HELP: Floating, Not Eating and Swimming Weird

[celia]

Leah,

I have a potential cheap cooling solution for you (and other Australians with access to Big-W). I'm investing tomorrow.

My mum rang me today and said that Big W have these air coolers (you put a tray of water in the back and they blow really nice cool air) for $99 I believe. It might seem like a decent layout but remember it will keep not only our little babies but also ourselves nice and cool all summer, it easily does one room.

You should appreciate this, I have always believed an Aussie house without A/C is like a Canadian house without heating. Yippee, my axies made me get one. Good on them!!!!

 

[mik]

Hi Celia, this principle is common to many types of evaporative cooler. In the middle east we used to call them desert coolers. Water is trickled over a packing and air is blown over the surface by use of a fan.

The evaporation causes what is known as adiabatic cooling (sorry i'm an engineer!).

Problems to watch out for: If the coils or packing gets dirty you can blow contaminated air, laden with fungus and bacteria, around. In the UK building game we went through some paranoia (and still do) regarding legionella and wet coolers. Plus the units can scale up with deposits and need regular cleaning.

Message is keep it clean - always! I have seen them in use throughout the middle east in filthy conditions but they are much beloved because of their effectiveness and simplicity.

 

[cynthia]

We call them swamp coolers here. I have had one in a previous house and it worked well for keeping the whole house cool. It was a large one though.

 

[celia]

It's only a small one. It's got the packing and filter at the back so it's easily accessible for cleaning which is good. It's doing an okay job but we had two days of 40 degrees. My poor babies got up to 27 at one point. I've got them down to 21 now, been working it down slowly so as not to scare them. Now to keep up the salt baths. They seem on top of it though. Does anyone recommend meucherocrome for fungus at all?

 

[john]

I've never had to use it.