning Man attendees who have fabricobbled and enginerded something akin to swamp coolers for their tents... and, indeed, these are only reasonable in very arrid climates like Black Rock City or like Phoenix. It's a shame that manufacturers can't simply accept that certain innovations are good for some things but not for others, and market them accordingly.
Why am I so surprised to see Deviant here? I wonder if you're just here out of interest, or if you're looking for desk accessories which you can stick cameras inside of...
Yup, they work really well in the So. Nevada desert, where most of the time, the humidity is less than 10%, but I'd never consider one in a place like Hampton Roads, Virginia.
I grew up in the high desert where we lived with only swamp coolers in the summer for many years and we were perfectly comfortable inside. If you live in a dry environment, they can be very effective.
Just bought one here in Las Vegas and your Spot on! Not only does it cool my place it adds some humidity which I actually like since Im from San Diego. Dry weather was causing my throat to dry up and the A/C air would dry the air more.
Yeah, I was about to say I grew up in SoCal and a lot of homes had big swamp coolers. It was always nice to turn it on during those hot, dry autumn nights. Back in the day, desert settlers used to sleep in "submarines" which were just big canvas tents with some kind of water bucket on top to wet the outside. Apparently, they worked pretty well for the pre-electricity days.
Amen brother! This is the land of "electronics thermal protection shutdown" lol. Edit: as I watch the steam coming off my lawn at 11am I'm laughing thinking about adding more humidity to our air.
I live in Miami and I have found a perfect use for them. Are the other people in your house keeping the AC at 75? Are you having a bad time trying to sleep? Buy this and keep it next to your bed. As long as the AC is dehumidifying the air in the house this is effective! Do not try to use during a power outage...you will have no luck.
There's an even more absurd issue with these: Somewhere around 60% relative humidity, slight increases in air humidity lead to significantly increased apparent temperatures, due to massively lessened effectiveness of perspiration. So if you use them for long enough, these things will end up making you feel hotter, not colder.
Yeah, if you live in a humid place you experience this almost every summer: here in Milan it never goes over 35 degrees, but since it's *VERY* humid it feels much much hotter. So much so that there's literally a word in italian (afa) that means "hot and wet weather".
Basically, if you don't live in an area that averages around 35% relative humidity these things are useless. However, if you do they can be a god send. I used to live near Sacramento, CA and depending on which way the wind is blowing, these things work great. You see Sacramento there are 3 different ways the Air Blows, from the North the air temp is the hottest, not blowing at all when it feels the hottest, and from the South West, when the state's Natural and quite literal Swamp Cooler is active, known there as the Delta Breeze, as it is when the Wind blows over the Sacramento River Delta prior to reaching Sacramento. Swamp Coolers are so effective during certain times of the year in Sacramento they have gigantic ones on the tops of some buildings there, like 10ft or more tall. I had one that was a "room" cooler, and it actually cooled the house ~2200 sqft for most of the Max heat days of the summer, when humidity and temperature was at Arizona levels, in fact at that level of humidity you may actually WANT to add some water to the air to make the AC more Pleasant as it will squeeze what little water there is in the air out of it.
Fun fact: When you’re enjoying a cold drink on a warm day, condensation doesn’t only form on the outside of the glass, but also on the surface of your drink. Enjoy!
Swamp Coolers are a more efficient replacement for Air Conditioning where I grew up in Utah. The air there was so dry normally that you would need to add humidity to it in order for it to even feel normal. Plus the incredibly hard water we had actually made the cooler more efficient by constantly leaving calcium deposits on the thatch it used as an evaporation medium. As they built up, the little calcium crystals would increase the surface area being presented to the air. Eventually, after a few years it would get too clogged and we'd have to replace it with a new panel but as long as you had a trickle of water and enough power to run a barrel fan, you had something that would turn your lips blue if you stood underneath the vent for more than a minute. You put that vent in a central upstairs room and the cold air coming out naturally sinks down through each room until it pools down in the basement. That's just how nearly everyone cooled their homes off where I grew up.
I live in Utah and this was definitely my experience too :) Lots of memories laying on the top floor landing with my sister after coming in from outside and feeling that ice cold air hit us! Also lots of memories changing out those panels every few years, replacing the pump every great once in awhile, and of course draining the water and taking the cover on and off. They really are pretty simple to take care of and cheap. It's too bad they don't work well in more places
@Peeshy lie about... how cold air was? Lol I mean I am pretty pathetic, but I guess I'm not quite on that level 😂 That air seriously was so cold though. Like other parts of the house wouldn't be as cold, but I remember lying under that swamp cooler and getting goosebumps pretty quickly. I would even grab a pillow and blanket and take the most elite naps ever on that landing lol the kind where it's really cold in the room, but you're bundled up in a blanket... Man, I actually really miss that lol it's like 80° in my place right now 😑
As a desert dweller in Arizona, I love my swamp cooler that is mounted on the roof of my house. While a swamp cooler is purposeless when it's a hundred and hell degrees outside, the two months approaching summer and the two months following summer can easily be chilled with a swamp cooler at less than one-third the cost of air conditioning. It's benefits are totally based on the climate in which its being utilized.
@@andykillsu Except that the underground aquifir flows southeast from California, so Arizona not only gets it's water from the Colorado River, it comes from underground via California, Nevada and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Arizona was once a swamp, after all.
BVSchaefer Phoenix also gets water from the Salt River. Its weird Phoenix is in an actual desert but has three good sources of water. Meanwhile places like Los Angeles are constrained despite being right next to a (salty) ocean. Of course Im not sure how good some parts of the underground water table are around Phoenix thanks to Motorola and others creating a few superfund sites. Theres a reason Phoenix has that big patch of undeveloped land just east of downtown along the 202. And the area around the 101 and 202 interchange is sketchy as well.
I just realized why it's harder to get cool in a humid environment. As he said in the video, if the atmosphere can't take on any more moisture because it's too humid, then your body can't use evaporative cooling (sweating) to cool down. It makes sense now! Thank you for educating me!
That's why when people say "It's the dry heat" it really does make a HUGE difference. Just compare the heat index of 110F @ 10% humidity to 90F @ 90% humidity.
it's also why deserts get so cold during the night; there isn't enough water in the air to stay warm and humid, and the heat from the sun isn't trapped
There is this trendy temperature indicator called "feels like". Usually in tropical area where I live, humidity ranges between 70-90%, the "feels like" usually ranges between 2°C to 3°C more than the indicated.
@@kub2039 I don't know how cool those things can get but where I live, Arizona the hotter bits, it likely wouldn't be much help unless locked in a house and at that point a good fan would work better. Now if I used it in per se a car with no AC it probably wouldn't help much there when the car is in direct sunlight. Back to a house, even a cheap end fan like the one I have in my room works wonders and doesn't take up too much space. What these things might be good for is little room that you want to save space with the door closed at almost all times in a dry state or region.
Where I'm from, growing up, all we had was a swamp cooler. I didn't get AC in the house until I was 17 years old. Even in our schools it was massive swamp coolers. They were just much cheaper to buy and run vs an AC and it worked wonders because I swear that most of the time, our environment was at a negative humidity level (obviously that's not possible, but it sure felt like it).
I saw an advertisment for one of these the other day, it hurt my brain. it talked about a team of "engineers" inventing this "airconditioner". did these engineers forget their 100 level thermodynamics?
There was no engineers. It's such a painfully simple concept that all it'd take to design one of these is some 3D modelling knowledge and a 3D printer. No engineering knowledge necessary.
My grandparents had a swamp cooler. In the summer, our area has hot ( to an excess of 110 Fahrenheit peaks or more) very dry. When my grandma moved here in the 40s they would wet sheets and hang them in the open windows at night to try to cool the house. Installing a swamp cooler was life changing.
When I lived in Arizona, a friend developed a thing he called PECS. The Personal Evaporative Cooling System. Before he went for a long drive in the hot, dry Arizona air, he'd wet down a T-shirt and wear it. That was it. That was PECS. It worked for about an hour in the Arizona air (maybe not that much), but it worked.
I have done that at Disneyland too! And when I really wanted serious cooling, I would wet down a small hand towel, place it on my head, then put a hat over it. It works as a nice sun shield on the neck and sides of the face, as well as cools nicely! At any amusement park, Water Rides are your Friends! GET soaked!
This stuff works pretty good. At the bottom of the lower grand canyon the dark rocks and the hot sun keep the canyon a breezy 95F+ most of the night. The best solution is to take a five gallon bucket of that sweet 45F river water and dunk your sheet in it. This keeps the hot and dry wind from drying you out and also cools you down! Of course the sheet would dry out every two hours, hence keeping a five gallon bucket rather than just dunking the sheet in the river.
I've been an HVAC guy for almost 2 decades. You presented this in a very easily understandable way. I'll be showing inquisitive customers this vid from now on so they can get their answers while I get to work!
I bet you know all kinds of tricks. Like running water over a (overheating) broken compressor to get it temporary working in a pinch. I was impressed when I saw that on UA-cam, the customer was a dance hall with a wedding reception going on.
God gifted me a room to rent in a penthouse, but in summer it's like 1000 up here and the central air doesn't really cool room enough, I'm on the roof with a huge terrace 100 feet wide and it soaks up the heat, open window and heat comes in. I'm disabled with no help or any income beside check for rent and food, so what can I do to help? I can spend $200 my birthday is coming up soon Thanks in Advance God Bless
@@commodoresixfour7478 An overheated compressor isn't "broken." They are built with an overload between 2 of the windings and it opens when it gets too hot. Something else is wrong within the system if the compressor is overheating. I've been an HVAC tech for a really long time and now work in the oilfield doing HVAC.
I live in southwest Colorado and the humidity here goes from about 5% to max 50% on a rainy day. So during the summer the swamp cooler only adds a minimal amount of humidity to the air and the cooling performance can be phenomenal.
One of my favorite instances of someone using one of these: working in a hot, humid basement that the building's A/C had somehow forgotten. This person bought a large version of one of these swamp coolers and had it running all the time.
Dude, about the highest praise I could offer you is that you would be an astoundingly good high school science teacher. And I'm *_incredibly_* glad you are NOT one (at least as a sole occupation). You're doing waaaay more good for the world doing videos like this one!
I'm an adult with Aspergers, and a lot of informative things go over my head, or I have to struggle to pay attention. The way you describe things is absolutely perfect, I genuinely feel like I'm learning things! Keep it up man, this is incredibly educational, and you're a fantastic teacher!
Indeed they are. Ancient civilizations in the middle east used to build towers that functioned the same way. They were meant for travelers and rulers who desired cooling areas.
@@cleonituk Because as demonstrated in the video they are dirt cheap to make. Consequently only a few suckers need to buy them to turn a profit, even if the rest of the stock sits unsold!
@@cleonituk stores in humid environments only carry these "air conditioners" because the margins on them are high since they're usually overpriced. You would be surprised at the number of dumb people who see a real window A/C unit for $150+ in a store and think they're getting a deal with one of these personal "air conditioners" for $40-80. Those are the people the stores that do carry them are counting on! Most of the marketing for units like in this video is being done via the internet in ads on social media, in-game ads on mobile games and various websites, especially news websites. Again counting on people thinking they're getting some sort of deal cause it costs less than a real A/C unit but it's not super cheap so it must have something substantial inside right? LOL
@@Choralone422 I wish I had ever seen an actual AC that cheap. Around here (granted not US currency, but it's the relationship that counts) An evaporative cooler will go from about $40 to $150 depending on size and construction. The cheapest air conditioner I have ever seen for sale is $550, which is more nearly 14 times the price of the cheapest units, and still more than 3 times the price of the most expensive. Then again the whole category of window mounted AC largely doesn't exist in this country (it used to, but I haven't seen one on a building or for sale anywhere in about 20+ years) So you go straight from the somewhat questionable portable AC in the $550 to $1000 range, to split systems which start at about $1500 (not including installation costs), and can easily get into the $5000+ range, if not substantially more... So, yeah. AC is not that affordable around here. Especially if you're in rental accomodation, because the rights of landlords to restrict what tenants do to a property are very extreme, and make it hard to do anything at all if you're renting...
It's more effective to buy a spray bottle with a misting setting, mist yourself and sit in front of a fan. That's how I got through a hot summer where I worked at a farm stand selling corn.
@@pauls5745 Wish there were cheaper (and smaller) AC units on the market. Something the size of the evaporative cooler in this video, but with a compressor and a tube with another tube inside for separating the in-airflow from the out-airflow.
