Swamp cooler?

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A swamp cooler adds moisture to an environment to cool. Its a poor man's air conditioning system for very dry locations. I would not recommend their use in a frame shop as it would add moisture to frames and all paper products. Once they leave your shop there will be "shock" of the products to dry out on the way home and in an air conditioned home or office causing warping.
 
Cityframe, where are you located. Here in Pueblo, Colorado, my shop has had a "swamper" as the main source of cooling for years. I feel the swamper doesn't add any more humidity to your shop than a location that has 15%+ relative humidity by nature.You probably won't use the swamper if the outside humidity level is above say 12 - 15% as they don't work. My question has always been, "How do framers deal with high humidity all the time, say like in Florida?"
And I have never had something come back because "Once they leave your shop there will be "shock" of the products to dry out on the way home and in an air conditioned home or office causing warping."

This is my opinion based on my experiences.
 
One of my local moulding suppliers uses a swamp cooler in thier Warehouse and their moulding comes warped all the time, I blame it on the swamp cooler
 
We're in California, so it's pretty dry here. And hot, in the 100's this week. I expect the cooler would be on a lot. They're getting really popular here because they are very green.
 
At home we use a humidifer in the winter. Wood stove dries the air out quite a bit. They're green, but what about the water use?

Don't read me wrong, I'm very green! Just always wonder where you save and where you waste and what the balance is.

I remember a family member of my ex who lived in OH had a humidifier system in there hot air furnace system. There was mold and rust issues that practically destroyed their heating system. In CA I would think the added moisture in the air would feel great, can you keep it out of the workroom/storage area? Like those plastic flaps that supermarkets use in the walkin freezers and dairy coolers?
 
I did my internship in a gallery with an evaporative cooler. It was a high-end gallery and frame shop. They didn't have any problems. Next year I'm putting one in my studio, but I live in the high desert where humidity is a foreign concept.

BTW...I hope everyone is surviving the flood in Atlanta. I think I remember seeing framers on the G from Atlanta...blessings to all of you.
 
I think it is all about balance. That is a great question for Hugh (or maybe Google it?)...."What is the appropriate humidity level for conservation work labs / framing studios?"
There are little 'gizmos' you can buy to measure your humidity levels. Too much and too little can cause all sorts of problems.

Here in Phoenix, AZ. where we can have 3% humidity levels, evap. coolers are great. But come monsoon season, they are worthless.

Hopefully someone might have the best % to run our shops at - I'd love to know!
 
We have a newer evaporative cooler in our home. Water bill went up by about $2 a month but elec bill dropped by $85. And the added moisture is great.

The owner of the building put individual roof-based commercial systems in all the units a couple of years ago. There are vents throughout the ceiling so putting in grocery walk-in type plastic barriers would not work. That was some serious creative thinking, though! The other tenants include a 24 hr fitness, a child care center, a salon, dog groomer, real estate office, a martial arts studio, and a restaurant. All seem to be very pleased with the system. Our space is the only vacancy, it was formerly a dry cleaners.

Everything else about the space works, my only hesitation is the possible damage from the cooler.
 
Get yourself a hygrometer (a device that is used to measure humidity).
I would think that anything less than 15% would not hurt your moulding or matboard. I you see the humidity getting to high, turn the cooler off and just run it on high ventto move the air. Like I stated in my original post, when the outside humidity is high, "swampers" do not cool.
 
Gawd I love busting myths. mik, stop it. Same goes for Sherry Lee...... Shayla please be a doll and go give her a semi stern talking to. Thank you.

Installing a 1,000cfm in the roof back in my days in the California desert (near Victorville) was a no brainer....... but to make it work like everyone elses 5,000 or 20,000 you have to know what you're doing.

