On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 11:34:01 +0100, "Tom Bennett"
wrote:

"Les & Claire" wrote .. I've seen a few
portable ones in the last insurance office I worked in but I had to
explain
about legionaries disease as they were just recycling the same old water
condensed out of the room with no anti bacterial additives or cleaning
regime at all.... 200 people on the phones in one room with two paltry
little virus spreaders... scary stuff!

Added to which these things try to defy the laws of physics in that, being a
closed system, they can't possibly do what they're being advertised to do .

I've had a few arguments with people who've used these that *unless* there
is a vent to take the hot exhaust air outside, the machines just add to the
overall temperature in the room that they're supposedly keeping cool. Most
of the "portable" (freestanding) units don't have this: they blow cool air
out of the front (giving the illusion of cooling the room) - and hot air
(i.e. the heat taken from the air + the heat caused by the machine
operating) out of the back, thus adding to the overall heat in the room.

- Tom.

Proper portable ac units using refrigerants need the hot air vented to
the outside.

We don't have the window mounted versions in this country so common in
the US

The sort of air cooler that blows across water and evaporates it does
actually cool the air down, as the heat is used up as latent heat to
cause the evaporation.

However, I have experience of the water evaporator coolers and
unsurprisingly, they also increase the humidity so the cooling effect
probably remains about the same - IOW, they're useless.

JPG