Me and my mom use the same method while on the beach and it's really warm. We just use a spray bottle with regular water and let the water evaporation cool us off.
I've done this too - you have to replenish the mist often, but it's effective. I wonder, is it moreso if you use salty water? Sweat is conspicuously salty, after all.
swamp coolers can indeed be very useful. a partner of mine used one *JUST* for the humidification purposes. it was a self built one out of random bits, but it did it's job.
I lived in the high desert of Wyoming for 11 years, using a swamp cooler. It’s amazing how cold it can be and how well it works. Can cool a home with a 3/4 hp fan motor, and a small water pump. It also puts moisture into the incredibly dry air of a desert. They don’t work well in a humid environment.
The only problem is: swamp coolers use up water. And water is scarce in the desert, so then has to be pumped in from elsewhere, so the cumulative effect on the environment is greater. I'm just glad I live in the UK. No AC needed, few fans occasionally at height of summer (some years).
G13....,you are in the right place....,it must help a lot to get some moisture in the air & if you can get solar panels to provide the power you would have cut out another cost.
@@ukeleleEric True, the accumulative effect on a LIMITED reservoir of water (sending the water out into the environment rather than to be used by drinking) could be a consideration (3-15 gallons/hour depending on how much cooling you need). But too, you can always look at the glass half full by realizing that a swamp cooler costs 15 cents a Kilowatthour (KWh) of electricity, where as an AC Unit would be costing about $1.20 a KWh for the same cooling. Therefore (for instance and assuming the electricity is made from a 'coal-fired' electricity power plant), all the coal that is burned to create that extra electricity needed (in the case of electricity powering AC systems) creates that much more CO2 to put into the atmosphere (greenhouse gas), to contribute to global warming. To suggest that a swamp cooler is less environmentally friendly than an AC System is very debatable.
I'm in my third year of Mechanical Engineering and I'm studying Refrigeration and Air Conditioning systems, and you JUST explained to me the difference between wet and dry bulb temperatures!! IT FINALLY CLICKED IN MY HEAD!! God bless you, brother!!
As soon as I saw those "This kid beat the cooling companies!" ads I groaned, I didn't realize the craze around these was part of the same schtick. Thanks for doing a video to highlight the near-uselessness of them.
These ads remind me of ads used to promote "nExT lEvEl sMoRtPhOnE", as saw in this video about scams, that was created by mrwhosetheboss. Whoever is behind this company is still scamming ua-cam.com/video/hq_5opT-MR4/v-deo.html
I've been on yet another Technology Connections binge lately, and I really must say, Thank you for the many years of content you've provided. I can only imagine the level of effort that goes into each of these videos, but you can feel the labor of love coming across in each video. One of the genuine UA-cam gems of information and entertainment delicately blended together.
I noticed this too and was looking to see if there were any comments related to it. I wasn't expecting Taran to be the one to do it! P.S. Please make another 4 hour video editing tutorial.
(for context, I'm Chilean) I got one of those some years ago, and while it kiiiind of worked, the effect was barely noticeable due to humidity being around 40, 50% in central Chile, but a friend's relatives that live in northern Chile near the Atacama desert claim these work amazingly well. We didn't know why at the time, now we do!
I got given one of these during the 2019 heatwave and gave it a shot. I live in the UK in an English seaside town where the humidity is regularly over 80%. In 2019 it was 35c, around 87% humidity, and one of these boxes was just blowing more moisture into the air. It's been collecting dust ever since.
The big thing is that advertising has gone off the rails. Social media sites absolutely do not care if you're using copyrighted materials without permission, if you have completely misleading or false statements, or even if you're using strong language, sexual themes, or violence. Of course they'll beat up the content creators over tiny issues, but the advertisers are okay to do whatever.
We simply call these "coolers" back home, and they're a great cheap alternative to air conditioners. Also, since it's the Sonoran desert, people usually appreciate the humidified cool air.
They work best in dry climates. He seems to be splitting hairs to say it's not an Air Conditioner. It does change the air, one is just refrigerated and uses a lot more power. Which is why it's often referred to a a "refrigerated" air conditioner.
@@Cheepchipsable He's not splitting hairs, that's what the term "air conditioner" means: a powered and refrigerated unit. An "evaporative cooler" is different, that's why it has a different name. I'm sure in some part of the world a dirty paper bag counts as a "bandage" but in any part of the developed world it would not.
"Outsourced Sweating", I love it! I'm going to have to use that now. I work on commercial AC for a living, and on occasion I will describe the operation for someone. This will be a fun little phrase to add to my stories.
@@jdlawless_fuel1416 I live in New York City where summer is extremely humid - these things don't work here and that's the point. They only work in certain environments which is what he explained at the 59 second mark very well. Humid areas like NYC during the summer - this thing is a waste of money. In very dry and hot areas where humidified cool air is not a problem, these things are pretty good. The effectiveness greatly depends on where you live.
i just want to thank you for making this vid and your other air conditioner vid. i recently moved into a room on the second story of a townhouse and have been absolutely miserably hot. i was researching these swamp coolers, but since i live in hella humid southwest mo i figured they wouldn't work, and your video confirmed it for me. i was then thinking an air conditioner, but a window unit in a second story apartment had me worried, so i was looking into a floor unit. your other video convinced me out of that (that and the cost). i installed a window unit at the beginning of the week, feeling better about it thanks to your vids, and have been living way more comfortably since. thank you for what you do!
"This is the third time I've made a video explaining the refrigeration cycle without making a video about. It really is a remarkable achievement of humanity" At first I thought the "remarkable achievement" referred to explaining the refrigeration cycle three times, and I was like "what's humanity got to do with it?"
@@telciris the ones we have india come with replaceable evaporation pads (made out of wood shavings). It takes about a whole season of operation for them to develop that mushy smell, since water is continuously drain through them. So, one can install new pads in them at the start of each season
Oooooo, my time to shine :) After spending thousands to get rid of some black mold that was terrifying my wife, I found out that like so many other conditions, it's not as bad as we fear. TLDR, if you have a specific allergy, it can be bad, but it's nothing to jump to crazy conclusions and fear. www.cdc.gov/mold/faqs.htm
@@telciris For a little unit like this, take the filter out when you're not running it and allow the filter to dry. Periodically clean the inside of the machine. Most importantly (toward the last reply), swamp coolers run best with ventilation. An AC required you close up the house to keep the cool in, but for swampers, you should have a window or door open to pull the air throughout the house. (This incidently dries and you don't get black mold unless you close up the house. Think windowless bathroom and hot showers). A problem not stated, is try to use soft water as hard water will leave calcium deposits pretty rapidly. This is all advice for drier climates, as TC is correct they don't really work in humid climates.
This is hands-down the best video I've ever seen explaining how an air conditioner works. Great job and good visuals. I study refrigeration in school and work on them daily at work on vehicles. I understand how they work and operate but you did an amazing job with the thermal visualizations and walking threw it all. I also really like the computer duster can as a great simple explanation of what a refrigerant is.
Yeah here in St. Louis we are surrounded by the Mississippi river and the Missouri river with all the concrete and asphalt we get similar weather to you guys. 80%+ humidity all summer and tend to be around 88-100f and get those wonderful flash thunderstorms out of nowhere
I lived in Cleveland all of my life so I'm used to 80-90% humidity. It feels weird being in Denver because I can actually feel cool from sweat. I thought I was having chills and actually took a covid test. Nope all these years I was just used to being covered in sweat and not actually feeling cooler.
As an Air Conditioning Graduate and HVAC Universal COR Certificate holder, I have to give you a 5 STAR review. Sir, You are on point on every issue and You've transported me back to the New York City REFA Ticket Fire Department Practical test. Thank you for making Air Conditioning Technology so simple and accurate to understand. I’m enjoying each of your videos and with your precise teachings - my FLORIDA Operations is solidifying their overall understanding as helpers. Keep up the great work and look forward to supporting your channel. 🙏🏽❤️✝️
THANK YOU once again for this entertaining and informative stuff. Love your humor and style! Fun fact: Our local library installed an evaporative cooling system ( a.k.a. "swamp" cooler) 24 years ago. But they didn't have the staff to clean or replace filters. All the librarians and technical staff frequently got sick. For a while they thought is was Legionnaire's disease. Then they noticed MOLD on some precious old books in the basement. It took a while to figure it out, because ours is the dumbest city on Earth. A philanthropist donated enough money to the library so they could hire a competent architect who IMMEDIATELY diagnosed the problem. The funny thing is, the "swamp" cooler was supposed to be "earth friendly" and "green" as part of the library's commitment to environmental concerns. As it turned out, they STILL used air-conditioning during the hottest summer months, ...so no savings there. And of course, this fancy evaporative cooler was improperly installed by our local dumbasses who don't understand such contrivances and never read... not even manuals. The damn thing LEAKED heat energy during the winter, driving their winter energy bills to nearly DOUBLE. Bottom line? They had to completely remodel the library AGAIN, remove "swamp thing," pay for expensive conservation of rare old books, AND paid a LOT of sick leave. Moral? ...Pick one. There are PLENTY of lessons to be learned there.
"Price: $41.99 (or something like that)" Geez, by the time you buy two (or certainly three) of those you could probably have bought an ACTUAL window air conditioner and been much more comfortable.
Yeah it isn't just price though, many apartment buildings don't allow tenants to have window AC units, for example my apartment only allows "through the wall" AC units, and those fuckers are all over 400-500 bucks a piece.
@@Roland597 why would you feel environmentally smug for buying this? What's the connection there? Or are you just taking any chance to shit on environmentalist?
@@rdizzy1 have you checked the price of a window unit lately? For one with a decent amount of BTU's say 15,000 are around $500.00 bucks a pop they ain't cheap either anything under that your waisting your money and not really cooling like you would want .
Here in Arizona, where it's usually dry, it works fine. My only form of cooling at my home is swamp cooling. It works great from April through June, as long as I keep a window or two cracked. As soon as monsoon season hits, it suuuuhhcks at cooling since the humidity keeps it from working as well. But the little swamp coolers are nice to have around on dry hot days for a cool breeze, and they're pretty cheap now. Also The paper filters are better than the sponge ones.
I remember one time when visiting my family in Texas we ate outside and they had a giant swamp cooler to comfort the customers. I was amazed at how cool things felt and how "an industrial fan" managed to make things so cool, and why we didn't use them at my school (which would go 90+ degrees in the last few months of the year). That's when my dad explained how swamp coolers worked, and that they would be completely useless in our home state where the humidity is regularly 100%.
Yeah, they sounds like a nightmare for the humid summer weather we get here too but I can imagine them having some benefit in arid climates (as long as water supply isn't an issue... which it kind of is in arid environments).
Yeah, I grew up in New Mexico where single digit humidity wasn't too rare. Moved to the midwest where "the sweat, it does nothing, NOTHING!" I was used to, you know, built in evaporative cooling.
I got one of these für ~15€ and since I don't have any air copnditioning, this thing provides a very comfortable stream of cool(ish) air compared to a simple fan, while not consuming a lot of power. I think that's what these are designed for and yes, you definitely feel the difference when the water tank goes empty eventually. Still it won't cool down a room, that should be imperative by design. So for everyone who didn't realize that from the beginning, this video will make it perfectly clear! 🙂
Thank you for explaining this! When I saw this for the first time on Instagram the ad claimed the so-called inventor "tore apart his old beater car A/C" to learn how it worked. I asked myself "He tore apart his car's A/C so he could learn how to make a swamp cooler?" Now I can point anyone to this video to explain how this works. I used to be an HVAC tech, but you're so good at explaining how all this works.
I remember someone who lived in Arizona describing a swamp cooler to me, and thought it was weird I'd never heard of one up until then. I live in the south. Those things wouldn't do much more than grow mold.
Thanks for exposing this scam. As soon as I started seeing the ads for these things, I became annoyed and I've been waiting impatiently for someone to rip into them.
I agree with the one person, I’m adult adhd and haven’t sat down and watched TV in like 10 years because I just can’t focus on anything more than about 4 or 5 min MAX as far as videos or television. I watched this entire video and actually heard everything he said and registered it! You sir have a gift for teaching!
