How do you use the fan setting on an air conditioner? Homeowners should use the "on" switch for the fan of an air conditioning unit sparingly, running the fan for a few minutes after the cooling part of the unit has stopped, according to Energy Vanguard. Using the "auto" option for the fan is a better choice. How do you turn the fan of a Lennox air conditioner on high? Most air conditioner units have buttons labeled "fan" or "auto." Some air conditioner technicians recommend putting the air conditioner's fan setting permanently to "on" to distribute cool air around the home evenly, but this strategy can backfire and add more humidity to the home, according to Energy Vanguard. Instead, homeowners should choose the "auto" option, or if homeowners choose to run the fan, they should do it for just a few minutes after the cooling part of the unit shuts off. Air conditioning units have two main components, one that cools the air, and another that distributes the cooled air around the house.

As the air is cooled, it also has moisture stripped from the air that condenses on the cold evaporator coil. An air conditioning unit that shuts off the cooling part after a short run may have water sitting on the coil, and when the fan is run after the cooling part shuts off, the water on the coil may evaporate and go right back into the air, claims Energy Vanguard. When this water goes back into the air, it raises the humidity level and can make a home feel uncomfortable even after it has been cooled off by several degrees. Do all attic fans have a humidity setting? Not all attic fans are outfitted with a humidity setting, which requires that the ventilation fan unit have an internal humidistat. Homeowners who have a s... What does a thermostat switch do? A thermostat switch is used to control the mode of a unit, which is the heating or cooling element, and the circulation fan on applicable units. How do you replace a ceiling fan switch? In order to replace a ceiling fan switch, turn off the power to the fan, remove the fan housing, remove the switch and replace it with a compatible unit.

How does a fan limit switch work? On furnaces, a fan limit switch uses a heat sensor to detect the temperature of the air passing through the valve that the switch is affixed to. Where can you buy a Hunter ceramic heater? What are the advantages of buying a Rheem gas heater? What are the benefits of using a Frigiking evaporative cooler? What are the top 10 gas furnaces from 2014? What products are needed for cleaning a dryer duct at work? I live in Phoenix where summer outdoor temperatures regularly exceed 110°F and humidity around 15% or lower is not uncommon. In this environment a mist system can easily pull the temperature down 20 to 30 or even 40 degrees in some cases. I've been toying with the idea of cooling my outdoor AC unit using mist, and did a little research. There are several commercially-available systems to do precisely this such as this industrial unit and this residential one. But I wanted to get an idea of what other people think of these systems.

In particular, I'm interested in the long-term effects of using these systems, especially with respect to mineral build-up and corrosion. The vendors of the commercial systems claim to have these factors under control, but I'd rather hear it from a neutral POV. I'm not particularly interested in unfounded FUD or enthusiasm, and comments like, "if it works so well then we'd all be using it" are particularly unhelpful. best home hvac systemInstead, I would like to know how these units actually fare in real-world usage. average price of a ac unitAlso, bear in mind that this is Phoenix, not New Orleans; cheap portable ac units for salein the dry summer heat nothing stays wet for more than a few seconds. Factors like mold are an absolute non-issue.

Mineral build-up is going to be dependent on your water. Do you have a Water Quality Report? Mine looks like this: Hard water starts around 10 grains per gallon or 170 ppm. In other words, 1 liter of water will have 0.17 grams of calcium/magnesium. I didn't see any water usage estimates for coolnsave aside from 6 cents per day. Also, they sell a water treatment filter which could take some of the minerals out but there aren't any details provided. The thermodynamics behind coolnsave are sound and the price is reasonable. Your best bet if no one here has any personal experience is to just try it yourself, keeping a daily inspection schedule for the first month to be sure you aren't coating your condenser with something that you can't remove. For the record, I tried it out myself. I installed the Cool-N-Save system on a 4-ton A/C unit that was scheduled to be replaced in three months. After that three month period in the middle of the summer, the positive effects of the system were negligible at best, and probably detrimental.

There were no detectible savings in cooling costs nor increase in cooling performance. And after that three-month period, despite using the manufacturer's own anti-calcium system, the calcium build-up on the outdoor unit was extreme, with a thin layer of rock uniformly covering all of the heat-exchanging surfaces, effectively destroying the unit. So that's a strong "Do Not Buy" from me. I have been experimenting with using an old mosquito misting system to mist around one of my AC condensers. It does seem to make a small difference in energy consumption and reduce register temperature by around 1 degree. Not much but enough to help when the system is running constantly when we have parties at the house. The red circle on the attached energy report for the condenser shows around a 100watt drop at 5:30pm when I ran the mister for 15 minutes. The system also shut down because the house reach target temp. What I don't understand is why ambient temperature makes such a big difference to energy used.

The whole chart shows a wave as the ambient temperature changes from night to day. Oh, I use condensate from the indoor unit for the mister so it shouldn't contain calcium etc. The reviews on Amazon are "mixed," but with a lot of quality complaints (leaks, poor durability): One commentator provided a link to another system, The Mister: This looks to be a higher quality product (although at 2.5X the price). It specifically avoids some of the issues raised in the cool-n-save reviews. Remove it in the winter to avoid freeze damage. However, I think you'll find this thread on the entire concept of interest: The killer issue being water quality - and therefore mineral deposits on the condensing coil. Panned as ineffective (they make the minerals more water soluble - so keep the mister headers clean - but the minerals remain, so they precipitate out when the water evaporates). One user posts a home brew solution using an RV water softener. One user postulated using an reverse osmosis (RO) system as the source of the water;

this would work - but you'd need a pump to boost the pressure up, and may have issues with generating enough RO water for the demand (RO systems are also very inefficient - a lot of water is wasted and it adds high-salt water to the sewer system). Some industrial systems are using RO (search for "BigFogg"). Some people report using water from the condensate line - which is mineral free - and either spraying it or dripping it over the condenser coil. I also live in Phoenix. My water hardness is 13. I used to have an outdoor patio misting system - with one of those inline filters. The filter was not effective - still got mineral build up on the misting heads. What really killed it was the sun exposure, though - the plastic tubes connecting everything got very brittle and started breaking on multiple segments. If you're worried about mineral buildup then buy a water filter. Go to Lowe's or Home Depot and get the 5 year inline water filter cartridge. I've thought about this too and living in the Panhandle of Oklahoma the weather is about the same conditions.

We used a swamp cooler back in the day and I thought it worked just fine, so I thought about building a swamp cooler around the AC unit, no mist. It activates when the AC unit comes on and soaks vertical pads around the sides of the unit kind of like a water radiator around a condenser radiator. Rheem used to have a water sprayed condenser coil on their Coral air units. They had a float that looked like it came out of a toilet tank. They work of course however to alter one will mess with the designed heat rejection and pressures its designed to operate by. The condensing unit must increase the refrigerant vapor to well above the outdoor airs temp to allow heat rejection to outdoors and condensing of the refrigerant to a liquid , if you mess with this who knows how lucky you may get or for how long and under what circumstance. Old AC condensing units in shopping malls had water cooled coils that were a spiraled coil and water ran in a tube in a tube setup that simply drained to a sewer total loss system and regulated the head pressure by throttling the waters flow to the drain.