Savvy appliance owners know all about an evaporative cooler’s inner workings. It’s an intricate image, one that’s meant for engineers. It’s not meant as an everyday resource. And that’s fine, for as long as it cools down the surrounding area, there’s no need to understand a complicated circuit drawing. All the same, curious minds are waiting for a by-the-numbers teardown.
A Block Diagram Teardown
A process flowchart is the tool of choice here, with its simplified format illustrating the schematics of a functional evaporative cooler. Block number one is the water pump. It’s an electric motor, a stator and coil mechanism that uses low voltages to produce a motion-generating electromagnetic field. Inserted into the water pipes, a compact impellor forces water to circulate.
The Key Functional Parts
Still in block diagram mode, the next processing box contains the water reservoir. A line connects the reservoir and pump blocks, for it’s the tank full of water that feeds the water pump. In reality, the lines coming out of those boxes are connecting wires and hoses. An electric power supply hooks into the water pump while tubes and filler caps are installed on the reservoir. For simplicities sake, though, let’s stick to the schematics.
Fitting the Blower Unit
Where does the blower unit fit into the schematic? It doesn’t, at least not quite yet. First of all, before the water is released into the air, there’s a medium transforming box to add to the diagram. It’s the wet media that occupies the next block, and another line is drawn between here and the water pump. Hoses and pipes circulate the fluid, and the piped water is now saturating the spongy materials. Again, this material takes many forms. It’s honeycombed or composed of desiccated layers or some other super-absorbent fabric. Having delivered the water to the fan area, let’s leave the housing.
Exterior Design Particulars
The schematics are put aside, which means we’re moving back outside the enclosure. Instead of hoses and pumps, we’re looking at a large blower unit. Last on the block diagram, large fan blades are there to catch the water and distribute the evaporating stream into the local air currents. The toughened plastic or plastic-coated aluminium enclosure frames the blower, supports everything, and acts as an impact-resistant, mobile housing.
The block diagram approach serves this post well. Of course, there’s always more to add, including electronic controls and digital remote controls, plus a thermostat or two, but such extraneous parts exist to regulate evaporative coolers. They’re not considered main functional parts, although perhaps they should be, for a flawed electronic controller can easily disable an otherwise operational evaporative cooler.