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Evaporative coolers work best with dry air. That is bringing in dry outside air, then letting it exhaust out a window.
For example: In Arizona it is typically dry. And when it rains, evaporative coolers don't work very well. That is why you don't see evaporative coolers in humid areas.
So they will not work well just recirculating the air in one room. The air will become humid.
Every swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) I have seen, used and/or maintained in the SW United States pulls air from the outside, and exhausts air to the outside...
Ours did. It worked very well until more people moved in and had more landscaping in the desert which they watered. When the humidity grew the swamp cooler didn't work all that well. If the air outside is reasonably dry, it works. If the humidity is higher, a small window AC does a much better job. My AC unit here had an 'auto' feature which draws the air from inside the cooled room and makes it run a lot less and generally work better. I intend to replace the small AC with a stronger one like the main one since with the door open it keeps the back of the house cool.
Since the first purpose of an A/C unit is to remove humidity and cooling the air is it's second purpose would it make sense to pay for another machine on top of that that adds humidity?
I disagree. I believe for most people, the purpose of their air conditioner is to cool the air, with little or no concern about the air's humidity.
Besides, This is what actually happens: Only when the inside air's humidity is high enough will it condense on the evaporator coils, and thus remove water vapor from the air, but the exhaust air's relative humidity is relatively higher or saturated than the warm air taken in. Only once the cooled air is warmed inside the home does the relative humidity drop.
In a way, cooling air is kinda like squeezing a sponge.
1. When the sponge is saturated with water, it holds it. The analogy is Air is fully saturated but ts not raining.
2. When you squeeze it a little, and let go, it will let loose some water, but its still fairly wet, The analogy is relatively high relative humidity).
3. Squeeze it harder then let go and it lets loose even more water. The analogy is relatively low relative humidity.
4. Squeeze it again but not as hard as the last time and it will still retain its water holding onto it until you squeeze harder then the last time.
5. each time you squeeze the sponge, it is akin to raising the relative humidity until the air is saturated and lets water condenses out
Every swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) I have seen, used and/or maintained in the SW United States pulls air from the outside, and exhausts air to the outside...
That is because once the air inside is fully saturated, it can no longer cool the air and mold will grow on everything.
On the other hand, one could build a bucket swamp cooler or the like, that takes air from the inside of the home passes it through a saturated medium with a fan, cool the exhausted air through latent heat of vaporization, while an air conditioner removes excess humidity from the inside air.
Evaporative coolers work best with dry air. That is bringing in dry outside air, then letting it exhaust out a window.
For example: In Arizona it is typically dry. And when it rains, evaporative coolers don't work very well. That is why you don't see evaporative coolers in humid areas.
So they will not work well just recirculating the air in one room. The air will become humid.
Recirculating the air in one room will just eventually saturate the air in that room, unless one also runs an AC unit that not only does the ejecting heat, or more precisely thermal energy, out of the room, but also removes the excess humidity.
Central AC with single-room swamp; blocking returns
Not directly addressed yet in the thread: MY question is whether it might help and whether it is potentially harmful or not to an A/C system; to run a window or portable evaporative cooler in a room with the whole house AC return open so as to feed the A/C cooler, wetter, air; meanwhile possibly closing returns in other rooms so that the AC system is 'assisted' by the evap cooler, which would probably have a window open in that room, not served by the AC system? Does that make sense? My concern before trying this seriously is whether the humidified air can hurt the AC unit; and whether blocking most returns could create an air pressure problem that might be harmful to the AC unit. Thanks for any ideas.
Following up on previous post, I forgot to mention the idea of just using the whole house fan and duct system of the AC without refrigeration, just to circulate the humidified air from a single room throughout the house. Pros and cons?
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Central AC with single-room swamp; blocking returns