"Some people claim that this practice reduces the life of the condenser through promotion of corrosion.... But those are just some people who didn't engineer the thing." BEST RETORT EVER! .🤣👍
My guess (also not an engineer) might be concerns that the condensate will not be purely distilled water, but distilled water from the humidity in the air *plus* whatever pollutants might be in the air that might come along for the ride and change the pH of the water. Possibly enough to be corrosive over time. Mind you, I’m mostly speculating as to the source/ rationale for the concerns of concerned. I am old enough to remember hearing talk of “acid rain”, but not quite old enough to remember what exactly it was (if it was different than what I described above). The validity of this concern would also likely vary by location, presumably greater in large metropolitan areas (especially in countries with low environmental standards), and lesser in rural areas far from any industrialization.
Well, corrosion is a thing, too. And yes, it will degrade the process to some minor extent, but it's hardly enough to make a difference. Yes, the condensate "water" will be some nasty stuff, because the air it came out of was rather nasty, and it ran off nasty, dusty, dirty, corroding mystery-metal (and copper.) (note: the condensate lines from our data center chillers are silicone, and copper. and despite the relative quality of the air, that water is not clean either.)
It also serves to evaporate the condensate water. That's very useful if you use them in a inside office space like I do. No water dumping on the floor outside.
Its also that they use a material that is more corrosion resistant (chromium, manganese ect mixed) because it will be exposed to more than a light condensation. The same amount of water exposure may shorted the life of units not built to have water sitting inside it as part of its design, as it would use slightly cheaper composite metals (other than the aluminum fins, which weigh+cost less than copper fins with not much less heat transfer & more corrosion resistance) These reasons are better explained in next years video he makes, the magic of metallurgy, & not including it here was to make this a better video (reasons why he so good!)
I'm so glad I already went to automotive school and learned everything I needed to learn about how A/C and many other everyday components work so I know how to call bullshit on random products that pop up over time.
same. im a refrigeration technician so seeing some "scam" (i know its not really a scam but just a way of cooling that is unsuitable in most circumstances) like this is just cringe for me
I agree. My dad was a/c and electrical. He both taught it and was a tradesman before becoming a teacher. Just growing up in the business has proven well worth learning everything he taught me. Makes it SO easy to call B/S.
My 100% a technical neighbour bought a small ceramic heater last year and was surprised it couldnt heat the room instead of the central heating installation🤦♂️ It seem the more expensive the bullshit is how better it gets sold 🥴
As a person that has at least some knowledge in at least one field of something, I am also able to call bullshit on random products that pop up over time.
My wife bought me one of these for working from home in Johannnesburg, South Africa, and given we're 700kms above sea level, with very dry air, and also air conditioners are a rarity in even middle class homes, it's a pretty good deal in summer.
"The cold gas SUCKS energy from its surroundings" *Sound of angry physicists banging on the door* "The compressor pump creates a sucking force" *BANGING INTENSIFIES*
@@BrianRRenfro Also, isn't that literally what suction is though? Or am I dumb. I don't see the problem with saying it sucks in air, because it's another way of saying the low pressure compels higher pressure gas in through a narrow opening to achieve equilibrium.
@@robynharris7179 Time changes according to gravity, so light must also. Kind of like sitting still in a moving car, means that you are actually traveling quite fast, even though you are sitting still.
I keep seeing these UA-cam video ads pushing this sort of cooler. Said it was invented by a high school student, and was punished by the school by expelling him. He took the idea to market and was offered millions by big A/C companies but he refused. What a hero, made me want to get one
Omg I thought water was an element not a substance Damn NASA and all their conspiracy friends Fortunately Technology Connections opened our eyes to the truth
mechanical engineer. here are some industry names for devices that can cool an entire room * AHU - air handling unit * FCU - fan coil unit * CRAC - computer room air conditioner * RTU - roof top unit i feal that "super PAC" would be best for a room that is intended for only a single person, or else it wouldn't be "persona'" :P
This entire video misses the point though. Swampies are not designed to be used in air conditioned Chicago apartments. They are designed for use in the desert. Deserts have EXTREMELY dry air. Even if an air conditioned room, Chicago's air is just too wet. Run this thing at night with ice water in the desert, say Las Vegas or Phoenix and it will drop the temperature by 20 degrees or more. They also make these in window units so it is constantly bringing in outside air that is 10% humidity.
As someone who lives in a hot/dry environment, these are a godsend(we use way bigger units with water pumps), would love to see those covered if you haven't already, instead of those wet wipes thingies hay is used and water is pumped to the hay to keep it constantly wet, the hay needs to be replaced every season/year tho, they use way less electricity
It's usually aspen excelsior, not hay, as the wood lasts a lot longer. I put the stuff that looks like filter pads in a few years, but honestly, nothing works as well as the aspen.
My parents bought me one cuz I needed a fan.. that thing made my room hotter it was a waste of 30 dollars and we returned it and got my self a normal fan
I'm one of the poor schmucks that live in an area where swamp coolers are generally the only coolers around. Desert, low humidity areas. The big ones that go on top of the houses work really well to a point. The few times we do get rain, they just stop working. They can blow air all day but the evaporation is dialed way back so now you just have a fan blowing 90 degree humid air into the house. Most of the time they are great and next to a normal AC it uses damn near no electricity since it's just a fan and a dinky little pump. So yeah, a little desktop one like that would work but it's too small to cool a room. Might be nice on your face. But unless you live in an area that has lower then 35ish% humidity they really won't do anything. Just have a fan.
Jesus Christ, I wouldn't be able to live in an area below 35% humidity all the year. Here were I live usually is mostly June to August and is not all days, but it is already terrible, my noise goes to a terrifying journey
I lived with my grandparents when I was in the fifth grade, and in our room they had a swamp cooler window unit. It was pretty sweet where we typically saw temps in the 95-100 range during summer, though I'm unsure how much humidity they regularly got over there. I can't recall how they conditioned the other rooms, but I think they had a regular a/c in the living room, and probably another swamp cooler in the adults bedroom. One sort of odd thing, is they used to take those miniature coke bottles (the bottles were made of wax) and throw a bunch of those in the swamp cooler water. We could just reach in there and down a small shot of coke anytime we wanted, as it made the drink cooler. They had a fridge, so I'm not exactly sure why they did that.
@@LucasRodmo Inside places that use the whole house evap cooler the humidity stays pretty high (65% is my house average in summer). When they stop cooling as @MultiMikin describes the house humidity can get insane though (75%+) which adds to the misery. In the winter I just use a whole house humidifier which uses the same wick cooling principles as the evap cooler.
It would of happened by now but it's really expensive to run my evil ocean boiling ray. I'm hoping that the government grants I applied for come through so I can turn them back on.
@@JoelGetzhasauselessurl Ah just shoot a powerful enough laser at the sun. It's made of highly reactive hydrogen so setting it ablaze will make it blast in an explosion similar to a super nova.
Actually, you can break second law of Thermodynamics! You see Joule screwed up, according him the energy released as heat from compression is about equal to the energy put in to compress the gas, but he ignores the fact that the gas cam be re-expanded and this can power about 80% of the energy needed to run the compressor in the first place. If you cool the compressed gas to ambient it still has most of the energy that you invested in compressing it remaining (it loses about 2%. If the compressed gas is allowed to come to ambient temperature, you can then decompress it and make it super cold, so now you can extract about 70% at best of the energy from the thermal imbalance created. The device can output usable mechanical/electrical energy and provide cooling. The second law of Thermodynamics doesn't work where pressure changes occur because most of the energy invested into compressing a gas is regained on decompression, but current technology (heat pumps, aircon, freezer) doesn't try and gain energy from decompression, they throw that energy away.
These are used in greenhouses all the time, just supersized. And yes, that includes the midwest where I live (Missouri). They work well enough to keep excessive heat down, require very little power consumption, and there are two benefits to plants: 1. Many plants prefer high humidity, especially tropical annual; 2. Higher humidity reduces water loss from pots, mostly by reducing transpiration (evaporation from leaf pores), making it so plants can go longer between waterings. This is reduces work, and also reduces water consumption.
in my dry south african home, we had a massive version of one of these to cool off the house. it worked really well, as we sometimes had 45 degrees celsius (113 fahrenheit for the american pals). That is, until... it got humid at all! Then it was, as you indicated, utterly useless. I remember my father cleaning the insides of algae and stuff, curious about how it worked. Now I know. Thank you!!!
GREAT video! Love the channel... well written and well delivered! I live in Las Vegas and have a 5,200 foot custom home here. I use evaporation cooling almost all summer! If the humidity is below 15% it works AWESOME! Example: Yesterday it was 115 degrees outside and my "swamp" cooler kept the inside of my house at 74 degrees! Once the temp went down to 105 the inside of my house went down to 68 and "click" the evap cooling system snaps off. The humidity was at 2% outside and lower so it worked GREAT! My power bill, using A/C, was around $600/month and now it's below $100/month ... but I use about $50/month of water more so, basically, I'm saving $450/month over the course of 4 months a year. that's close to $2,000/year I'm saving with a more comfortable environment! Also, it puts the humidity at about 22% inside my home (you have to leave a window or two open, you know) which is awesome, as no humidity Vegas dries your skin, hair, eyes and nose and gives you nose bleeds and rock-buggers. I LOVE evap cooling! BUT! If the clouds roll in and the humidity goes up over 15% I turn off the evap, close the windows and crank up the AC because if I don't, as you said, the temp goes up and the humidity inside the house goes up past 50% --- which is to us here in Vegas, miserable ... yet NOTHING compared to what you all in the midwest and florida and texas have! Also, yeah, that stupid thing you bought - the mini-evap-cooler - is a rip off and I would call it a scam since it's being marketed as an "air conditioner". Evap coolers are only useful in 1) very low humidity places, like here in Vegas, and 2) when super dry air is being released as fast as it's being sucked. Trapped evap-cooling air is icky but if you release it it's awesome! Feels like Hawaii in the spring! A/C here in the desert puts the humidity at 0% and no humidity in the air is awful and makes your skin look and feel like your dad's old wallet ... and the rock-buggers and nose bleeds are just ... :(
One thing to add is that humidity itself has a huge effect on how hot a room *feels*. A room with higher humidity will always feel warmer than a room at the same temperature with lower humidity. This is because with higher humidity, the human body's cooling (sweating) is less effective. Humidity is a measure of how close to 'capacity' the air is in terms of the amount of water it can hold. In a room that is at 100% humidity, water will simply not evaporate as the air cannot hold any more. The higher the temperature, the greater the amount of water that can be in the air is and by the same principles, the lower the humidity (the 'dryer' the air), the easier it is for water to evaporate into it. This is why hot summer nights often feel just as bad, if not worse, than in the day. Swamp heaters lower the air temperature that comes out of them due to evaporation taking energy from the air, as described in the video. However, that air now not only has a higher humidity because of the added water, it also has a higher humidity because it is at a lower temperature. Double dipping on humidity so to speak. This is likely why although these things technically cool the air by a few degrees, the air itself likely feels just as warm to us because our sweat is evaporating worse than in the room around it.
To what extent does sweating play a role when there isn't water actually beading on the skin? Is there a microscopic layer of water constantly on my skin that I can't feel? Or is there a significant body of water directly moving from the cells in my skin to the air?
Goes both way. If it's humid during a cold winter day in Canada, you feel it more because the humidity transfert your heat to the air more effectively.
If I may... a cold but humid room will feel colder. Basically, air with more thermal responsivity will be colder or warmer depending on it's temperature relative to our comfort level.
"Swamp cooler" is mostly a western US thing (desert). In the East and Southeast in particular, evaporative coolers don't work at all. We use "ar condishunen". Swamp coolers don't work in the swamp
Google cools their data center in South Carolina with evap coolers, but they only need to cool to 80 degrees. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
4 роки тому+4
@Wesley Mays You have no idea what you're talking about. Which coolant? What temperature on which side of the loop? What pressure on each side? The thing is that a vapor-compression refrigeration system is NOT a Carnot cycle engine. What helps is the hot side to be in the coldest environment possible and the cold side to be already near the temperature of the hot side. COPcooling = Tcold/(Thot - Tcold) If you don't know what you're talking about, say nothing; don't guess!
It's actually used in India in months of Loo in northern India. Loo is strong dry wind that blows during May June, it's so hot and dry that people have died on spot from heatstrokes.
I bought a swamp cooler and it's awful. My swamp is still as hot and humid as ever.
Shrek?
@@DestDroid you aint the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?
@@kevin42 Lookin kinda dumb 🤣
All that glitters is gold
@@MandrakeFernflower Only shooting stars break the mold.
