Q: How is your COOLING SYSTEM working now?
A: Great! The details follow... but... in a nutshell... yeeha! unfriggin' believable!!!
60 gallons of water evaporated so far today.
It feels like each level of the house is about one level lower than without the system running. (i.e. 3rd floor feels like 2nd... 2nd like 1st... 1st like basement)
That's about 10-20 degree drop downstairs... and up here (on the 3rd floor) it is about 20-30 degrees less.
While sidd was in town, he was gracious enough to help my pea brain through the math (see below.)
On a typical hot day, I'm evaporating 40 gallons of water.
Sooo... the math suggests that each gallon of evaporated water is equal to running a typical air conditioner for 1 hour.
Or, you could say I'm saving 40-60 air conditioning hours a day.
Or, that I would have to run 40-60 air conditioners for 1 hour to achieve the same effect.
notes:
1 BTU = 1055 Joules
1 BTU heats 1 pound of water by 1 degree F
Lfusion = 80 calories (to freeze water)
Levaporation = 536 calories
1 calorie = 4.2 joules
1 calorie raises the temperature of 1 gm (or cc)
of water by 1 degree C
1 US gallon = 3.8 liters = 3800 cc
The first thing I thought of was a cold beer. That taken care of, I set it down and crawled behind the groaning air conditioner compressor.
I see a 15 amp 220V circuit, actual running rating is 12 A (with various fusing options for startup current, and does not include fan motor indoors, so i will use the 15 A number.)
That works out to is 3.3KW unit.. eats 3.3KWh per hour
1 cubic foot of water saves 1.78 KWh
So evry cubic foot evaporated shuts my air conditioner off for 32 minutes.
So I crawled out, took a deep swig, smiled broadly and set the hose on 'kill'.
Of course, this is an experiment, so I need to keep track of indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, and water usage and a buncha other stuff like air conditioner running time, and utility bills, etc... in my copious spare time... watch this space for further details.
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