Lou Schneider
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- Joined
- Mar 14, 2005
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taoshum said:Interesting perspective on the dynamics of the air flow. There's no free lunch tho... cool, wet air is much heavier than warm, dry air so the fan on your swamp cooler has to work harder to move the cool, wet air from low to high. OTOH, the warm, dry air wants to vent anyway since it is lighter... in fact some of the ancient middle east home designs used this effect to vent hot air and pull in cool air from below.
It's called chimney effect. Hot air rises, if you place an opening at the top of the stack you'll draw in replacement air at the bottom.
Jerry's doing the same thing in his garage - if anything, the convection flow will help airflow through the swamp cooler, not hinder it. I'll bet there's a slight airflow from convection through the cooler any time the windows are open, even if the cooler's fan is off. So there is a free lunch, after all.