Pro tip: put a swamp cooler and an air conditioner at opposite ends of your home to wirelessly transmit water.
You can also use pipes to wirelessly transmit water. Why would you use wires to transmit water?
@@angolin9352 A pipe is a cylindrical wire.
@@MrT------5743 Pipes are hollow and transmit fluids. Wires are either solid or braided and transmit force or electricity.
.
I guess you could make a hollow wire, or use a pipe to transmit electricity, but why would you do that? It just creates extra engineering problems when you use the wrong materials for the job.
I think you mean pipelessly. not wirelessly.
@@angolin9352 I was thinking of something like a Wave-guide to send microwave energy.
"water is, believe it or not, a substance"
I choose to not believe such preposterous declarations
yeah, i hate it when people make big claims like this without citing their sources
Thank you, Sir. Don't fall pray to THIER logic.
Im very glad to see fellow academic here
@@pseudophori6541 Absolutely! Yesterday, someone told me that the sun is "bright". When I asked for citations, he couldn't come up with a single one! That fool got a hearty laugh from me.
don't fall into the web of lies created by big-academia
My boss wanted to use one of these as cooling for their archive room. I had to explain to her multiples times how HORRIBLE of an idea that was.
oh no
If that happened at a place I worked I would probably just quit because clearly the boss does not understand what they are in charge of which knowing what your subordinates are doing is helpful for leading them in the correct direction
@@the_undead you would quit if your boss didn't know how "personal air conditioners" worked? Okay man.
@@thesentry5710 you do know what an archive room is, right? Humidity has to be controlled in an archive room, swap coolers ruin that balance and could damage what's stored in the room because they add water to the ambient. if I worked at an archive and my boss insisted on putting in a swap cooler instead of conditioned air, I too would quit.
Did they want their archives to be usable? ;)
"Water is, believe it or not, a substance."
[citation needed]
Bill Nye?
sooooooooo... basically all humans have substance abuse issues? :O
Water is a substance.
You heard it here first, y'all!
@@celecitaxerror9553 Humans are ugly bags of mostly water.
nitehawk86 The one pickup line that every woman wants to hear
I went to a trade school for this, and I’m currently in the air conditioning industry. Just wanted to congratulate you for producing the most efficient, easy to digest explanation of the refrigeration cycle I’ve seen. Your explanation of evaporative cooling is on point as well, excellent job on this video.
Did a general Plant Operator course that pulled us into the loop on the cooling cycle, pretty neat stuff, the even had a "demo board" of a deconstructed AC unit reconfigured and set up so you could see how everything was arranged and working
Right, I know both the HVAC side and the Science side but damn if this wasnt a refreshingly easy way to present this! This should be the 1st thing they show in trade school lol.
Same same, i agree, he did a great job
No matter how good the explanation is, I'm still struggling to understand it.
Maybe that's why people like me keep falling into these scams. I mean, I know there's no free lunch. But a good promise against little money almost always seems worth it, and rarely is.
Ibra Chaka Scam is a good word for it, calling this an “air conditioner” is baloney. At it’s core, the theory behind refrigeration/air conditioning is to take the heat from an area where you don’t want it, and spit it out some place where it doesn’t matter. Swamp coolers are not capable of that whatsoever, and will only work where it’s warm and dry. They would be fantastic in Arizona due to it’s desert climate, less so in Florida because it’s so humid already. In that setting, it’s essentially a little desk fan, and will not do much for you.
"Water is a substance."
You do learn something new every day.
I'd need to see substantial evidence of this.
@@adm0iii Someone will come along and allege that it's unsubstantiated.
@@economicist2011 But it *is* unsubstantiated
And air is a fluid - learned when you study any field of engineering.
@@andydelle4509 And light is a particle and a wave. And my comment was obvious sarcasm to anyone over the age of 5. Don't talk down to me pretending you're a genius.
My parents use a huge swamp cooler (around 64 cubic feet for the actual cooler mounted on the roof) to cool their house here in Colorado. It's so dry here that it does an amazing job of cooling their house. It also adds some good moisture to the air which is quite welcome in Colorado year-round.
Unless your parents have a very large commercial unit then residential units are at the biggest half that size.
Years ago I bought a "cooling vest" for riding on my motorcycle in the summer. You soak it in water and the gel layer inside absorbs water. As you ride you get evaporative cooling. Putting on my gear inside the airconditioned building I was getting fairly cold. Once I got out into the nice Virginia humidity. I did not feel any cooler. I DID however feel... damp.
So, I experienced both the best this thing could do in a dry environment and the uselessness in a humid environment. Of course, inside the building I don't need cooling.
There are now "cooling vests" for cosplay/furries (and actual doggies) that are basically slow-release ice blocks that fit into a special vest. They use your freezer, but you might want one if you're still biking in the summers.
@@Adderkleet Those friggin' things are AWESOME!!! My brother (impressed by one he won in a contest) bought me two... and eventually himself a second.
I can bundle one in the bag and strap it to the bike, and slip into the other under my riding jacket... Ride ALL DAY in triple digits, and only want (note, "want" NOT "need") to change out in the mid-afternoon or so from hitting the road around dawn... Stay out until midnight and no discomfort!!!
Best of all, you can get a LARGE bag of ice at a store, pour a little in the bottom of a cooler and then bury the ice-packs from a vest (now liquid from use) in the cooler with the remaining ice... AND in a couple hours, they're ice again!!!
Those bags are pretty friggin' useful thermal containers, too... keeping a vest "ready" for upwards of 10 hours while I'm riding around with it on my sissy-bar or a rack. ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 I personally think these things are the cause of our fires we are having everywhere and the west coast ridge that never goes away blocking storms from our end. Time we ban these evil machines . Note: I never used to believe in Global Warming but now do after enough time and data it's definitely real. Al Gore was right and wrong about it at the same time.
@@kylehill3643 It's a bit more complicated than blaming me and my motorcycle... I get 60 miles to a gallon of gas... Meanwhile, on the order of 15,000 gallons of gasoline are burned in around 3 or 4 hours doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING every weekend from the first break in cold weather to the first hard frost for Nascar alone...
Go ahead and attack people like me who take a ride TO SOMEWHERE and enjoy THE lightest use of fuels to do it while you neglect the monsters that get 1 to 5 miles per gallon of gas or diesel and populate the roads by the god damn hundreds of thousands EVERY DAY ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT...
I'm not denying my carbon footprint... I'm pointing out that while your precious Hybrids brag about 30 mpg like their owners are somehow saints, YOU are attacking a guy who gets DOUBLE THAT on a plain old simple engine going down the road... I simply use the right tool for the job...
I don't have to have THE BIGGEST BADDEST motherfucker in the whole god damn lot just to make up for dick size. I get along just fine and get to go and see sights and not waste money or gas or atmospheric problems to do it... SO please, just TRY to make some god damn sense about where your crusade is going... Take on the actual problems, instead of people who avoid an idiotic waste of gas at 1 or 2 mile per gallon going in circles to end up EXACTLY where they started 500 miles ago...
Yeah, me parking my bike or going electric is REALLY going to help... Right? ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 non biker people don’t get the idea of being on the road on your bike on a long trip in the interest of recreation lol. I been runnin fat camping trips on my GS for years now and getting 60+ mpg the whole time and somehow the enviro-posers don’t like that LOL
We aren’t the problem. Period. Cars are literally 2000+ pounds and my bike is 400. They aren’t thinking about how being alone in the car is making them use 10x the energy to be transported the same distance as myself, and usually at lower speed. It hurts to watch stupids run the planet.
Executive summary: The marketers are blowing hot air, even if the device isn’t.
Clever turn of phrase ;-)
Given the evaporation cooling effect of this wondrous product in non saturated environment I think the term you are searching for good sir is "blowing tepid air!" 🤨
🤔😁😂🤣🤣😂
Oh, you clever commenter.
@@imaner76 "tepid" ... now _there's_ a word that's not used often enough.
@@josephgaviota I'm currently on a one man crusade to bring it back! Step one, is being witnessed right here and now. It shalt reinstate its self to the normal vernacular. Prise it from the mouths of the verbose, reclaim it with me and you get to say. I was there, I was there at the start of it all!
I always thought "swamp coolers" were called that because they make it so humid you feel like you're in a swamp, as my A/C-free childhood will attest
As someone who doesn't speak English natively, this was my assumption too!
Oh yeah, especially when it's so hot outside that they are out of their efficiency range 😂
@@simplybeanjelly its not the heat. It's the humidity.
True. They tend to do that as well as smell bad after a while, unless you can replace the sponge/wick material and clean the device often.
they work better in hot and dry places. especially if you have the water evaporate outside to cool the air inside with some sort of heat exchanger thing; then you could actually cool your house with that at the expense of water consumption
When I ended up in an electric outage in a heat wave, I turned myself into a evaporating cooler via suggestion from my mom. I doused my clothes in water and as it evaporated I was cooled, it kept me from heat stroke and might be helpful for others in an emergency.
Works well if ambient humidity is low. In tropics with very high hum, useless
Working Wind Turbines, summer 2008, I had to keep cool in Texas. Dousing a hard hat full of water over kept me "cool" for several hours.
I once went for a swim in the sea. It was doing a similar trick until I saw the sharks and overheated some more on making a fast exit.
@@unggrabb yeah, that would be very difficult, I live in high humidity area but not the tropics! Would have to find some wind, shade or cold water to sit in.
past days i did this by taking a quick cold shower and sitting in my room without drying myself. i would be completely dry in 30 minutes. rinse and repeat and for the last fase dive into bed while still mostly wet. sleep like a baby.
When I was in Death Valley, they used swamp coolers. They worked really well when the outside humidity was less than 1%
@G Galilei So, you are saying that because they work well in arid or semi arid places, they don't work in very very arid places?
That doesn't even make any sense.
The performance of a swamp cooler is dependent on relative humidity. The lower the humidity the better they perform.
They work best when the relive humidity is as low as it can get, like when it is less than 1%.
@G Galilei Then why did you call it pure bullshit?
Your comment implies that they worked well ONLY when the humidity was nearly nonexistent.
Like a left-handed compliment?
@@Battalionkitchen No, my comment only implies what I said, that they were used in Death Valley where the humidity is really low.
Also. swamp coolers work best in low humidity. They don't work as well in high humidity. That is just a fact, it isn't an insult.
Of course, and I agree. What you said was correct, I was just pointing out how it might be taken, which might explain his comment.
"human comfort was just a bonus," might just be the greatest summary of industrialism
223rd like!
Ahhh but they also realized productivity improved as well. So while employees' comfort wasn't really the goal as back then they didn't know it would also help the employees be more comfortable - it did help their bottom line and the employees were not as susceptible to heat exhaustion thus less issues of employees not showing up and more dedication. It's easy to look at things back then by comparing to what we have now. Over half the countries on earth still don't have air quality measures in place for employees in production facilities. Every country was third world at one time
I'm comfortable, the wife and kids are being baked and steamed, job accomplished - assuming a divorce is one's goal - with massive payments to said ex-spouse and children.
Rightfully so.
I would like this comment, but the like total speaks for itself
This statement is both true and false at the same time lol.
I've known a number of Burning Man attendees who have fabricobbled and enginerded something akin to swamp coolers for their tents... and, indeed, these are only reasonable in very arrid climates like Black Rock City or like Phoenix.
It's a shame that manufacturers can't simply accept that certain innovations are good for some things but not for others, and market them accordingly.
Yeah, I built one to use in a hexayurt and it was great. Not only cooled things down, but kept the beer cold!
Hey Dev! :D
Why am I so surprised to see Deviant here? I wonder if you're just here out of interest, or if you're looking for desk accessories which you can stick cameras inside of...
Yup, they work really well in the So. Nevada desert, where most of the time, the humidity is less than 10%, but I'd never consider one in a place like Hampton Roads, Virginia.
@@darkmann12 Ahh I wouldn't have noticed it was him!
I grew up in the high desert where we lived with only swamp coolers in the summer for many years and we were perfectly comfortable inside. If you live in a dry environment, they can be very effective.
Just bought one here in Las Vegas and your Spot on! Not only does it cool my place it adds some humidity which I actually like since Im from San Diego. Dry weather was causing my throat to dry up and the A/C air would dry the air more.
Yeah, I was about to say I grew up in SoCal and a lot of homes had big swamp coolers. It was always nice to turn it on during those hot, dry autumn nights. Back in the day, desert settlers used to sleep in "submarines" which were just big canvas tents with some kind of water bucket on top to wet the outside. Apparently, they worked pretty well for the pre-electricity days.
