Beating the heat

9:44 AM

This is the hottest time of the year in these parts. Yesterday was over 100 degree F. The climate control in this location is actually quite good. You only feel it when you go outside. It feels like you're stepping into an oven.

So my efforts are along the lines of how to improve upon this. Well, you can't do it by much. But maybe it can be made more energy stingy. I put a watt meter on this ductless mini-split set up, and it will pull about 1200 watts when the compressor is engaged. There's some room for improvement right there.

Not to say that it's inefficient. Only that when it does kick in, it is a pretty heavy draw on electric current.

If the time it spends in the on mode is minimized, the energy stinginess factor increases. That would usually entail a higher thermostat setting. As I type this, I am looking at the readout. It is set at 27 degrees Celsius, which is about 81 degree F. The compressor kicks in ocassionally. If it ran all the time, that would not be what I'd want. I will keep the thermostat as high as I can get away with in order to minimize its use.

While the compressor is on, it is drawing water out of the room, which makes it drier inside, as well as cooler.

So I collect the water, and re-use it in my swamp cooler. The swamp cooler will evaporate water, and the dehumidifying function of the mini-split will draw the water back out and dump it outside in my collection bucket. This makes it a closed loop for that water. It so happens that I have another dehumidifier that I salvaged from my trailer when I moved out. It uses about 300 watts or so. So if I run this dehumidifier more, it means the dehumidifier on the mini-split will run less. That will make it more energy stingy.

The dehumidifiers pull out a LOT of water. More water than the swamp cooler can use. So I have an additional source of water unless I can run that swamper more often. Anyway, the plan is to hook up the solar power station to the dehumidiifier, which means that it doesn't use any grid power at all. The solar panels should be able to run this dehumifier almost all day while the sun is up.

I haven't got it all set up yet, but I'm getting there. I ordered another part from Amazon, and it will arrive tomorrow. When I hook up everything, the dehumifier will run on solar power for most of the day. This will reduce the amount of work that the mini-split will have to do in order to keep me cool and comfy. It will do so at the mimimized use of grid power, I hope.

5:00 PM

About noon-ish, I got an idea to run an experiment. The dehumidifiers were working, and the swamper was working, so why not put it through its paces? It seems that I can maintain a reasonable comfort level with the swamper going full blast and the mini-split set at its highest temperature--32 deg C. That's on a hot day with the temp above 100 Deg Farenheit.

It produces a bunch of water, which will require some way to use it. Recycling through the swamper won't be enough, because the swamper can't keep up. At 32 deg C, the mini-split runs about 1/3 of the time. If that holds, then solar power might be running about one half of my energy needs. It should make a dent in the electric bill.

Nice experiment, but I don't have my part from Amazon yet, so I cannot hook up the big battery and run it off solar power yet.