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a/c power
By elvin1949, Section Remote Living Posted on Mon Apr 12th, 2004 at 05:16:16 PM MST
try this to reduce a/c power use

good afternoon all
30 yr's ago a friend with no money and breathing trouble asked for help. she had to have a/c but could not afford to pay for the electricity to run it. here is what i did.
took the pad's, water pan with float valve,and water pump from a swamp cooler.
put the water pan with the pump and float valve
under the a/c unit. plumb it with a line tap
[fridge ice maker setup] and plastic tubing.
wire the pump to run only when the a/c compressor
is running. put the pad's next to the condensor
on the air intake side. turn it on you power usage
will drop a substantual amount.
later
elvin

a/c power | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: a/c power (none / 0) (#1)
by RatOmeter on Tue Apr 13th, 2004 at 11:26:25 AM MST
(User Info) http://www.rato.us

I did something similar (an experiment only) with a window air conditioner some years ago. It boosts the efficiency quite a bit. The heat transfer is more efficient into water than air and then evaporation cools the water. The downsides that I see are:

1) The outside unit (condensor coils and compressor), while designed for outside conditions, aren't intended to be submerged even partly. My main concern here would be accelerated corrosion.

2) The evaporator coils in my test unit started icing up after about an hour of run time. I guess it wasn't intended to run that cold or that continuously, plus the humidity in the room where I was testing it was high.

Still, it's an idea worth thinking about. So much so than many modern "high efficiency" window air conditioners are designed to let condensation collect in the back of the unit outside where the external fan can splash a bit of it on the coils to utilize evaporation for a boost.

-RatOmeter

a/c power | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 editorial)

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