Definitely the right device for some use cases.
It's only problematic when they're falsely advertised, i.e. as useful to everyone.
As a Floridian I laughed so hard at the "Personal Air Conditioner" ad. Yeah, sure, that will work well here.
Amen brother! This is the land of "electronics thermal protection shutdown" lol.
Edit: as I watch the steam coming off my lawn at 11am I'm laughing thinking about adding more humidity to our air.
I live in Miami and I have found a perfect use for them. Are the other people in your house keeping the AC at 75? Are you having a bad time trying to sleep? Buy this and keep it next to your bed. As long as the AC is dehumidifying the air in the house this is effective! Do not try to use during a power outage...you will have no luck.
@@ChristakyMe You could always just change the people in your house.
Cool! If it works in florida, then it must work in New York!
I am grateful every day I don't spend in the tropics Florida is my perfect hell.
There's an even more absurd issue with these: Somewhere around 60% relative humidity, slight increases in air humidity lead to significantly increased apparent temperatures, due to massively lessened effectiveness of perspiration. So if you use them for long enough, these things will end up making you feel hotter, not colder.
Yeah, if you live in a humid place you experience this almost every summer: here in Milan it never goes over 35 degrees, but since it's *VERY* humid it feels much much hotter. So much so that there's literally a word in italian (afa) that means "hot and wet weather".
Basically, if you don't live in an area that averages around 35% relative humidity these things are useless. However, if you do they can be a god send. I used to live near Sacramento, CA and depending on which way the wind is blowing, these things work great. You see Sacramento there are 3 different ways the Air Blows, from the North the air temp is the hottest, not blowing at all when it feels the hottest, and from the South West, when the state's Natural and quite literal Swamp Cooler is active, known there as the Delta Breeze, as it is when the Wind blows over the Sacramento River Delta prior to reaching Sacramento.
Swamp Coolers are so effective during certain times of the year in Sacramento they have gigantic ones on the tops of some buildings there, like 10ft or more tall.
I had one that was a "room" cooler, and it actually cooled the house ~2200 sqft for most of the Max heat days of the summer, when humidity and temperature was at Arizona levels, in fact at that level of humidity you may actually WANT to add some water to the air to make the AC more Pleasant as it will squeeze what little water there is in the air out of it.
Nonno there’s a word in English too: muggy.
Good evaporative cooler work well in places like Arizona. I how much of a scam these desktop ones are though.
@@flyingmoose muggy is an adjective though, "afa" is a noun referring to hot wet air
Fun fact: When you’re enjoying a cold drink on a warm day, condensation doesn’t only form on the outside of the glass, but also on the surface of your drink. Enjoy!
Condensation on the surface of my drink? I wondered why my drink was always wet, mystery solved!
A useful fact to annoy your housemates.
oh yeah? Then...
100% of the water in the world has been pee at some point. even the water in your saliva. enjoy.
So this means that water is definitely wet
@@GraveUypo An accurate further extension of my point.
Swamp Coolers are a more efficient replacement for Air Conditioning where I grew up in Utah. The air there was so dry normally that you would need to add humidity to it in order for it to even feel normal. Plus the incredibly hard water we had actually made the cooler more efficient by constantly leaving calcium deposits on the thatch it used as an evaporation medium. As they built up, the little calcium crystals would increase the surface area being presented to the air. Eventually, after a few years it would get too clogged and we'd have to replace it with a new panel but as long as you had a trickle of water and enough power to run a barrel fan, you had something that would turn your lips blue if you stood underneath the vent for more than a minute.
You put that vent in a central upstairs room and the cold air coming out naturally sinks down through each room until it pools down in the basement. That's just how nearly everyone cooled their homes off where I grew up.
Neat
I live in Utah and this was definitely my experience too :)
Lots of memories laying on the top floor landing with my sister after coming in from outside and feeling that ice cold air hit us!
Also lots of memories changing out those panels every few years, replacing the pump every great once in awhile, and of course draining the water and taking the cover on and off. They really are pretty simple to take care of and cheap. It's too bad they don't work well in more places
I live in southern Australia and our summers are often dry as well so in my house we use evrapotive coolers as well for the same reasons.
@Peeshy lie about... how cold air was? Lol I mean I am pretty pathetic, but I guess I'm not quite on that level 😂
That air seriously was so cold though. Like other parts of the house wouldn't be as cold, but I remember lying under that swamp cooler and getting goosebumps pretty quickly. I would even grab a pillow and blanket and take the most elite naps ever on that landing lol the kind where it's really cold in the room, but you're bundled up in a blanket... Man, I actually really miss that lol it's like 80° in my place right now 😑
@@rite2bcreative - People seem to hate that these things work.
As a desert dweller in Arizona, I love my swamp cooler that is mounted on the roof of my house. While a swamp cooler is purposeless when it's a hundred and hell degrees outside, the two months approaching summer and the two months following summer can easily be chilled with a swamp cooler at less than one-third the cost of air conditioning. It's benefits are totally based on the climate in which its being utilized.
Yeah it works fine until you run out of water in the desert...
@@andykillsu Except that the underground aquifir flows southeast from California, so Arizona not only gets it's water from the Colorado River, it comes from underground via California, Nevada and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Arizona was once a swamp, after all.
BVSchaefer Not sure if you have been sitting under a rock, but the Southwest is running out of water FAST...
BVSchaefer Phoenix also gets water from the Salt River. Its weird Phoenix is in an actual desert but has three good sources of water. Meanwhile places like Los Angeles are constrained despite being right next to a (salty) ocean. Of course Im not sure how good some parts of the underground water table are around Phoenix thanks to Motorola and others creating a few superfund sites. Theres a reason Phoenix has that big patch of undeveloped land just east of downtown along the 202. And the area around the 101 and 202 interchange is sketchy as well.
Yep, in high heat low humidity areas they work great. But those areas are rare. The majority of humans live near the water.
I just realized why it's harder to get cool in a humid environment. As he said in the video, if the atmosphere can't take on any more moisture because it's too humid, then your body can't use evaporative cooling (sweating) to cool down. It makes sense now! Thank you for educating me!
That's why when people say "It's the dry heat" it really does make a HUGE difference. Just compare the heat index of 110F @ 10% humidity to 90F @ 90% humidity.
it's also why deserts get so cold during the night; there isn't enough water in the air to stay warm and humid, and the heat from the sun isn't trapped
So the Midwesterners are right when they say "it's the humidity that gets ya."
There is this trendy temperature indicator called "feels like". Usually in tropical area where I live, humidity ranges between 70-90%, the "feels like" usually ranges between 2°C to 3°C more than the indicated.
yep, and in turn we can stand 'much' higher temperatures in dry environments than in humid ones
"At least it's a little cooler" said no one who's ever dealt with real humidity.
These things seem like they’re great for places that are hot & dry, like the southwestern US, but terrible for places that are humid
@@kub2039 they dont work in northeastern us its useless
Ben Toth, hartt School percussion. Have YOU studied with Shane Shanahan?
@@kub2039 I don't know how cool those things can get but where I live, Arizona the hotter bits, it likely wouldn't be much help unless locked in a house and at that point a good fan would work better. Now if I used it in per se a car with no AC it probably wouldn't help much there when the car is in direct sunlight.
Back to a house, even a cheap end fan like the one I have in my room works wonders and doesn't take up too much space. What these things might be good for is little room that you want to save space with the door closed at almost all times in a dry state or region.
@Solemn Solace not if it's only a degree or two but increased humidity. At least my experience.
Where I'm from, growing up, all we had was a swamp cooler. I didn't get AC in the house until I was 17 years old. Even in our schools it was massive swamp coolers. They were just much cheaper to buy and run vs an AC and it worked wonders because I swear that most of the time, our environment was at a negative humidity level (obviously that's not possible, but it sure felt like it).
"Water is believe it or not, a substance"
Who are you, who is so wise in your ways?
Of science*
@@SF-tb4kb because of the curve Einstein
bro i swear u just compressed (no pun intended) an entire semester's worth of HVAC lectures in a matter of a half hour. Keep up the fantastic work
I like the pun.
What kind of semester do you imagine? Where they speak one word every 10 minutes or what?
I understand.
Was 2 4 hour lessons for me for this basics.
@@cebruthius a universal concept of education: taking 10 words to say what can be just as clearly said in 3.
I saw an advertisment for one of these the other day, it hurt my brain. it talked about a team of "engineers" inventing this "airconditioner". did these engineers forget their 100 level thermodynamics?
I saw the same on UA-cam yesterday in French... With a team of fake engineers. Scammers are everywhere.
Nope, it was there 400 level marketing classes that they were remembering ;-)
*train* engineers
There was no engineers. It's such a painfully simple concept that all it'd take to design one of these is some 3D modelling knowledge and a 3D printer. No engineering knowledge necessary.
The people buying them WON'T study Thermodynamics. That thing is hard asf.
My grandparents had a swamp cooler. In the summer, our area has hot ( to an excess of 110 Fahrenheit peaks or more) very dry. When my grandma moved here in the 40s they would wet sheets and hang them in the open windows at night to try to cool the house. Installing a swamp cooler was life changing.
When I lived in Arizona, a friend developed a thing he called PECS. The Personal Evaporative Cooling System.
Before he went for a long drive in the hot, dry Arizona air, he'd wet down a T-shirt and wear it.
That was it. That was PECS. It worked for about an hour in the Arizona air (maybe not that much), but it worked.
I have done that at Disneyland too! And when I really wanted serious cooling, I would wet down a small hand towel, place it on my head, then put a hat over it. It works as a nice sun shield on the neck and sides of the face, as well as cools nicely! At any amusement park, Water Rides are your Friends! GET soaked!
Ah yes. Using PECS to cook your pecs. Nice.
Funnily enough, that is a great, cheap and effective way of cooling yourself down in a dry climate.
This stuff works pretty good. At the bottom of the lower grand canyon the dark rocks and the hot sun keep the canyon a breezy 95F+ most of the night. The best solution is to take a five gallon bucket of that sweet 45F river water and dunk your sheet in it. This keeps the hot and dry wind from drying you out and also cools you down! Of course the sheet would dry out every two hours, hence keeping a five gallon bucket rather than just dunking the sheet in the river.
Imagine living in a hot country lol
I've been an HVAC guy for almost 2 decades. You presented this in a very easily understandable way. I'll be showing inquisitive customers this vid from now on so they can get their answers while I get to work!
I bet you know all kinds of tricks. Like running water over a (overheating) broken compressor to get it temporary working in a pinch. I was impressed when I saw that on UA-cam, the customer was a dance hall with a wedding reception going on.
God gifted me a room to rent in a penthouse, but in summer it's like 1000 up here and the central air doesn't really cool room enough, I'm on the roof with a huge terrace 100 feet wide and it soaks up the heat, open window and heat comes in.
I'm disabled with no help or any income beside check for rent and food, so what can I do to help?
I can spend $200 my birthday is coming up soon
Thanks in Advance
God Bless
This is a underrated comment
@@commodoresixfour7478 An overheated compressor isn't "broken." They are built with an overload between 2 of the windings and it opens when it gets too hot. Something else is wrong within the system if the compressor is overheating. I've been an HVAC tech for a really long time and now work in the oilfield doing HVAC.
As a prolific sweater, I absolutely detest swamp coolers for indoor use. I don't need *more* humidity!
I live in southwest Colorado and the humidity here goes from about 5% to max 50% on a rainy day. So during the summer the swamp cooler only adds a minimal amount of humidity to the air and the cooling performance can be phenomenal.
Daddy
Where you live perhaps. But Earth doesn't have just one biome. There are places in the US alone that are arid, desert, tundra, & even a rainforest.
@@Rudofaux Indeed. Even within my state, there are all of these things. :)
One of my favorite instances of someone using one of these: working in a hot, humid basement that the building's A/C had somehow forgotten. This person bought a large version of one of these swamp coolers and had it running all the time.
Dude, about the highest praise I could offer you is that you would be an astoundingly good high school science teacher. And I'm *_incredibly_* glad you are NOT one (at least as a sole occupation). You're doing waaaay more good for the world doing videos like this one!
I'm an adult with Aspergers, and a lot of informative things go over my head, or I have to struggle to pay attention.
The way you describe things is absolutely perfect, I genuinely feel like I'm learning things! Keep it up man, this is incredibly educational, and you're a fantastic teacher!
