Simple Air Conditioning Device Can Save You Hundreds!
Click Here For Wholesale Prices on Air Conditioner Efficiency Products!
In an earlier article, we discussed how air conditioning works. The important fact from that article is that some sort of water cooling function, such as a cooling tower, increases the efficiency of the condenser to allow for more effective cooling. This is due to the fact that, as water evaporates, it absorbs a great deal of energy (heat) from the surrounding air, making the job of your air conditioner’s cooling coil that much easier.
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(Image courtesy of: Bryant, Charles W., and Marshall Brain. “How Air Conditioners Work.” 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://home.howstuffworks.com/ac.htm> 21 May 2008. Please visit their site for a terrific explanation of air conditioning and other systems.)
Even if you could afford a cooling tower, the neighbors would not be too happy about you installing one unless you had a few hundred acres of land in a remote area.
The trick is in scaling down the high efficiency cooling systems, or at least the underlying technology, so that it is accessible for you and me.
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Luckily, I have been researching, and installed at my own house an extremely affordable solution which utilizes that same principle, which is that the evaporation of water mist draws a large amount of energy from the air in the form of heat, allowing your air conditioner’s condensing coils to cool faster and pump that coolness into your house or small office.
I was immediately impressed with the simplicity, and the fact the I installed the device in 15 minutes without using any tools whatsoever. Notice here that it is installed on a residential heat pump, and will work on almost any similar split system air conditioner or heat pump. The important factor is that the condenser (the outside portion of your air conditioning system) is upright and has a fan which blows air upwards through a grate.
The top portion of the Cool-n-Save is glued onto the condenser and connected to your home’s outdoor water nozzle with the included plastic tubing. The included filter provides water without small particles which would clog the misters.
The top of the Cool-n-Save base contains a paddle (flap) which moves upwards when air is blown from the condenser’s fan as shown above, opening a water valve which sends water down through three plastic tubes. Three misters send a cool, moist mist towards the condenser intake, cooling the ambient air by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
Here we see the Cool-n-Save mister in action, spraying a super fine mist and using a tiny amount of water.
Proving Cool-n-Save Energy Savings
Although it is too early to give definitive figures on energy savings, and it will be difficult to compare month-to-month energy bills due to fluctuations in temperature and other variables, I can attest to its ability to reduce the load on my air conditioner and thus cool my home quicker than before.
If nothing else, this product increases our comfort level on hot days.
Instead of accepting my subjective opinions on the Cool-n-Save, you can download the Cool-n-Save Study by Tulane University for a comprehensive engineering analysis of the device.
When in doubt, the Energy Star Partner seal should give you confidence:
Calculate Your Savings
According to Con Edison, the amount of energy used by your air conditioner is a function of outside temperature and thermostat settings, and will range from 50% - 80% of your total energy costs in the summer.
How much did you calculate? We conservatively estimated $ 170 per month savings at our home.
Would you think it would be fair if Cool-n-Save paid for itself in less than one summer? Before answering, consider other upgrade projects you have completed in your house. Have you installed new windows to improve insulation? The payback period for new windows can run over 10 years!
For the Cool-n-Save, let’s use: 3 months x $ 170 savings per month = $ 510 savings in one summer!
In our situation, Cool-n-Save is paying for itself in 2-3 weeks! Plus, we noticed our house reached a comfortably cool temperature much quicker, even on the hottest, most humid days!
If the Cool-n-Save cost only $ 100.00, then it will be EARNING you money for 2-1/2 months of the summer, or even longer in hot, southern-US States.
$ 170 savings per month x 2.5 months = $ 425 PROFIT you made this summer by using an energy efficiency device!
Buy Cool-n-Save Below Retail Price!
So, consider the $ 425 or more profit you are earning when installing the $ 99.00 Cool-n-Save, and then take an addition 5% discount Maryland Green Power Co. gives you against the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and you have a real money saver!
Special Offer: Get 5% off the suggested retail price of $ 99.99 by clicking on the secure Google Checkout button below:
(Purchase link temporarily removed on August 20, 2008)
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August 29, 2008 - Note: MGPC will not be replenishing its stock of Cool-n-Save, instead favoring the custom-designed air conditioning and heating solutions at:
Green HVAC Solutions for Home and Office
Click on the HVAC link at that site to view the many options available for business and residential customers.
Tags: cool and save, cool-n-save, cooling tower, efficient air conditioning, tulane university, water cooled air conditioner
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
One last thought on air conditioning:
And air conditioning has plenty of unintended (side) effects. As the less-industrialized world realizes that air conditioning pays for itself with huge increases in productivity, they buy more (air conditioning has only been popular worldwide for forty years… it’s still catching on). As people buy more, they use more energy, create more greenhouse gases, make the world hotter. Price of energy goes up… etc.
All the more reason to do it more efficiently than we are now.