When I was a kid, the hose didn't quite reach. So I had to fill the 5gal bucket with water and walk it the last 20ft. Then I got smart and figured out how to put 30 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket.
first I hung the bucket up near the top of the 8' post..... the hose would just reach. I hacked a notch in the side of the rim to hook the hose in. Next I drove a couple of 16p nails in the side of the bucket near the bottom.
Oops..... now it leaks. :D
I tied a rope around the bucket just below the holes..... and stretched it over to the stake just past where I needed the water.

When I turned on the water, the water ran through the hose.
When the hose was full with 100' of water, it ran out the end into the bucket.
When the bucket filled, it leaked out the holes.
The water squirting out the holes, hit the rope and surface tension made the water run down the rope to the other end.
When the water got to where the rope was at it's lowest point, it collected until the surface tension burst and it watered where I needed it.

Along the way, some fell off the rope anyway. So that is where I planted the squash row. So when I watered the tomatoes, I also watered the squash.

Ok, so what has this got to do with the swamp cooler?

Well this was in Bishop where the summer was stuck about 110 degrees, and we lived on DG Decomposed Granite. That means if you make an irrigation trench 30' long...... and turn the hose on full, somewhere about 20-24' the water disappears.
That part of the garden was mine and I didn't have the $3 for more hose.

So a swamp cooler only works if you can keep moving the air. The bucket only held 5 gallons.... until I poked a hole in the bottom.... then it would "hold" as much as I kept putting in.

If you have a 2,000sq ft house/shop; and the walls are 10' high you have 20,000 cubic feet of space. If your swamp cooler is 5,000cfm (pretty standard for $800) it only takes the cooler 4 minutes to fill the house.

BUT..... if you intall "Up-Ducts" in the areas like the farthest from the door into the bedroom, and near the wall in the bathroom etc.... the 5,000cfm can shove cooled air into the house all day long.

Now, I will be the first to admit that in New Orleans when I was there, some of those days seemed like 105 degrees with 130% humidity. But the truth is, that as soon as the dew point is reached (which is lower than the temp) the "air" can't hold the moisture any more and lets it go. Which takes a whole lot of energy and is the reason the temp would drop that 10-15 degrees when it rained.

But that didn't explain why the rust bucket swamp coolers on all of those back woods lounges can still cool. The answer is, that even a 10% conversion in that kind of heat feels refreshing. If the heat outside the bar is 95, and the heat inside the dark bar is only 86 (10%) the perceived temp is even cooler.

But lets get back to reality.

there you are in the Central Valley of CA. The temp is 100 and the RH (relative humidity) [lets pick the sweaty arm pit of CA] in Stockton is at a sweltering 78%..... that still leaves a conversion rate of 22%. AND if the water is coming straight out of the pipes..... it's already at 58 degrees with a conversion resevoir of 42%. Which could net you a blast of 5,000cfm @63degrees.

If it fills your shop up in 5 minutes...... you don't get squat...but the doors keep trying to open themselves. :D
If you have up-ducts..... you are going to be cold as a well diggers instep if he is related to a witch.

Now lets talk about humidity for a moment.

If the temp in your shop/house etc is under 72 degrees...... how much humidity do you think it will support?

Hint here.... the colder it is (think Pueblo, CO in the winter) the less moisture the air can support.

IF you want to do a real fun experience.... and there is a mall near you with an ice rink...... take your Hygrometer at the end of the mall farthest from the ice. Also have a thermometer. The temp will probably be about 68-72 degrees. The RH will probably vary depending where you live.

Now holding them at say 6' above the floor...... walk down the mall and out into the middle of the ice.

Here is what I will tell you. 1) you will feel chilled. [duh?] 2) the tempature will be the same as it was before. [huh????]

Now..... Question: "What happened to the RH?"

So, back to the myth about swampers not cooling when the humidity is high..... you were never a drunk sailor in PI were you. And the reason it smells that way in PI and India is because they use "grey water" in the swampies. :D

Try getting that image out of your mind's nostrils.
 
