If you are looking for cooling down, you will not only find fans and air conditioning systems in the large online shops, but also often so-called evaporative coolers in various sizes. They arouse interest because they are sometimes advertised as “mobile air conditioning without a hose” or “tabletop air conditioning unit”. So they are supposed to solve two problems of classic air conditioning units, which are rather large and inflexible due to the necessary hose.
The basic idea of the evaporative cooler also sounds plausible: water removes energy from the environment when it evaporates, which makes the air colder. If you distribute this slightly colder air with the help of a fan, the room should cool down to a certain extent. At least the air should feel cooler when blown onto the body.
- Evaporative coolers are often marketed as mobile air conditioners without a hose.
- At their core, these devices are fans that additionally distribute cool and moist air throughout the room.
- In fact, you benefit from the additional evaporative cooling, but the disadvantages can be serious.
We brought such an evaporative cooler into the office and checked what kind of cooling you can actually expect. Compared to an air conditioning system, you can get it much cheaper: If you don’t buy during the worst heat wave, small evaporative coolers are available for around 20 euros. Larger models cost around a hundred euros, but that is only half of what you would have to pay for a monoblock air conditioning system. The larger evaporative coolers look very similar to these, which at least raises certain expectations in terms of cooling performance.
That was the excerpt from our heise-Plus article “Water cooling for the apartment: This is what evaporative coolers bring”. With a heise Plus subscription you can read the entire article.