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Thank you for introducing us to this product. Our school is in a northern state, so at first I had my doubts about how much it would save us. We have a total of 12 Carrier air conditioners and installed the cool n save on each one.
As of last month, our savings is close to 20%. The cool n save has already paid for itself - in the first month!
We are talking to the administration about installing these at all schools in the County.
Could you calculate “how many cars” we took off the road. Next year’s students should know what their school is doing for the environment.
Best Wishes,
Roger L.
Brockton, MA
July 10th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Dear Green Power,
Thank you for shipping the Cool and Save so fast. I just hooked it up as the hot weather hit us here in California.
I noticed that our air conditioner does not run so long now and we feel great.
I’ll send you an email when we get our electric bill. Even if we don’t save, I think it was worth it just for the cooler house.
Gratefully,
K.M.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Hello,
One last question: Do you offer a referral fee if my neighbors buy the Cool and Save from you? A couple of them asked about it when they saw the flapper on my air conditioner moving up and down. I think I could sell alot of these?
K
July 10th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Hello Kathy,
We are rebuilding our affiliate plan for this item. In the meantime, we are looking for sales professionals in California. Depending on your qualifications, we might be able to offer you a sales consulting position (1099 contractor - commission only). We have other energy saving product lines besides Cool-n-Save which you could also represent.
Please send your resume to fax: 1-443-927-9018 for consideration.
There are also openings in other areas of the USA too. Inquiries are welcome.
Regards,
Dennis Meizys
Maryland Green Power Co.
443-864-3072
August 11th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Doubt that your figures of $170 saving per month is realistic. I live in Texas, my entire one month bill for a 1400 sq. ft. house was $180. Temperatures were in the high 90’s. Where do you get this figure from?
Also, looks like an intersting product, but $100? For what looks like about $5-10 worth of parts?
August 12th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Hello Tom,
What is your humidity in your part of Texas? Our relative humidity in the summer is about 80 percent, which impedes the cooling of the coil, and creates a larger latent heat load inside the house.
This is also based on over 3000 sq. ft. of living space being cooled by a central heat pump. The entire electric bill averages $ 300 - $ 400 in the summer months, but that’s because our house is entirely electric, including stove tops, ovens, water heater, etc.
We are going to knock down some of our water heating expenses by using the Solahart solar water heater to pre-heat water coming into our hot water tank. This should reduce up to 90% of our water heating electric power usage.
Then, in addition to the cool-n-save, we are also reducing air conditioning operating expenses by more effectively regulating solar radiation via solar reflectors, which will also reduce our winter heating load.
As far as the accuracy of the figures, we have installed an Eniscope, which is a component of Enigin’s EnergyMaps program. The Eniscope effectively isolates many electrical parameters and allows one to see where energy is being wasted. Although we recommend the Eniscope as an energy reduction tool for small to medium-sized businesses, we have installed one at our home as a demo unit, which has been operating flawlessly for almost a year. During that time, the Eniscope has been uploading energy usage data to a remote database, where our EnergyMaps software allows us to graph historical trends and looks for patterns which give us clues as to how to further save energy in a facility.
As far as the parts are concerned, is a product really just worth the sum of its parts or the total cost of its materials? If that were true, we could take your computer and break it down into $ 5.00 worth of plastic, $ 3.00 worth of steel and copper, $ 15.00 worth of precious metals and other materials, and less than 25 cents worth of silicon.
Total material cost of your computer would then be about $ 23.00, but how much did you pay for it?
It is true that that figure does not take into account all the engineering, manufacturing time, management overhead, and marketing costs.
Now, measure its value in terms of what it does for you. This would produce a much higher figure. Since I assume you own a computer, you must have put its perceived value high enough to purchase it.
The same is true for the cool-n-save. First of all, we welcome your industriousness and invite you to purchase a correct-sized flapper and connect it to a valve which splits filtered water from your garden hose into three fine misters delivering at just the right rate of water misting so that the mist droplets will enter your condensing unit without settling on the cooling coils, yet disperse enough so that a large percentage of the air entering the condensing unit has been cooled due to the mist’s evaporation effects.
The Tulane study shows an in-depth analysis of the misting effect, and is available for download.
Furthermore, the government’s Energy Star seal should also boost your confidence.
As for us, we haven’t calculated our actual energy savings since our pattern of usage is much different this year from last year’s due to travel and other factors. However, on those really hot days in mid-summer when we were home, we were happy that our air conditioner seemed to get a turbo boost of power from the cool-n-save, and we definitely felt more comfortable. That was worth the $ 100 to us.
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate your skepticism, because as an engineer, I go through the same analytical thought process before I believe a claim.
I hope this explanation helped.
By the way, your energy usage is low already, and the cool-n-save is probably not a great investment to you. Congratulations on keeping your energy bill so low! Maybe you have some tips for us? If you do, please post them here.
Regards,
Dennis Meizys
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