Baer,India smells like that for MANY reasons....The "greywater" is proably the most sanitary thing on the streets!!!!! BTW,Careful...My Mother got a lovely(near fatal) case of Legionaire`s from the coolers at the Columbus,OH convention center a few years back.VERY rare occurence,though. Also,that is why some supermarkets no longer spray the produce.Bacteria will grow in the hoses,and the misters would make a lovely germ aerosol! L.
 
That is one very grave concern as is MERCA and a few others these days.....
so much concern has sprouted a newer version of the old swamp.

Granted $$$$ helped move this along too.

this is a kind of very lengthy (when isn't government documents) yet interesting paper which explains the whole process, including the use of up-ducts or pressure relief valves, and the new system that keeps inside air inside and the processing outside.... including the humidity.

Of course if you have some real money to throw around...... and want to suck the temp and moisture right out of the air...... nothing beats a chill beam.
 
Baer, I 'm still not really sure what the point is that you were making, or how it might relate to the subject at hand. Ok, there were a few posts about an evaporative cooler not being as efficient at higher RH, but you agreed to that in principle if not the the same extent.

The question was, "what will a swamp cooler do to my mouldings and mats?" If you are living in an area with already high humidity, adding moisture can't help. And, as you pointed out, the lower the temperature the less moisture the air can hold, so you are compounding the problem - adding moisture and lowering the temperature - both of which factors increase the Relative Humidity. If you started out at your theoretical 78% you may well end up with rain, even if it does get down to 63°. At least it would be a cool rain, I guess.

As to the other question brought up, "what is the best RH level for moulding papers?", I know that wood lives best at about 40% RH. I'll leave it to someone more familiar with paper to chime in with that.
 
Baer Charlton said:
there you are in the Central Valley of CA. The temp is 100 and the RH (relative humidity) [lets pick the sweaty arm pit of CA] in Stockton is at a sweltering 78%..... that still leaves a conversion rate of 22%. AND if the water is coming straight out of the pipes..... it's already at 58 degrees with a conversion resevoir of 42%. Which could net you a blast of 5,000cfm @63degrees.
Click to expand...

Apart from the fact that this had nothing (as far as I could tell) with the OPs question, it was bothering me as seemingly illogical. So I just took a look at my psychrometric chart. If you are at 100 °F and 78% relative humidity, that equals approximately 16 grains of water per cubic foot at dew point. Unfortunately, the dew point for 16 grains/cu ft is 92 °F. This led me to question where you got your formulas from, and to Wikipedia where I found the following example:

At 32°C (90°F) and 50% relative humidity, air may be cooled to about 24°C (75°F). The dew point for these conditions is 20°C (~68°F).

In this example, the air is already 10 °F cooler and with 28 %points less RH, and they are saying the maximum cooling effect is 5 °F more than you.

Using the information on the above referenced page:
The wet-bulb temperature of 100 °F and 78% RH equals approximately 93.5 °F (per calculator at http://www.4wx.com/wxcalc/rh.php). Since you then have to add 6 to 8 °F to the wet bulb temperature to get the maximum cooling effect you are now back to where you started. In other words, you will not get any cooling effect in the example that you provided.

Baer Charlton said:
Gawd I love busting myths.
Click to expand...
Please do.
 
If you use a swamp cooler correctly, the humidity does not get very high.

If it's working well for your shop, odds are, many of your customers are using them as well. In that case, if they take their work straight home, there should be no "shock".
 
This shop has been using an ancient evap cooler for 50 years. Keep your outer doors cracked a bit so air flow moves from the entry vent, through the shop, then outside. Don't leave it on over night, as the moisture will build up too much, but turn it on as soon as you come in... They don't cool off already hot air very quickly. During high humidity periods, like the desert monsoon season in August, you'll really wish you had A/C. Swamps don't work well when the humidity rises and temp climbs above 90 degrees. And they seldom cool more than 5 degrees under those conditions. As for your mats, we keep them stored upright in a fairly tight pack; as for moudling, a lot of ours comes in warped already :icon9:. Keep your duct work clean, to avoid debrise blowing around. And watch where they are aimed... Don't want to have customers standing at the design table with their cheeks flapping from a 5G force of wind in their faces.

