A sweltering band of humidity has settled in for the week. Even a slow walk produces sweat when this kind of weather dominates the land. The question is, can evaporative coolers deliver the goods when the air is already saturated with water? Will the energy-efficient appliance rise to the task and cool the muggy environment? Come on, we’re about to reveal the answer. Let’s test the situation.
Testing a Hunch
The test environment is clammy and hot. Anyone unlucky enough to enter the area will struggle. This unfortunate individual will feel like they’re being crushed between two giant sponges. A portable evaporative cooler receives its cue and spins up to speed. Is the equipment cooling that room? The answer is yes, but this win is conditional. The air in this test site is already saturated with tiny beads of suspended water, so it simply cannot receive more evaporative content. At the same time, that cooling mechanism is dynamic. Water is actively leaving a tank, being converted into a fine vapour, and that evaporated mist is entering the humid air. So it’s a question of quantity, of how much overhead the high humidity locale will accept. This is where things become tricky.
A Conditional Solution
If humid air is stuck inside a building, open a few windows. It’s an industrial laundromat, a textile rinsing room, or some other super-damp factory interior. Even if the evaporative cooler is working full-out, it’s not going to impact the high humidity conditions in here, right? So, open the doors and windows. Is this a livestock building on a farm? Livestock losses occur when their living quarters are muggy. Again, an open door and a few open vents allow outside air to enter. Convection currents take over, the saturated air shifts, and that seemingly ineffective cooling appliance regains its influence. Of course, the other half of this conditional predicament casts a shadow over that solution. All things considered, the portable unit can’t carry off this maneuver if the outside air is also humid.
Although evaporative coolers are less efficient when they’re used in high humidity regions, there’s still hope. The device will actively blast a breeze into that clammy zone and evaporate a finite quantity of water. However, this effect works best if the user can set up a series of convection currents inside that structure. The best way to do that is to open a door, a window, or some vents. All the same, this tactic can only be considered if the outside air is significantly cooler. Like we said at the beginning, the answer to this tough question is “Yes,” but the approval is conditional.