News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
They water the air in Sedona. Let that sink in for a minute. They use machines to spray water into the air, and no, I’m not talking about a humidifier. Like over-the-door air conditioning units that just piss water all over the sidewalk, except it evaporates before it ever makes it to the concrete, just to keep people from passing out while walking to the corner store.
That's just evaporative cooling. People have been doing that for thousands of years. It's pretty damn effective at lowering the temperature a good amount in dry climates.
Totally. It’s very surprising for people who aren’t familiar with it to experience for the first time. Especially aimed outdoors.
That's not air conditioning, at all.
That's evaporative cooling, and it's been used for hundreds of years in cultures worldwide to help reduce heat. Adding humidity into dry air naturally reduces the heat index. It's not supposed to make it to the ground, the entire point is for it to evaporate and increase ambient humidity in the air.
It's extremely energy efficient, but is limited to very dry environments. Above about 30% ambient humidity it quickly stops being effective at cooling the air, and at around 60% ambient humidity it's just no longer noticeable. So for a desert area, it is an ideal, cheap and easy way to cool an area.
There are evaporative systems designed for homes and businesses that use the same principle. A box with an opening on one side for airflow, a large wet pad and a fan combined with ducting, will cool an entire home. It uses remarkably little water, and power only to run a simple pump to keep the pad wet and the fan spinning. It uses a fraction of the power and air conditioner uses and is a lot more effective when humidity is low.
For most of the summer an air conditioner isn't even needed to cool a home. Central ducting with an evaporative cooler will work for 90% of the summer. Only during the monsoons where the humidity is too high for it to be effective is an AC system really necessary.
Source: I live in AZ and my home has both an evaporative cooler and an air conditioner.
Do you have separate discrete units to pull that off? Or are they both tied into the same air circulation system?
Discrete units but both attached to the same ductwork.
Since A/C needs to operate on a closed system there's a one-way damper just below the Evaporative cooler where it attached to the duct work. The evaporative cooler on the other hand works best in an open system, so you can direct airflow best by opening windows in rooms that need more cooling.
Two separate controls as well. The A/C is attached to a standard thermostat. The Evaporative cooler is simple by comparison, just a manual knob with Off, High Fan, Low Fan, High Cool, Low Cool, and Pump only. The last three run the pump to keep the pad wet.
At night, Low Fan might be all that's needed even in the summer, just moving air. The cooler moves A LOT more air around the house than the A/C does since it has a massive spinning drum fan and an open airflow system.
That's a clever arrangement! Thanks for sharing. I'm in Colorado and we get dry enough that evaporative cooling is effective, but home came with AC, which means everything just gets dry and you static shock all your electronics to death as your power bill spins up to infinity. I never considered that one could have a dual system to switch between. What is your temperature differential with the evap operational? 20 degrees or so?
Yeah about 15-20 normally, but can get up around 30 around peak summer with zero humidity. Above about 100 outside though it just can't keep up and the AC is needed even with low humidity.
So basically above 100 and above about 40% or so humidity, the AC is needed, otherwise the evap cools better and is a lot cheaper to run.
Yup. Evaporative cooling was popular in AZ before electricity was available. In the late 1800s to early 1900s there were many homes and building with cooling towers on them. People would hang wet sheets across them and the cooling effect would create a current as it fell down the tower which would on turn create more draft across the cooling cloth.
I meant “like” as in similar to, not as a filler word. I know they’re not air conditioners. I was likening the design for descriptive purposes for people who live in less arid regions. It was especially surprising to see them aimed outdoors when I visited. When I asked a shop attendant about them, he said they were to keep tourists from passing out because they drink too much alcohol and not enough water. Haha