If I were Queen, I'd have A/C in a frame shop, if for nothing else than keeping the framers comfortable. But a good evap system can be economical and if used right doesn't cause too many problems.
 
Thanks Baer for the educational reading. I said in my first post "This is my opinion based on my experiences." I believe that those of us who use evaporative coolers speak from our own experiences and not from the technical manuals of what should / does happen. Like HannaFate " If you use a swamp cooler correctly, the humidity does not get very high." and Matoaka " a good evap system can be economical and if used right doesn't cause too many problems.", we have figured out what works for us and what doesn't. No myths to be busted, just life experiences.
 
Mik, you guys have a HUGE resource there about 2 miles from where we had the class. It used to be called the Rocky Mountain Institute.... but now its like the Sustainable Living Research or something.....
We only got about 30 minutes to run through..... but I now know what kind of building I would build for a zero carbon frame shop.... but along the way, I would use a swampie.
 
David N Waldmann said:
At 32°C (90°F) and 50% relative humidity, air may be cooled to about 24°C (75°F). The dew point for these conditions is 20°C (~68°F).

In this example, the air is already 10 °F cooler and with 28 %points less RH, and they are saying the maximum cooling effect is 5 °F more than you.

Using the information on the above referenced page:
The wet-bulb temperature of 100 °F and 78% RH equals approximately 93.5 °F (per calculator at http://www.4wx.com/wxcalc/rh.php). Since you then have to add 6 to 8 °F to the wet bulb temperature to get the maximum cooling effect you are now back to where you started. In other words, you will not get any cooling effect in the example that you provided.

Please do.
Click to expand...

Unlike the little light bulb in your refrigerator that only comes on when you open the door. The correct use of a evap cooler is "continuous".

So your example numbers may be correct outside the envelope or when the system is first turned on...... but very quickly the number start sliding down quickly. ALL OF THE NUMBERS: temp, RH and dew point.

BUT only if you are providing a pressure relief escape or up-ducts for the higher temp (which in the upper regions of a warehouse can be hitting the upper 150+ with a respectively higher RH.

Proper placement of a evap cooler is a direct dump to the center of the floor where two things happen, 1) it cools the floor by picking up some of the energy (heat) from the floor..... which tempers the cooled air flow and 2) with that extra heat (energy) but lower humidity in the cooler air, it allows the air to continue to absorb more moisture until it reaches its balance point.

As that is happening in the floor strata.... and the cooler air is getting "fatter" (JBR can attest to flying in hot weather vs cool weather).... this pushes the hot thinner wetter air out the up-ducts at about..... 5,000 cfm (which is why you need your up-ducts flow matched to your inflow.

Now back to your question about Vermont.... if you had a system of say a 1,000cfm and a 5,000cfm or two and could turn them on in stages.... (I'm assuming you have an insulated roof and wall system . . . apposed to the one place I worked in a steel building that was blistering hot in summer and freezing in winter..... and yes, in the summer the paper mats were floppy like a sponge and we regularly had to run them through the vacuum/heat to be able to cut..... and quickly fit before they ballooned up again.)

On those really hot days you could be running all three, but spring and summer, maybe just a single 5,000.... but almost all summer long, I would be running the 1,000cfm 24/7 just to keep the temp moderated so that the walls/floors/moulding/fixtures etc would eventually have a "radiant" mean temp.... that would not support a high RH.

Just because you are using water to create cooler air, doesn't mean you have increased the RH in that air..... but just the inverse.

Look my young friend, for ease we talk about temp and water..... but the truth is we are talking about transfer of energy and the energies ability to hold molecules active enough to prevent globs to form.

