Air Coolers

Air coolers are becoming increasingly popular across the country. They’re a great compromise between fans and air conditioners – they offer more cooling power than a fan, but are much more affordable and eco-friendly than an aircon. It’s easy to see why they’re so popular, but if you want to know more about how these things will help you stay cool for less, keep reading.

How Do Air Coolers Work?

Air coolers use a natural process known as evaporative cooling. The basic explanation is that when water evaporates, it turns into vapour and is absorbed by the air. For the air to absorb moisture, it needs to use heat energy, so it gets much cooler. This is why the wind feels cold when it blows in from the ocean or over a lake.

Air coolers use this process to give a more natural, refreshing breeze. They don’t need any complex machinery like an aircon, and instead contain four main parts: a water tank, a pump, an absorbent pad or membrane, and an electric fan. The pump draws water from the tank and steadily soaks the pad (which is usually made from soft, absorbent fibres). The fan is positioned in front of the pad, sucking warm air through the back of the unit. The air cools as it passes through the wet pad and is blown out into the room by the fan.

How to Use an Air Cooler

If you want to cool down an entire room, air coolers work best when placed next to an open door or window. They use much less power than aircon units and perform better when they’re allowed to work with the natural airflow of a well-ventilated room. Luckily, they’re really lightweight and easy to wheel around to the perfect spot. If you only need to cool a small desk area or office cubicle, though, you can place your air cooler wherever it’s most convenient. They don’t have an exhaust and don’t need to vent warm air anywhere simply because they don’t produce any.

Is an Air Cooler Right for Me?

While they aren’t aircon units and you shouldn’t expect the same icy blast from an air cooler, they still offer a much greater cooling performance than a fan. This means they’re usually suitable for medium or larger rooms like living rooms and offices. If you have a very large or a very hot room that you want to keep cool – such as a south-facing open-plan office – you might be better off with an air conditioner.

Benefits of Air Coolers

Air coolers seem to get more popular with every passing summer. If you’re not sure why, we’ll list a few key benefits below that’ll help clear this up for you!

Eco-Friendly

The climate crisis gets more urgent every year, so it’s no surprise that more people are looking to reduce the amount of energy they use. While the arctic breeze produced by an aircon unit is nice, most people simply don’t need that kind of power. Air coolers don’t use any refrigerant gas and only use a small amount of electric power to run. This means they’re good for the planet and good for your energy bills!

No Exhaust

For an air conditioner to work, it needs to vent warm air out of an exhaust. If you have a fitted aircon unit, this isn’t a problem as fitting the exhaust vents will be handled as part of the installation process. Portable aircon units will have a long duct system which you’ll need to run out of a window or door, which isn’t always possible. Air coolers sidestep this problem completely – the evaporative cooling process doesn’t produce any warm air, so there’s no need for them to have an exhaust.

Amazing Value

Air coolers occupy the middle ground between fans and air conditioners. When you need more cooling power than a fan can offer but want something more affordable than an aircon, an evaporative cooler is perfect. For the performance they offer, air coolers are simply unbelievable value! Even if you want to chill a very large room, picking up a set of 2-3 air coolers is often much cheaper than a single air conditioner, so if you want to get the most for your money you should definitely consider them.

Stylish

Air coolers can be made to look quite stylish as they don’t have any components on show. This gives manufacturers the freedom to focus on the way the unit looks without it affecting its performance. If your home décor is important to you, pick something that has a bit of style as well as substance!

Quiet

As all their components are housed inside the unit, air coolers tend to be a little quieter than electric fans and air conditioners. They’re not completely silent – no air cooling system is – but the outer housing and cooling pad will help to muffle the noise of the internal fan a little.

Low Maintenance

An evaporative cooler never needs to be gassed and requires almost no maintenance. You’ll need to refill your unit’s water tank every day and you might need to wash the absorbent pad once a year – that’s about it.

Extra Features

Many air coolers are fitted with extra features to help you make the most out of them. The models on this page might have remote controls, timers, fan modes, and more. Check what features your chosen model has by clicking on its image above.

The History of Air Coolers

Did you know air coolers have been around, in one form or another, since 2500BC? When you pick up an air cooler, you can do so with complete confidence that it’s a design that’s been refined over thousands of years of human history!

The first recorded use of evaporative cooling is from ancient Egypt. Stone tablets from this time have been found showing servants fanning pots of water to keep their masters cool. These clay pot coolers are still around in some parts of the world today, and while they’re obviously much more rudimentary than the models on this page, the principle is the same!

Since that time, evaporative cooling techniques have been improved from bits of damp cloth hung over doorways all the way to the sleek and stylish air coolers you can see above. If you’d like to know more, click here to learn more about the surprisingly rich history of the air cooler.