Hello, my fellow. How goes it?
Same here! Autistic and adhd adult with an interest in these things but needs a touch of entertainment in the presentation! Love tech connections
I’m a human and I see moving pictures
I've got trs so I'm not autistic.
Hello fellow aspie! :D
I really love his dry, snarky humor and talent for wordplay.
Coming from Mississippi (+80% relative humidity) to Utah (
Indeed they are. Ancient civilizations in the middle east used to build towers that functioned the same way. They were meant for travelers and rulers who desired cooling areas.
Which makes me wonder why stores would bother carrying them in obviously very humid states.
@@cleonituk Because as demonstrated in the video they are dirt cheap to make. Consequently only a few suckers need to buy them to turn a profit, even if the rest of the stock sits unsold!
@@cleonituk stores in humid environments only carry these "air conditioners" because the margins on them are high since they're usually overpriced. You would be surprised at the number of dumb people who see a real window A/C unit for $150+ in a store and think they're getting a deal with one of these personal "air conditioners" for $40-80. Those are the people the stores that do carry them are counting on!
Most of the marketing for units like in this video is being done via the internet in ads on social media, in-game ads on mobile games and various websites, especially news websites. Again counting on people thinking they're getting some sort of deal cause it costs less than a real A/C unit but it's not super cheap so it must have something substantial inside right? LOL
@@Choralone422 I wish I had ever seen an actual AC that cheap.
Around here (granted not US currency, but it's the relationship that counts)
An evaporative cooler will go from about $40 to $150 depending on size and construction.
The cheapest air conditioner I have ever seen for sale is $550, which is more nearly 14 times the price of the cheapest units, and still more than 3 times the price of the most expensive.
Then again the whole category of window mounted AC largely doesn't exist in this country (it used to, but I haven't seen one on a building or for sale anywhere in about 20+ years)
So you go straight from the somewhat questionable portable AC in the $550 to $1000 range, to split systems which start at about $1500 (not including installation costs), and can easily get into the $5000+ range, if not substantially more...
So, yeah. AC is not that affordable around here.
Especially if you're in rental accomodation, because the rights of landlords to restrict what tenants do to a property are very extreme, and make it hard to do anything at all if you're renting...
It's more effective to buy a spray bottle with a misting setting, mist yourself and sit in front of a fan.
That's how I got through a hot summer where I worked at a farm stand selling corn.
my friend in Thailand tells me it's common to have spray bottles as real a/c there is very expensive
@@pauls5745 Wish there were cheaper (and smaller) AC units on the market. Something the size of the evaporative cooler in this video, but with a compressor and a tube with another tube inside for separating the in-airflow from the out-airflow.
yeah same in pheonix with no ac in my car, a spray bottle worked great!
Me and my mom use the same method while on the beach and it's really warm. We just use a spray bottle with regular water and let the water evaporation cool us off.
I've done this too - you have to replenish the mist often, but it's effective. I wonder, is it moreso if you use salty water? Sweat is conspicuously salty, after all.
swamp coolers can indeed be very useful.
a partner of mine used one *JUST* for the humidification purposes.
it was a self built one out of random bits, but it did it's job.
I lived in the high desert of Wyoming for 11 years, using a swamp cooler. It’s amazing how cold it can be and how well it works. Can cool a home with a 3/4 hp fan motor, and a small water pump.
It also puts moisture into the incredibly dry air of a desert. They don’t work well in a humid environment.
Gremlack13 Plus put in ice cold water it also work great !
The only problem is: swamp coolers use up water. And water is scarce in the desert, so then has to be pumped in from elsewhere, so the cumulative effect on the environment is greater. I'm just glad I live in the UK. No AC needed, few fans occasionally at height of summer (some years).
And a shitty weather all year around causing one of highest depression rates in whole Europe over the winter. At least is environmental friendly!
G13....,you are in the right place....,it must help a lot to get some moisture in the air & if you can get solar panels to provide the power you would have cut out another cost.
@@ukeleleEric True, the accumulative effect on a LIMITED reservoir of water (sending the water out into the environment rather than to be used by drinking) could be a consideration (3-15 gallons/hour depending on how much cooling you need). But too, you can always look at the glass half full by realizing that a swamp cooler costs 15 cents a Kilowatthour (KWh) of electricity, where as an AC Unit would be costing about $1.20 a KWh for the same cooling. Therefore (for instance and assuming the electricity is made from a 'coal-fired' electricity power plant), all the coal that is burned to create that extra electricity needed (in the case of electricity powering AC systems) creates that much more CO2 to put into the atmosphere (greenhouse gas), to contribute to global warming. To suggest that a swamp cooler is less environmentally friendly than an AC System is very debatable.
I'm in my third year of Mechanical Engineering and I'm studying Refrigeration and Air Conditioning systems, and you JUST explained to me the difference between wet and dry bulb temperatures!! IT FINALLY CLICKED IN MY HEAD!! God bless you, brother!!
A Dutch 1st year here!
Although I'm studying Electrical Engineering!
Good luck with your studies!
As soon as I saw those "This kid beat the cooling companies!" ads I groaned, I didn't realize the craze around these was part of the same schtick. Thanks for doing a video to highlight the near-uselessness of them.
What ads. I want to see what sh** they say
zsin128! I've seen them here on UA-cam. I instantly thought "these aren't new" my family used them when I was a kid and well before that.
@@zsin128 Probably something like this: ua-cam.com/video/QWrMigKprlI/v-deo.html
These ads remind me of ads used to promote "nExT lEvEl sMoRtPhOnE", as saw in this video about scams, that was created by mrwhosetheboss. Whoever is behind this company is still scamming
ua-cam.com/video/hq_5opT-MR4/v-deo.html
Nice pfp :3
I've been on yet another Technology Connections binge lately, and I really must say, Thank you for the many years of content you've provided. I can only imagine the level of effort that goes into each of these videos, but you can feel the labor of love coming across in each video. One of the genuine UA-cam gems of information and entertainment delicately blended together.
So much attitude in this one!
Very unexpected to see you here.
I always knew Taran was the man of taste.
Now you can tell Linus what he's doing wrong in his home ac Installation
Clearly a prograde attitude
I noticed this too and was looking to see if there were any comments related to it. I wasn't expecting Taran to be the one to do it! P.S. Please make another 4 hour video editing tutorial.
(for context, I'm Chilean) I got one of those some years ago, and while it kiiiind of worked, the effect was barely noticeable due to humidity being around 40, 50% in central Chile, but a friend's relatives that live in northern Chile near the Atacama desert claim these work amazingly well. We didn't know why at the time, now we do!
I got given one of these during the 2019 heatwave and gave it a shot. I live in the UK in an English seaside town where the humidity is regularly over 80%. In 2019 it was 35c, around 87% humidity, and one of these boxes was just blowing more moisture into the air.
It's been collecting dust ever since.
Hey, the dust it collected didn't collect anywhere else, so at least there's that.
@@Anvilshock that's some nice dry humor...unlike his sopping wet room ಡ ͜ ʖ ಡ
"It's been collecting dust ever since " why, did you replace the water paper with a dust filter? 😉
@@florinpandele5205 your comedy would actually turn this useless device into something mildly useful, a room corona cleaner. So we can't have that.
@K05 T4R You really couldn't. Cheap and nasty tat.
The big thing is that advertising has gone off the rails. Social media sites absolutely do not care if you're using copyrighted materials without permission, if you have completely misleading or false statements, or even if you're using strong language, sexual themes, or violence.
Of course they'll beat up the content creators over tiny issues, but the advertisers are okay to do whatever.
Oh wait you mean advertising for the cooler, not like an ad popped up that was odd for you
We simply call these "coolers" back home, and they're a great cheap alternative to air conditioners. Also, since it's the Sonoran desert, people usually appreciate the humidified cool air.
21:03
They work best in dry climates.
He seems to be splitting hairs to say it's not an Air Conditioner. It does change the air, one is just refrigerated and uses a lot more power. Which is why it's often referred to a a "refrigerated" air conditioner.
@@Cheepchipsable He's not splitting hairs, that's what the term "air conditioner" means: a powered and refrigerated unit. An "evaporative cooler" is different, that's why it has a different name. I'm sure in some part of the world a dirty paper bag counts as a "bandage" but in any part of the developed world it would not.
Hey that's where Trevor Philips lives right?
@@Ignisan_66 Pretty sure that would be the Mojave
Technology connections: This is a miniature swamp cooler.
Me, an intellectual: ah yes, outsourced sweating.
Oh that's actually clever!
And.......you're so modest. What a bonus!!!!
"Outsourced Sweating", I love it! I'm going to have to use that now. I work on commercial AC for a living, and on occasion I will describe the operation for someone. This will be a fun little phrase to add to my stories.
I'll have one of those robots that sweats for me, please. I'm tired of it.
how are you so wise in the ways of science
I live in a very dry desert. Swamp coolers are incredibly effective here.
Exactly
@@jdlawless_fuel1416 I live in New York City where summer is extremely humid - these things don't work here and that's the point. They only work in certain environments which is what he explained at the 59 second mark very well. Humid areas like NYC during the summer - this thing is a waste of money. In very dry and hot areas where humidified cool air is not a problem, these things are pretty good. The effectiveness greatly depends on where you live.
Southeast Texas, no workie
@@thegreatsiberianitch But West Texas, workie well.
21:03
i just want to thank you for making this vid and your other air conditioner vid. i recently moved into a room on the second story of a townhouse and have been absolutely miserably hot. i was researching these swamp coolers, but since i live in hella humid southwest mo i figured they wouldn't work, and your video confirmed it for me. i was then thinking an air conditioner, but a window unit in a second story apartment had me worried, so i was looking into a floor unit. your other video convinced me out of that (that and the cost). i installed a window unit at the beginning of the week, feeling better about it thanks to your vids, and have been living way more comfortably since. thank you for what you do!
Step one: Turn box fan on
Step two: Hang wet towel in front of fan
Step three: Profit
Make sure it a clean towel, and not 1 that been hanging on the towel rack for 2 weeks. Or you will get a smelly room.
@@wonniewarrior true xD
@@wonniewarrior another reason they're called 'swamp' coolers
Step 4, clean up the mess of water you've made
or you can just get a bowl of ice cubes and some salt instead
"This is the third time I've made a video explaining the refrigeration cycle without making a video about. It really is a remarkable achievement of humanity"
At first I thought the "remarkable achievement" referred to explaining the refrigeration cycle three times, and I was like "what's humanity got to do with it?"
I... I thought that was the joke. The achievement being that he's explained it thrice without a dedicated video.
This is by far the best comment on this video... I didn't pick it up that way but its soooo much more funny that way.
Without humanity he wouldn't have had a refrigeration cycle to talk about
Wait, is the achievement of humanity the fact that no viewer needed a video about the refrigeration cycle?
Next, we talk about peltier effect cooling.
Swamp coolers are my favorite way to spread black mold spores throughout my room
I see you didn't read the directions for how to operate one.
@@telciris the ones we have india come with replaceable evaporation pads (made out of wood shavings). It takes about a whole season of operation for them to develop that mushy smell, since water is continuously drain through them. So, one can install new pads in them at the start of each season
Oooooo, my time to shine :) After spending thousands to get rid of some black mold that was terrifying my wife, I found out that like so many other conditions, it's not as bad as we fear. TLDR, if you have a specific allergy, it can be bad, but it's nothing to jump to crazy conclusions and fear. www.cdc.gov/mold/faqs.htm
@@telciris For a little unit like this, take the filter out when you're not running it and allow the filter to dry. Periodically clean the inside of the machine. Most importantly (toward the last reply), swamp coolers run best with ventilation. An AC required you close up the house to keep the cool in, but for swampers, you should have a window or door open to pull the air throughout the house. (This incidently dries and you don't get black mold unless you close up the house. Think windowless bathroom and hot showers). A problem not stated, is try to use soft water as hard water will leave calcium deposits pretty rapidly. This is all advice for drier climates, as TC is correct they don't really work in humid climates.
Yep. Had a house swamp cooler when I lived in Utah, but did not like it at all.
He left out everybody’s favorite use of air duster: getting high and walk-in on sunshine ☀️
This is hands-down the best video I've ever seen explaining how an air conditioner works. Great job and good visuals.
I study refrigeration in school and work on them daily at work on vehicles. I understand how they work and operate but you did an amazing job with the thermal visualizations and walking threw it all.
