Well then, that ad at least was scam through and through.
A partial truth, anyway.
It’s absolutely possible for swamp coolers to cool a small space 30 degrees over some number of minutes (‘matter’ of minutes isn’t precise, after all) if you live in a desert.
But yeah, super scammy to imply that would be true no matter the context or that it would be only a few minutes.
I’m currious to try the Icybreeze. It’s a cooler that doubles as an air conditioner. It claims to NOT be a swamp cooler.
That looks like a more finished version of the “fan and a bucket of melting ice”, which actually does sort of work as an air conditioner because you can use the transition of ice to water to cool a room. It takes a good bit of ice though, a manageable amount if you have access to one of those big commercial ice machines, a bit harder if you’re just using a home freezer to make your own. This was discussed in another recent thread:
One of my co-workers bought one of the mini-swamp coolers for our office space which has some of the worst climate control ever. Yes, IF it’s not too humid and it’s blowing directly on you it will provide some relief, not the least because it has a fan.
Unfortunately, being near Lake Michigan, when we’re hot we’re also humid because there is a lot of lake to evaporate water off of (which does keep the lake and shore cool, a really big natural swamp cooler… at the expense of making everything humid). It just makes the office over all more humid, and our de-humidifier (which is actually much more useful) just has to work all the harder.
^ This.
Ha ha ha… not even if you use dry ice.
There’s another portable A/C that actually uses a proper refrigerant system or peltier cooler, so it blows hot air out the back, but is powered by battery or low-voltage DC so it has a very low capacity in order to maintain any semblance of run time. Someone did a review of it by setting it up in his car and ducting the hot air outside. He was “so impressed” by the “great performance” of reducing the temperature in the car from something like 95 degrees to 80 degrees in an hour. To me that’s akin to being impressed at 1885 Doc Brown’s warehouse-sized refrigeration machine’s ability to make one whole ice cube. I think Thunderf00t on YouTube gave the product and the total shill of a “review” a thorough roasting.
I imagine their “test” is to hold a thermometer an inch in front of it.
Sorta like a cheap smoke detector I once bought.
Instructions: For best results, hold directly over flame.
mmm
And then the detection process involves touching it to see if it’s hot?
I think visual detection would be more reliable.
“Is it on fire?”
In a room in the middle of the Atacama filled with desiccant
This is obviously a development of tried and true technology, a significant improvement over rocks - which lack sensitivity as visual fire detectors.
I lived as a kid in Arizona before central air conditioning – with heat pumps – became practical* but we had evaporative coolers big enough to cool the house. With our conditions, humidity typically in the mid-teens, occasionally down to single-digits, evaps were good for cooling the air by about 20 degrees. This meant for our typical daytime temps of 105 to 110 the temperature inside would be 85 to 90 degrees F. With central air came great rejoicing.
*I distinctly remember the unfairness of it all when the master bedrooms got window air conditioners while us kids did not.
While we should have every right to assume otherwise, we simply cannot rule out that their 400 square foot room has an abnormally low ceiling height:
At that point, it’s really all about cubic feet, and tends to make their (bullshit) claims a skosh more plausible.
Thanks for all the replies. ISTM that one problem with these swamp coolers is the moisture content they put into the air. I guess in a really dry environment that would be as plus, but in a house I could see it leading to very rapid corrosion of metal surfaces.
Doing a bit more reading one source said these coolers can cause interior humidity to climb to 85%. As an example I try to keep my gun safe at 60% humidity to keep my firearms from riding in the safe. This device would cause havoc.
Perhaps the room is a walk-in refrigerator?