It’s already 25DegC in my home office.

The best cooling automation I have so far is to turn the fan on when it’s 25 for >5mins.

Is there a nice zigbee / ESP32 evaporation cooler that I can enjoying setting up with HA?

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukOPEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    Thanks

    Hmmm… my office is 50~60%:

    At 55% relative humidity, the swamp cooler will be able to drop the temperature from 90°F to 81°F. That’s a -9°F drop.

    So, it’ll be able to drop 32°C to 27°C…

    Looks like I might have to look for a different solution… or have a higher electricity bill by running a dehumidifier too.

    • Test_Tickles@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Dehumidifiers are air-conditioners… Like literally. So, you would be running a swamp cooler to cool the room by adding humidity, but because dehumidifiers produce excess heat, you would then be adding heat to dehumidify…

        • Test_Tickles@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          It sounds like you are not in the US, so the best I can do is give you some suggestions that are available to me and hopefully they are not too far off for you…
          A small 5000btu window AC are really cheap here, and are typically less than 40lbs (18kg). So you probably won’t want to pull it out of the window daily, but you could probably lug it into position at the beginning of the season, and then take it out at the end of the season.
          Portable ACs typically cost a bit more but are much more mobile. They are typically heavier than comparable window ACs, but they are on wheels and the exhaust tube is light and can be put in taken out of the window on demand. Ones with both an intake and exhaust tube are much more efficient, but they are a lot harder to find (at least around here) and more expensive. The ones with just an exhaust tube do work though, however you should judge it’s cooling by half of whatever it says. So if it says it is a 10,000 BTU then it will perform more like a 5000 BTU. If you wrap the hot exhaust tube in a blanket or some other form of insulation you will see a significant improvement in cooling. Also the exhaust tubes are only about 5 to 6 inches (130-150mm) in diameter, so they can be routed through holes holes smaller than windows. On the side of my garage there’s a hole in the brick where they routed wires and other stuff to the exterior. I was able to cut a hole in the sheetrock on the inside of my garage directly opposite of that hole through the brick. I was then able to route the exhaust from my portable AC through that hole and it blows out through theme opening in the brick. Or maybe you could have the portable AC tube routed to an exhaust in another room but have the AC positioned to blow into your office Despite what others have said swamp coolers do work, even somewhere like where I live where the typical humidity outside is 75 to 95%. But the higher humidity the less positive effect they have. So they definitely fall into the “better than nothing” category. And of course the big downside is it is going to increase the humidity. If your windows are closed, that could cause problems. But my guess is that you have your windows open, so a lot of the humidity is going to make its way out with normal breezes anyways.
          If all else fails Matthias has a great video on how to best position a fan to get the most airflow out a window.