I also really like the computer duster can as a great simple explanation of what a refrigerant is.
1:49 "water is, believe it or not, a substance."
Oh damn. I thought it was a metaphysical construct.
I thought it was one of the four elements
cue avatar the last airbender intro
lol.
@@sodiboo It is that too.
Ah, like phlegm.
"The Midwest is a humidity nightmare"
**Cries in Florida**
Yeah here in St. Louis we are surrounded by the Mississippi river and the Missouri river with all the concrete and asphalt we get similar weather to you guys.
80%+ humidity all summer and tend to be around 88-100f and get those wonderful flash thunderstorms out of nowhere
I feel you xD
**cries in new orleans**
@@jameshowell1214 you win...NO is fucking bad and I live in a pretty hot area in the summer
I lived in Cleveland all of my life so I'm used to 80-90% humidity. It feels weird being in Denver because I can actually feel cool from sweat. I thought I was having chills and actually took a covid test. Nope all these years I was just used to being covered in sweat and not actually feeling cooler.
As an Air Conditioning Graduate and HVAC Universal COR Certificate holder, I have to give you a 5 STAR review. Sir, You are on point on every issue and You've transported me back to the New York City REFA Ticket Fire Department Practical test. Thank you for making Air Conditioning Technology so simple and accurate to understand. I’m enjoying each of your videos and with your precise teachings - my FLORIDA Operations is solidifying their overall understanding as helpers. Keep up the great work and look forward to supporting your channel. 🙏🏽❤️✝️
THANK YOU once again for this entertaining and informative stuff. Love your humor and style!
Fun fact: Our local library installed an evaporative cooling system ( a.k.a. "swamp" cooler) 24 years ago. But they didn't have the staff to clean or replace filters. All the librarians and technical staff frequently got sick. For a while they thought is was Legionnaire's disease. Then they noticed MOLD on some precious old books in the basement.
It took a while to figure it out, because ours is the dumbest city on Earth. A philanthropist donated enough money to the library so they could hire a competent architect who IMMEDIATELY diagnosed the problem.
The funny thing is, the "swamp" cooler was supposed to be "earth friendly" and "green" as part of the library's commitment to environmental concerns. As it turned out, they STILL used air-conditioning during the hottest summer months, ...so no savings there. And of course, this fancy evaporative cooler was improperly installed by our local dumbasses who don't understand such contrivances and never read... not even manuals. The damn thing LEAKED heat energy during the winter, driving their winter energy bills to nearly DOUBLE.
Bottom line? They had to completely remodel the library AGAIN, remove "swamp thing," pay for expensive conservation of rare old books, AND paid a LOT of sick leave.
Moral? ...Pick one. There are PLENTY of lessons to be learned there.
What utter moron decided to install a glorified humidifier in a *Library* in the first place?
@@ToastyMozart One that has a grudge against books
@@ToastyMozart The local authority's Beancounter? It's a cheaper option than full on Air Conditioning and the maintanance there of
So... Step 3: Profit!
Moral? Governments are bad, m'kay. :D
“Dusting your computer junk” never have I been called out like this
@fff stupid then don't watch lol
they sell computer vacs that work really well. Ive got a datavac one
@@feralkitty33 Sucking is always better than blowing when it comes to dust.
GAMER GEAR
you know I actually thought they were just cans of compressed air! wow, I'll never buy one. so environmentally bad!!
"Price: $41.99 (or something like that)"
Geez, by the time you buy two (or certainly three) of those you could probably have bought an ACTUAL window air conditioner and been much more comfortable.
But then how can I remain environmentally conscious AND feel superior to everyone while sweating my self into dehydration!
Yeah it isn't just price though, many apartment buildings don't allow tenants to have window AC units, for example my apartment only allows "through the wall" AC units, and those fuckers are all over 400-500 bucks a piece.
@@Roland597 why would you feel environmentally smug for buying this? What's the connection there? Or are you just taking any chance to shit on environmentalist?
@@rdizzy1 have you checked the price of a window unit lately? For one with a decent amount of BTU's say 15,000 are around $500.00 bucks a pop they ain't cheap either anything under that your waisting your money and not really cooling like you would want .
@@jimmyjennings4089 If you're "waisting" your money, just take off your money belt and you will feel cooler.
Here in Arizona, where it's usually dry, it works fine.
My only form of cooling at my home is swamp cooling. It works great from April through June, as long as I keep a window or two cracked. As soon as monsoon season hits, it suuuuhhcks at cooling since the humidity keeps it from working as well.
But the little swamp coolers are nice to have around on dry hot days for a cool breeze, and they're pretty cheap now.
Also
The paper filters are better than the sponge ones.
“This is the third time I’ve explained the refrigeration cycle without making a video about it” - and that’s why I like this channel.
I've never seen anyone so savagely tear apart a product.
10/10 quality content. Would watch again.
If you want to see more product reviews, then subscribe! He always gives his brutal, honest opinion.
Literally all the 100s of different makes of 'Swamp cooler' have just been demolished
You should see some videos from LockPickingLawyer then
I remember one time when visiting my family in Texas we ate outside and they had a giant swamp cooler to comfort the customers. I was amazed at how cool things felt and how "an industrial fan" managed to make things so cool, and why we didn't use them at my school (which would go 90+ degrees in the last few months of the year). That's when my dad explained how swamp coolers worked, and that they would be completely useless in our home state where the humidity is regularly 100%.
Yeah, they sounds like a nightmare for the humid summer weather we get here too but I can imagine them having some benefit in arid climates (as long as water supply isn't an issue... which it kind of is in arid environments).
Yeah, I grew up in New Mexico where single digit humidity wasn't too rare. Moved to the midwest where "the sweat, it does nothing, NOTHING!" I was used to, you know, built in evaporative cooling.
I got one of these für ~15€ and since I don't have any air copnditioning, this thing provides a very comfortable stream of cool(ish) air compared to a simple fan, while not consuming a lot of power. I think that's what these are designed for and yes, you definitely feel the difference when the water tank goes empty eventually.
Still it won't cool down a room, that should be imperative by design. So for everyone who didn't realize that from the beginning, this video will make it perfectly clear! 🙂
Throw some ice packs into it.
Also humidity is key. If youre in the tropics like me, this is useless.
Thank you for explaining this! When I saw this for the first time on Instagram the ad claimed the so-called inventor "tore apart his old beater car A/C" to learn how it worked. I asked myself "He tore apart his car's A/C so he could learn how to make a swamp cooler?"
Now I can point anyone to this video to explain how this works. I used to be an HVAC tech, but you're so good at explaining how all this works.
I remember someone who lived in Arizona describing a swamp cooler to me, and thought it was weird I'd never heard of one up until then.
I live in the south. Those things wouldn't do much more than grow mold.
They grow mold in Arizona, too, but at least the mold is slightly cool.
Well in Utah they work AND grow mold. How about that?! 😁
@@drippingwax But do shooting stars break them?
@@ZeldagigafanMatthew That kind of joke will get you smashed in the mouth.
@@valecrassus7835 Careful there, "Turner", the ice you skate is getting pretty thin.
Thanks for exposing this scam. As soon as I started seeing the ads for these things, I became annoyed and I've been waiting impatiently for someone to rip into them.
Act interested to drain their advertising budget.
UA-cam algorithm are dumb. Click them. Don't skip. Give positive feedback.
You have a gift that allows you to explain concepts very well. Thanks for share it with us.
I agree with the one person, I’m adult adhd and haven’t sat down and watched TV in like 10 years because I just can’t focus on anything more than about 4 or 5 min MAX as far as videos or television. I watched this entire video and actually heard everything he said and registered it! You sir have a gift for teaching!
He's got a gift!
Look! A squirrel!
I absolutely agree. I have the same problem from the same cause and have been watching all of his videos 👍👍👍
@@glowingunknown5625 WHERE! Oh wait... Frick you
Same
"Some people claim that this practice reduces the life of the condenser through promotion of corrosion....
But those are just some people who didn't engineer the thing." BEST RETORT EVER! .🤣👍
My guess (also not an engineer) might be concerns that the condensate will not be purely distilled water, but distilled water from the humidity in the air *plus* whatever pollutants might be in the air that might come along for the ride and change the pH of the water. Possibly enough to be corrosive over time.
Mind you, I’m mostly speculating as to the source/ rationale for the concerns of concerned. I am old enough to remember hearing talk of “acid rain”, but not quite old enough to remember what exactly it was (if it was different than what I described above).
The validity of this concern would also likely vary by location, presumably greater in large metropolitan areas (especially in countries with low environmental standards), and lesser in rural areas far from any industrialization.
@@tanya5322 its like in restaurant refers were the food gasses off and eats the coils and they leak in 3 years
Well, corrosion is a thing, too. And yes, it will degrade the process to some minor extent, but it's hardly enough to make a difference.
Yes, the condensate "water" will be some nasty stuff, because the air it came out of was rather nasty, and it ran off nasty, dusty, dirty, corroding mystery-metal (and copper.) (note: the condensate lines from our data center chillers are silicone, and copper. and despite the relative quality of the air, that water is not clean either.)
It also serves to evaporate the condensate water. That's very useful if you use them in a inside office space like I do. No water dumping on the floor outside.
Its also that they use a material that is more corrosion resistant (chromium, manganese ect mixed) because it will be exposed to more than a light condensation.
The same amount of water exposure may shorted the life of units not built to have water sitting inside it as part of its design, as it would use slightly cheaper composite metals (other than the aluminum fins, which weigh+cost less than copper fins with not much less heat transfer & more corrosion resistance)
These reasons are better explained in next years video he makes, the magic of metallurgy, & not including it here was to make this a better video (reasons why he so good!)
I'm so glad I already went to automotive school and learned everything I needed to learn about how A/C and many other everyday components work so I know how to call bullshit on random products that pop up over time.
same. im a refrigeration technician so seeing some "scam" (i know its not really a scam but just a way of cooling that is unsuitable in most circumstances) like this is just cringe for me
Same here, former HVAC tech and the claims in those ads drove me crazy.
I agree. My dad was a/c and electrical. He both taught it and was a tradesman before becoming a teacher. Just growing up in the business has proven well worth learning everything he taught me. Makes it SO easy to call B/S.
My 100% a technical neighbour bought a small ceramic heater last year and was surprised it couldnt heat the room instead of the central heating installation🤦♂️
It seem the more expensive the bullshit is how better it gets sold 🥴
As a person that has at least some knowledge in at least one field of something, I am also able to call bullshit on random products that pop up over time.
My wife bought me one of these for working from home in Johannnesburg, South Africa, and given we're 700kms above sea level, with very dry air, and also air conditioners are a rarity in even middle class homes, it's a pretty good deal in summer.
"The cold gas SUCKS energy from its surroundings"
*Sound of angry physicists banging on the door*
"The compressor pump creates a sucking force"
*BANGING INTENSIFIES*
Physicists: WELL YES... BUT ALSO NO.
Sucking is just the other end of pushing. I see more pretend physicists being pedantic enough to worry about the word than real ones.
YOU WILL SUCK THIS AIR GOOD
YOU WILL
SUCK THIS AIR
KLEEN
RIGHT NOW
@@BrianRRenfro Also, isn't that literally what suction is though? Or am I dumb. I don't see the problem with saying it sucks in air, because it's another way of saying the low pressure compels higher pressure gas in through a narrow opening to achieve equilibrium.
An exhausted linguist is banging on the door that's behind the angry physicist.
Homer: "Lisa! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
Unless you get your items from the Jack in the beanstalk giant!
Closing credits sax hits
The Speed of Light, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the Law.
@@robynharris7179 Time changes according to gravity, so light must also. Kind of like sitting still in a moving car, means that you are actually traveling quite fast, even though you are sitting still.
Homer: “Marge, can you set the oven to cold”.
"Oceans aren't boiling"
*yet
I love these comments by himself
I said 'yet' out loud before I noticed the text, maybe he has a point lol
I keep seeing these UA-cam video ads pushing this sort of cooler. Said it was invented by a high school student, and was punished by the school by expelling him. He took the idea to market and was offered millions by big A/C companies but he refused. What a hero, made me want to get one
01:49 "Water...Believe it or not is a substance."
Me: Taking notes furiously
Omg I thought water was an element not a substance
Damn NASA and all their conspiracy friends
Fortunately Technology Connections opened our eyes to the truth
@@TheNasaDude Nope, water is not an element. It's a compound of the elements Hydrogen and Oxygen.