The more energy (higher temp) the more agitated the hydrogen and oxygen molecules are which allows for more to gather in a defined space (higher RH).
The minute you remove a fair portion of the energy (warm air passing through a wall of water will give up energy to evaporate the water..... but also gives up it's ability to hold as many molecules) the slower the agitation resulting in less suspension of water molecules. . . .thus a lower RH.

As for the supplier in the south east that someone complained about that they stuff all summer long is warped and wet...... three things come to my mind:
1) Why are you dealing with them?
2) How do they stay in business with bad product?
and the third is that probably the owner is either cheap and it's in an uninsulated steel building with no heat or cooling....and don't care about the product or their people; or they are ignorant of the cause and effect or how to change it. Either way, I firmly believe this economy will sort those out.
 
Ignore

N/M
 
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How do framers deal with high humidity all the time, say like in Florida


or LA or ,believe it or not, Virginia(some parts actually seem more prone to humidity-at various times of yr-than down here)????(not many swampers in fla---they are here but mostly use on office bldgs--told they are alot cheaper to run in big structure)

dont know about the others but we have a/c 24/7 and maitenance the units every quarter to keep them healthy and their drains free flowing--I had my service guy to be extra cautious looking for anything growing in/around the unit--I sprayed the dickens out of it when spotted. Cant do that with a swamper BUT you can make real sure it isn't growing anything --this will xlate into alot of inside problems--(directly??? or just because of all the excess crud floating around???).
I Had a habit of spraying the backroom assembly room(floor-walls-worktables-storage areas) with lysol(used that because it has mold killers in it AND it is mostly alcohol-it evaporates well) every month...didnt hurt to do it and, as I never-in 7 years- had a problem with moulds- was effevtive). I also douched down anything that came in with mould already present(inside or out)....big trick is not letting this stuff get a toe hold in your area anf then not letting it stay(it'll only get worse).
 
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Baer Charlton said:
Look my young friend, for ease we talk about temp and water..... but the truth is we are talking about transfer of energy and the energies ability to hold molecules active enough to prevent globs to form.
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Baer, are you a salesman perchance?

Here is a chart produced by the Consumer Energy Center of the State of Californiahttp://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/heating_cooling/evaporative.html:
evap_chart3.gif

I realize it's a Government agency and they don't always know what they are doing...

However, here is one final non-technical thought. Take a look at some information from a place that SELLS evaporative coolers (and they are by no means unique in that regard):
How Does a Swamp Cooler Work?
​
Swamp coolers are simple, low-technology devices because they cool with evaporation, and at one point or another, we've all experienced evaporative cooling. In fact, the principle can be akin to wearing a wet t-shirt and standing in front of a fan. Assuming the climate is dry and the humidity levels are low, a cooling (and sometimes even chilling) effect will be felt instantaneously. However, on the other hand, in areas with high-humidity, this will only result in a feeling of dampness on the skin and in the air (emphasis mine).
Swamp Cooler Buying Tip
​
Always remember that swamp coolers work best in arid climates; in other words, in temperatures above 80° F and with humidity levels below 30%.
​
They must not want the potential business of all those people who live in "non-arid" climates. I guess they are afraid they couldn't handle all the business....or maybe it's the complaints.

I'm sorry Baer, but in spite of your flattery I'm not interested in that particular bridge you're selling.
 
No problem David, you can have which ever bridge trips your trigger.

My point is that this is not a black and white thing.... there is mostly grey.

Always remember that swamp coolers work best in arid climates
Click to expand...

Operative word here is "best". It doesn't say "only".

People here are pleasently surprised when they finally turn on a swamper... and sun of a gun: it works.

It's the same as solar electric. It's always over cast, we're too far north, it rains too much........ The facts are: Portland IS the national average for solar hours. Perception.

Now about that wet t-shirt in front of a fan in New Orleans when the temp hits 100 with a RH of 95%....... so you're saying it's the "feeling of dampness" that gives those dancers those rock hard SNEs?
 
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