Evaporative Coolers and the Environment
Using an evaporative cooler in place of an air conditioner to stay cool when it's hot can be highly beneficial to the environment in a number of ways. This section of the website looks at how we can reduce the environmental impact that enjoying a convenient indoor cooling creates by our choice of cooling device.
The modern family household is heavily reliant on a variety of electrically powered appliances for many variations on what we have come to enjoy and expect as "conveniences" rather than "necessities" with the result being high power usage month on month. This consumption of electricity increases dramatically during the hot summer months when millions of households turn on their air conditioning systems that work to maintain a comfortable indoor climate.
Power Consumption and Environmental Impact
While most of us live this way blissfully unaware of the impact our actions are having on the environment, there are some that have woken up to the hard and often unpalatable truths about energy consumption and its consequences. However, it's not all bad and there are ways that many of us can help to reduce the heavy load on the electricity grid each summer by our choice of air cooling solution.
One such way is to replace the more traditional air conditioner with an evaporative cooler in those areas that have a climate that is conducive to its best performance. The best climate for getting the best performance from vent free evaporative air cooling devices is a hot, dry atmosphere as is usually found in inland locations that are far from large expanses of water (lakes, rivers etc) such as in desert or semi-desert towns.
The major reason these coolers are a much better choice for providing a comfortable indoor climate is their extremely low energy consumption ratings when compared to regular air conditioners. As a general albeit stark example, a medium sized evap cooler outputting somewhere in the region of 500 CPM (Cubic Feet per Minute) such as the Kuulaire PACKA53 model.
This particular unit can deliver enough cold air to cool up to 325 sq ft by up to 25°F, yet it only uses 150 Watts of power to achieve that feat. A comparable 10,000 BTU air conditioner will use 2-3 kiloWatts, up to 20 times as much to do the same cooling job.
When you work that out in graphically high impact terms, it can mean reducing your energy bills during summer to 1/20th of what you'd be paying if you continued using AC!
Helping the Environment
While the above is just on example of how much you can save in terms of the dollars assigned to your household budget, there is another way in which making this change can have a massively positive impact:
The local and national environmental situation is in serious trouble at present because it is under threat by the nation's gargantuan thirst for consuming power. The more power we use, the greater the load on the electricity grid to supply homes and businesses with the power they need to run all those energy hogging appliances including AC.
But if more and more households and business are willing to make the switch to low power evaporative cooling technology in the locations where it is effective, that load can be reduced considerably. What that would mean to the environment is a slow down in the use of natural resources to generate that power with the knock-on effect of lower pollution levels.
If just one household in every town in dry climate areas made that switch to economical swamp coolers, the impact would be unnoticeable. But if a hundred households in each town did it, then we'd see a measurable positive change and if a thousand homes in each town changed, then I'm sure you can imagine the positive impact on power generation and the ecological benefits.
Every family in dry climate areas that currently uses air conditioning to stay cool in summer because they don't know of this cheaper and more beneficial alternative of evaporation cooling can do their bit for our planet if they choose to. It's all a case of first knowing about the alternatives and then being considerate enough to at least investigate this solution to see just how much they can save for themselves while benefitting the country as a whole
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