Window units vs. Central

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Many of the new window units don't pee any water because the condensate is channeled to a pan that abuts the hermet ball and the heat from the compressor evaporates the water.

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Thanks for the information. I never heard of a "hermet ball" and don't know what that is, but I reckon that's what's happening with the condendsate from my window unit.

[Pat]

Bird, A design innovation that prevents water runoff from A/C units while increasing their efficiency is this:

Let the water pool up at the bottom of the unit till it is deep enough to be hit by the blade tips of the fan blowing on the condenser coils. This fan may be improved and have a continuous ring around the circumference. Anyway the fan picks up the water and slings it into the air stream going through the coils. The water is evaporated by the hot coils. The heat required to evaporate the water cools the coils quite a bit, increasing the efficiency above just a dry air flow. Unless you have TREMENDOUS humidity you may never see liquid water come out of the unit.

If you stand in the hot air flow out the back of the unit you may feel little drops of water once in a while after it has run enough to have enough water to touch the fan.

This is a really slick trick and was long overdue to be employed.

Pat

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
This is a really slick trick and was long overdue to be employed.

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Yep, sounds like someone came up with a good idea.

[egon]

This is not new and may not be so slick. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

In some of the plants I worked at water was sprayed on air coolers during hot days. It took many years but finally it was determined that solids in the water precipitated out on the coils changing the heat exchange effects. Did more harm than good! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Bird]

I've probably mentioned this before, but many years ago, there was a product on the market that got a lot of publicity for awhile, then seemed to just disappear. It was the tubing, nozzles, etc. to spray a fine mist of water on the condensor coils during hot weather. It initially sounded like a good idea, but maybe it went away for the same reason you mentioned.

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The condensate water that is used to help cool the condenser coil has little or no impurities in it so build-up on the coil is not a problem. As soon as you try that trick with tap water, you are basically distilling the water and that leaves the impurities, whatever they may be, on the coils. You sometimes see evaporative coolers used as a "booster" to help lower the temperature of the air that is used to cool the coils of the condenser. That works well in very arid climates like FRESNO CALIFORNIA for example. That's an old Fresno trick; using an evap cooler to boost the condenser. After all, when it's 115, you got to do SOMETHING. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I call the modified spherical-shaped housing that surrounds hermetically-sealed compressors the 'hermet ball". Don't touch one while the unit is running unless you touch it real close to the low side inlet. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[Bird]

Dave, I never lived or worked or went to school in any building with refrigerated air until I was nearly 20 years old. I bought a 7 year old house trailer (later called mobile homes and now manufactured housing). At that time, all of them that I knew of were metal skinned, and mine was 8' wide by 28' long; yep, smaller than modern RVs, but also at that time, the 10' house trailers were the top of the line. Anyway, the bedroom was in the back end, but I put a Fedders air-condtioner in the front wndow and it moved enough air to cool the bedroom in the back when I worked nights and slept during the day.

But my parents only had a big evaporative cooler in a living room window of their house. I think they were usually called swamp coolers back then. So I'd seen homes with evaporative coolers and homes with refrigerated air, but I had never seen homes with both until 1990 when we spent a month in Phoenix, AZ.

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I can still remember the day in the summer of 1947 when my Dad got up from his sweaty attempt at taking a nap, ....he had a dairy and milked cows and delivered milk in the pre-dawn hours each day. ....and went to Azevedo Hardware in Gustine, California where he bought an Essick Evaporative Cooler. The copper tubing that was used to take water to the cooler from an exterior faucet was "war copper" a tube that was slightly undersized, ... not a full 1/4".... and which would not fit the regular fittings so you had to solder a transition sleeve to use it. We had that cooler as our only climate modifier up until the time I left home to go away to college (1961) and the apartment we had in college was my first-ever use of an air conditioner. A swamp cooler will make 70 degree air, IF it is in an arid climate, and IF the pads are in good shape, and IF the water distributor tubes are nice and clean. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[egon]

That pure condensate water will have an affinity for any airborne particles and soon have lots of impurities in it.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]