Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 17:45:21 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Kevin Prichard <kpx@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Aircooleds and Airplanes
> On Mon, 17 Jul 95 16:00:47 CDT Kevin Prichard said:
> >On this subject, has anyone noticed, generally, if your air-cooled runs
> >cooler in rainy (although not necessarily cooler) weather? Perhaps a Rube
...
> this is not so "Rube Goldberg" as you might think. ;) NASA and the electric
> company up in north alabama found that if you put a very fine mist onto the
> evaporator coils of a housefold air conditioner, it drastically improved the
> heat transfer and made the a/c more efficient ... i.e., used less power to
> cool the house better. so they rigged up some little dinky thing that had
> a thermostat to tell the squirter/mister when to run.
>
> that's been many years ago, and i haven't heard anything about it since ...
> anybody know what happened to the idea? maybe it rusted the a/c?? :)
The A/C in my apartment is mostly aluminum, I think this is worth a try.
I still have the specs it came with, says here- Mosture Removal: 3.2 pints
per hour. Maybe I'll set it up so it drains into the mist water bottle...
it'll feed itself. Hmm, the water'll probly get pretty dirty, maybe I'll
put a filter between the bottle and pump.
> and in the southwest, years ago, weren't there some sort of Evaporative
> Coolers for houses?? that used something like that to cool the house (instead
> of a compressor system a/c)??
I had one when I lived in southern Calif... They were kinda effective in
*dry* heat; when humid, it just got more unbearable.
> running the mixture rich: the new Cadillac Northstar engine management
...
> the oil (cause it will be VERY diluted with gasoline by that point!! not ALL
> the gasoline evaporates ... some of it washes past the rings and gets down
> into the crankcase).
>
> now THAT's Rube Goldberg Engineering!!! :)
...and it also sounds like engineering by committee! ("Sure the oil will
dilute, but if there is an increased engine seize rate, we'll sell more
motors!")
Kevin Prichard
The Atlantic Software Group
1981 Vanagon L - The Bus That Ate Manhattan