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Just a wick (the grid like paper element) from an evaporative humidifier in a cheap plastic cage with a water trough at the bottom and bungies with hooks to strap it over the front of a standard fan.
The water evaporation will cool the air and raise the humidity.
Could be made for $10 or so.
Can
you tell I live inland in southern California and can't afford to run my A/C?
Evaporative cooling fan
http://www.bigofan.com/products.html
Baked but maybe not within your budget [FarmerJohn, Aug 05 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]
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Just be glad y'all ain't going to USC. As a fellow SoCalßaker, I use twin window fans - occasionally prop a sealed ice pack or open mouthed bottle of the frozen stuff depending on *desired* humidity level. I grew up in Central CA, where it gets *really* hot, so 99°F< doesn't bother me as much as mere mortals. |
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I've got something very simmilar to this sitting in my office at home. A wick strapped to (what amounts to) a basic fan. It wasn't ten dollars, it was £16, but much cheaper than FarmerJohn's example. So, baked. |
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Confused:
a) There are swamps in Southern California?
b) Why do you want to cool swamps down anyway? I think that would really tick off the crocodiles and the other cold-blooded things that live there. |
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Sorry if the name was miss-leading my dear Dr.... A swamp cooler is a device that cools the air in any location (not just swamps) by evaporating water. The swamps in SoCal are populated with two legged cold blooded things. |
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Did everyone catch that this is an add-on for any existing fan, not a product to be sold with the fan included? The low cost is the deal... $5 maybe in quantity, but $10 for sure. |
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Wouldn't the humidity make it more unconfortable? It's not really the heat thats the problem, but the high humidity that prevents your sweat from evaporating and cooling you. |
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[thumbwax], same deal down here in Texas... |
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When I hadn't bought a humidifier yet, I did this same thing with just a piece of rope and a wet towel. Tied the rope to both ends of the towel and hung it from the fan cage. |
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Uh.. wouldn't a _de_humidifier cool down a place? Because it feels much hotter when the humidity is high. |
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The actual heat energy required to turn water into water vapor is more than the apparent heat caused by the increase in humidity. Again, it works better in dry places. The desert of not so western California for example. |
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You're better off making a misting system for portable fans due to the problems below. |
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Couple complications: 1] swamp coolers have to pump water over their mats. Wicking apparently isn't effective enough to supply water to cool the air and allows lime deposits to build up too quickly. 2] The pressure differential needed to pull air through a wet mesh with enough surface area to significantly cool the air is enough to choke most portable fans. |
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I've tried to build devices as described. You either have lower flow resistance by making a whacking huge mat surface with enough sealing to keep air from sneaking in around the fan [imagine a beach ball sized or larger mat]; Or you need to replace the fan with a blower designed to deal with high flow resistances. |
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There are box fan 'swamp coolers' on the market. Home Depot sells them for around $100 bucks. They are iffy in anything over 30% humidity. A good swamp cooler will work up to 50% humidity. |
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blane69, I think you are right. What you say rings true... Back to the drawing boards. |
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How about a system of baffels that bounces the air off of a few flat surfaces? E.g. panels in a tube (tent like material) that "reflect" the air through some 90 degree bends before it can exit into the room. |
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I know this sort of system has been used for filtering air ('59 Jag sedan air filter) but that was with oil wicking up from a sump. |
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