Spent $17 for 2 misters this morning, got them going near the condensing unit. I'll let everyone know if this really works.
Keep an eye out for mineral deposit left on the fins via evaporation. A build up of the minerals can dramatically reduced the efficiency of the unit.
Any idea how long it might take for such a deposit to show up? Hours, days etc...?
You can make a paste out of Lemi Shine or similar to clean the deposits off.
I have to use it on my dishes due to hard water. It works great to clean stains out of my refrigerator water-in-door drip tray as well.
I have to use it on my dishes due to hard water. It works great to clean stains out of my refrigerator water-in-door drip tray as well.
It all depends on how much water is evaporated and how hard your water is. Here at work my cooling towers evaporate thousands of gallons of water daily in this weather. I am constantly having to deal with the scale.
I once ran a service call at one of the Evans Furniture Stores, someone had installed a pvc pipe sprinkler on one of their ACs. The condenser was one solid sheet of scale. It must have been there all summer.
You can get an idea about the scale in your water by boiling a half gallon of water on you stove till the water is gone. The white stuff left over is scale. This is what is going to be left on your condenser coil.
My suggestion would be to make sure the coil is as clean as possible and leave it alone.
if misting water on the condenser was the thing to do wouldnt they have units with that already installed??
No, because this adds cost and complexity to units that typically don't need that functionality to run.
But when you have a unit that is rated for cooling a given size in a given ambient temperature, and we exceed that ambient temperature, a little help never hurts. People who went "big" on the cooling bulkhead don't need to consider this, but it's debatable if they need that big of a unit most months of most years. It's about balancing cost with typical need.
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If you are like me and have a mobile home with half of it in the direct sun all day long, and a 20 year old cooling system running, you look for any advantage you can get on the cheap. Right now its 89 in the room I am sitting in and if misting water on the coils for a couple of weeks would help cool this thing off some until the heatwave breaks I would gladly do it.
My A/c guy (I've known for 20 years) was out this morning to see why mine quit yesterday and I asked about the watering, misting option. He advised absolutely not to do it. The mineral build up would make it worse.
more returns in a home would probably be better?