You learn something new everyday.
Don't forget the oceans aren't boiling.
Which makes waterboarding substance abuse.
0:10
If these things are called “Personal Air Conditioners”
Are Whole Room Air conditioners called Super PACs?
*nyuk nyuk nyuk*
Does that mean I can collect tax-free donations for an LG Super PAC?
Alec* is so damn funny
mechanical engineer. here are some industry names for devices that can cool an entire room
* AHU - air handling unit
* FCU - fan coil unit
* CRAC - computer room air conditioner
* RTU - roof top unit
i feal that "super PAC" would be best for a room that is intended for only a single person, or else it wouldn't be "persona'" :P
Granpda Corey inb4 Bong Cooler
“And the oceans aren’t boiling”
At time of recording
Bottomed left of screen said ”yet...” got a chuckle out of me
I lol'd hard when i saw the "...yet" appear.
hive mind.. had the same thought
2020 isn't over yet
This entire video misses the point though. Swampies are not designed to be used in air conditioned Chicago apartments. They are designed for use in the desert. Deserts have EXTREMELY dry air. Even if an air conditioned room, Chicago's air is just too wet. Run this thing at night with ice water in the desert, say Las Vegas or Phoenix and it will drop the temperature by 20 degrees or more. They also make these in window units so it is constantly bringing in outside air that is 10% humidity.
As someone who lives in a hot/dry environment, these are a godsend(we use way bigger units with water pumps), would love to see those covered if you haven't already, instead of those wet wipes thingies hay is used and water is pumped to the hay to keep it constantly wet, the hay needs to be replaced every season/year tho, they use way less electricity
yes the small ones are kind of pointless.
It's usually aspen excelsior, not hay, as the wood lasts a lot longer.
I put the stuff that looks like filter pads in a few years, but honestly, nothing works as well as the aspen.
I like how you occasionally say “fun fact”, even though your videos are entirely fun facts!
super fun facts!
I just watched a 30 mins video explaining how something I've never seen or would have ever bought doesn't work.
Mine works great.
My parents bought me one cuz I needed a fan.. that thing made my room hotter it was a waste of 30 dollars and we returned it and got my self a normal fan
Except it works amazingly well
Except that whether it works depends on where you are - where I am and for my purposes it works and it was only 20 bucks or so.
Welcome to the internet
that ring around the condenser fan is called a "slinger ring"
it literally slings the water into the condenser.
So... the cold air is brought directly from the Himalaya mountains. Got it.
true.
and that's why it takes some time to cool the room..you know ..some times it get stuck in traffic jams and stuff ..
I learned so much about water in this video. Water is:
1. A substance
2. Not scarce
3. Except where it is
I'm one of the poor schmucks that live in an area where swamp coolers are generally the only coolers around. Desert, low humidity areas. The big ones that go on top of the houses work really well to a point. The few times we do get rain, they just stop working. They can blow air all day but the evaporation is dialed way back so now you just have a fan blowing 90 degree humid air into the house. Most of the time they are great and next to a normal AC it uses damn near no electricity since it's just a fan and a dinky little pump. So yeah, a little desktop one like that would work but it's too small to cool a room. Might be nice on your face. But unless you live in an area that has lower then 35ish% humidity they really won't do anything. Just have a fan.
Jesus Christ, I wouldn't be able to live in an area below 35% humidity all the year. Here were I live usually is mostly June to August and is not all days, but it is already terrible, my noise goes to a terrifying journey
I lived with my grandparents when I was in the fifth grade, and in our room they had a swamp cooler window unit. It was pretty sweet where we typically saw temps in the 95-100 range during summer, though I'm unsure how much humidity they regularly got over there. I can't recall how they conditioned the other rooms, but I think they had a regular a/c in the living room, and probably another swamp cooler in the adults bedroom. One sort of odd thing, is they used to take those miniature coke bottles (the bottles were made of wax) and throw a bunch of those in the swamp cooler water. We could just reach in there and down a small shot of coke anytime we wanted, as it made the drink cooler. They had a fridge, so I'm not exactly sure why they did that.
@@LucasRodmo Inside places that use the whole house evap cooler the humidity stays pretty high (65% is my house average in summer). When they stop cooling as @MultiMikin describes the house humidity can get insane though (75%+) which adds to the misery. In the winter I just use a whole house humidifier which uses the same wick cooling principles as the evap cooler.
@@Honis less bad then.
For all of us non-americans (just in case); 90°f is roughly 32°c
“The oceans aren’t boiling.”
2020: Ooh, write that down
"Yet" 2:10
yeah. I would say, 2020: Not yet...hold my beer.
@@harveyharbicht4959 don't lose hope
Don't lose hope
Well, they won’t be, either. That isn’t the issue we’re dealing with.
"quick AC refresher" spends next 20 minutes explaining AC
This is why I love technology connections
But I do find AC refreshing.
I mean AC is pretty cool.
hvacr vdeos = amazing channel
this channel = amazing channel
two of my favorite channels
"The oceans aren't boiling", we're only a little over halfway thru 2020. Give it time.
Great...now it's going to be hip to wear liquid nitrogen vests along with these masks, as if they'll magically stop us from suffering our fates.
...at which point murder mussels rise from the torrid waves!!!
... YET
.... I thought, then went back in the video to check if he really wrote it out :D :D
It would of happened by now but it's really expensive to run my evil ocean boiling ray. I'm hoping that the government grants I applied for come through so I can turn them back on.
@@JoelGetzhasauselessurl Ah just shoot a powerful enough laser at the sun. It's made of highly reactive hydrogen so setting it ablaze will make it blast in an explosion similar to a super nova.
TLDR: The laws of thermodynamics do not bow to marketing.
Actually, you can break second law of Thermodynamics! You see Joule screwed up, according him the energy released as heat from compression is about equal to the energy put in to compress the gas, but he ignores the fact that the gas cam be re-expanded and this can power about 80% of the energy needed to run the compressor in the first place. If you cool the compressed gas to ambient it still has most of the energy that you invested in compressing it remaining (it loses about 2%. If the compressed gas is allowed to come to ambient temperature, you can then decompress it and make it super cold, so now you can extract about 70% at best of the energy from the thermal imbalance created. The device can output usable mechanical/electrical energy and provide cooling. The second law of Thermodynamics doesn't work where pressure changes occur because most of the energy invested into compressing a gas is regained on decompression, but current technology (heat pumps, aircon, freezer) doesn't try and gain energy from decompression, they throw that energy away.
TLDR: Marketing does not care.
The climate change problem in a nutshell.
These are used in greenhouses all the time, just supersized. And yes, that includes the midwest where I live (Missouri). They work well enough to keep excessive heat down, require very little power consumption, and there are two benefits to plants: 1. Many plants prefer high humidity, especially tropical annual; 2. Higher humidity reduces water loss from pots, mostly by reducing transpiration (evaporation from leaf pores), making it so plants can go longer between waterings. This is reduces work, and also reduces water consumption.
Never thought about the greenhouse aspect of swamp cooling. Great explanation of it's several benefits... Thank you.
they were popular in laundry matts in the mid-west back in the 1960's.
in my dry south african home, we had a massive version of one of these to cool off the house. it worked really well, as we sometimes had 45 degrees celsius (113 fahrenheit for the american pals). That is, until... it got humid at all! Then it was, as you indicated, utterly useless.
I remember my father cleaning the insides of algae and stuff, curious about how it worked. Now I know. Thank you!!!
GREAT video! Love the channel... well written and well delivered!
I live in Las Vegas and have a 5,200 foot custom home here. I use evaporation cooling almost all summer! If the humidity is below 15% it works AWESOME! Example: Yesterday it was 115 degrees outside and my "swamp" cooler kept the inside of my house at 74 degrees! Once the temp went down to 105 the inside of my house went down to 68 and "click" the evap cooling system snaps off. The humidity was at 2% outside and lower so it worked GREAT! My power bill, using A/C, was around $600/month and now it's below $100/month ... but I use about $50/month of water more so, basically, I'm saving $450/month over the course of 4 months a year. that's close to $2,000/year I'm saving with a more comfortable environment! Also, it puts the humidity at about 22% inside my home (you have to leave a window or two open, you know) which is awesome, as no humidity Vegas dries your skin, hair, eyes and nose and gives you nose bleeds and rock-buggers. I LOVE evap cooling! BUT! If the clouds roll in and the humidity goes up over 15% I turn off the evap, close the windows and crank up the AC because if I don't, as you said, the temp goes up and the humidity inside the house goes up past 50% --- which is to us here in Vegas, miserable ... yet NOTHING compared to what you all in the midwest and florida and texas have!
Also, yeah, that stupid thing you bought - the mini-evap-cooler - is a rip off and I would call it a scam since it's being marketed as an "air conditioner". Evap coolers are only useful in 1) very low humidity places, like here in Vegas, and 2) when super dry air is being released as fast as it's being sucked. Trapped evap-cooling air is icky but if you release it it's awesome! Feels like Hawaii in the spring! A/C here in the desert puts the humidity at 0% and no humidity in the air is awful and makes your skin look and feel like your dad's old wallet ... and the rock-buggers and nose bleeds are just ... :(
I see this video, then my mom goes ahead and buys two of these. I'm in a pretty humid state. Pain.
tranform those into algae farms to create your own swamp, your mom will be so proud of your craftsmanship
One thing to add is that humidity itself has a huge effect on how hot a room *feels*. A room with higher humidity will always feel warmer than a room at the same temperature with lower humidity. This is because with higher humidity, the human body's cooling (sweating) is less effective. Humidity is a measure of how close to 'capacity' the air is in terms of the amount of water it can hold. In a room that is at 100% humidity, water will simply not evaporate as the air cannot hold any more. The higher the temperature, the greater the amount of water that can be in the air is and by the same principles, the lower the humidity (the 'dryer' the air), the easier it is for water to evaporate into it. This is why hot summer nights often feel just as bad, if not worse, than in the day. Swamp heaters lower the air temperature that comes out of them due to evaporation taking energy from the air, as described in the video. However, that air now not only has a higher humidity because of the added water, it also has a higher humidity because it is at a lower temperature. Double dipping on humidity so to speak. This is likely why although these things technically cool the air by a few degrees, the air itself likely feels just as warm to us because our sweat is evaporating worse than in the room around it.
The source of the phrase "it's a dry heat!".
To what extent does sweating play a role when there isn't water actually beading on the skin? Is there a microscopic layer of water constantly on my skin that I can't feel? Or is there a significant body of water directly moving from the cells in my skin to the air?
Goes both way. If it's humid during a cold winter day in Canada, you feel it more because the humidity transfert your heat to the air more effectively.
If I may... a cold but humid room will feel colder. Basically, air with more thermal responsivity will be colder or warmer depending on it's temperature relative to our comfort level.
Unless you live in a very dry environment. Then it's a very good thing to have
I’ve been seeing ads about some boy genius disrupting the AC industry by… making a swamp cooler.
Tech Connect: "There's a big, big, big, big, BIG, HUUGE..."
Me: Wait for it!
Tech Connect: "Caveat".
Me: Aw..
Yeah that line has given everyone pretty blue marbles.
Less know fact: A "caveat" is the concave part the "but".
"Swamp cooler" is mostly a western US thing (desert). In the East and Southeast in particular, evaporative coolers don't work at all. We use "ar condishunen". Swamp coolers don't work in the swamp
Google cools their data center in South Carolina with evap coolers, but they only need to cool to 80 degrees. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Wesley Mays
You have no idea what you're talking about. Which coolant? What temperature on which side of the loop? What pressure on each side?
The thing is that a vapor-compression refrigeration system is NOT a Carnot cycle engine. What helps is the hot side to be in the coldest environment possible and the cold side to be already near the temperature of the hot side. COPcooling = Tcold/(Thot - Tcold)
If you don't know what you're talking about, say nothing; don't guess!
It's actually used in India in months of Loo in northern India. Loo is strong dry wind that blows during May June, it's so hot and dry that people have died on spot from heatstrokes.
LOL
Yes... I live in New Mexico USA...
107* today.. we love our "Swamp" Cooler.
Yes. Evaporator coolers work in hot, very low humidity climates. We had one and it works just like a regular a/c. But only in hot, dry climates.
90 degrees F, 90% humidity: huh, why haven't I seen more of these around?
Oh, that's why.
I like how you wrote "yet" after you mentioned that the oceans aren't boiling.