Cool-N-Save - easy way to reduce A/C costs

We enjoy watching Living with Ed on television. Ed Begley, Jr. has been working to live ever-greener for 30 years, and the show never fails to give us several great ideas. A recent episode featured the Cool-N-Save product. The idea is to provide a gentle mist of water around the air conditioner condenser - only when the condenser fan is running - so that the evaporation of the water will help the air conditioner with its cooling chores. The projected energy savings are up to 30 percent! Given that the Cool-N-Save costs under a hundred bucks (US$87), it will be worth it even if our savings fall far below 30 percent. Here in Florida, air conditioning is one of the main power consumers of a home (for all-electric homes, water heating is the other real biggie).

Well, I've got quite a list of chores I've been wanting to get to around the house and the yard, so I took a vacation day today to tackle some of them. One of those jobs was installing our new Cool-N-Save unit.

The installation is very simple, although some might find the adequate instructions not quite detailed enough. So Shirley snapped a number of pictures as I installed the unit. We probably took 30 minutes to do the installation, but that was largely because we kept going back inside to fetch a felt pen, a wire cutter, a cable tie, etc. We've posted the installation sequence up on Flickr.

And with that, we are hoping that our footprint on the earth has perhaps become just a little bit smaller :)

Comments

[Debbie]

So how did the Cool-N-Save work out? Corrosion and buildup on the fins seemed to be a concern, have you experienced any of that? Is the system still viable for this summer?

[Joe]

The Cool-N-Save is turned off at the moment :) ...no problem (so far) with buildup, but there HAS been a problem with getting it to shut off the mist when the A/C turns off. So I've been experimenting with s-l-o-w-l-y adding a little weight to the end of the flapper. I want to ensure that it's light enough that the fan will still push it up and turn on the mist, but it needs to be slightly heavier so that it drops down ALL of the way and shuts off the water. Here in Florida (as with many other places) we are very low on our rainfall and water is a precious resource -- don't want to waste it.

So overall, I still believe this is a good product, and I expect to have time to experiment more in a couple of weeks when I'm back to just working full time, instead of a lot of extra hours :)

[Bill]

Our house here in Las Vegas has 2 AC units. Can 2 of them be mounted in parallel since our individual AC's come on at different times depending on what side of the house needs cooling.

[Doug]

Bill according to the cool-n-save web site FAQ's you can hook up more than one to a single water source.

Joe, any luck with getting the water to shut off. I am thinking of getting one but would like to know how to work the bugs out before I do.

[Linda]

Ok, I'm interested in purchasing this coolnsave product, can anyone confirm monthly savings and and issues with the water and air conditioning unit? Please responsed, as the heat is coming to Florida along with the high electric bills!

[Paul Price]

Hi ,

The Cool-n-Save is now available form Florida Eco Products for $99.95 with Free Delivery to anywhere in the US

http://www.floridaecoproducts.com/product.sc?categoryId=1&productId=1

Thank you, Paul