Misting fan

[T-Rex]

Any of you guys use a misting fan in your shop? I just spent a half hour checking out different models online, I've been looking into getting one for the shop this summer. It's already getting mighty hot these days. For the winter I have infra-red heaters, but nothing yet for the summer, and A/C seems quite impractical considering how much air-flow there is going on in my shop.

After looking online, it seems like quality misting fans are a bit more expensive than I thought so I figured I'd see if any of you fine folks have tried this out, or even currently use one in your shop.

[dustyg]

If you have a garden hose you could hook it up to, you could just get a misting kit from amazon for <$15 and use an old box fan.

http://www.amazon.com/Orbit-20066-Portable-Outdoor-Cooling/dp/B000P0KSXO

[Swim]

are you worried about getting your materials wet? I would not want water collecting on my bench or my tools. Does not seem hot shop friendly. I have a portable AC unit under my bench. THe cool air catches all the parts I want to cool off, it even wafts up my shirt a bit.

[menty666]

Get a plastic fan, hang a wet hand towel in front of it.

[Yeef]

when i was younger i lived in a trailer with no ac for a while, but we didn't pay the water bill... so we had 2 swamp coolers set up in the showers with a series of fans to move the air around. the place was a giant air conditioner. it was great.

the landlord wasn't happy.

[Yeef]

double post, oops =O

[Simian]

I would not use a mister of any kind in your work space but this guy has a damn smart DIY ac unit that should provide some very inexpensive relief from the heat.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSLbpAwibg

[Simian]

Here is a different version.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V93Gh3Q2Ro

[menty666]

Here's my dark cloud rebuttal :D

http://www.consumerreports.org/air-conditioners/can-a-homemade-air-conditioner-keep-you-cool/

[Simian]

Here's my dark cloud rebuttal :D

http://www.consumerreports.org/air-conditioners/can-a-homemade-air-conditioner-keep-you-cool/

All great points. I just hydrate a ton and grind through the heat. With the milli work it gets pretty hot and the fans of any kind don't seem to matter.

Clearly one would expect an actual A/C unit to out perform a DIY bucket. lol

[FifDeez]

Even with the massive volume of air moved AC cann be ducted underneath your desk to blow on you for Maximum cooling effect. Or if your able put your table in front of the AC. Both these ideas will help to cool you even if not able to cool the room. But if you want get 8" flexible insulted tubing. Its like 40$ for 25feet. So you can run that from your AC to under your desk. I do this every summer and freeze.

[T-Rex]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the thoughtful responses! I've actually come up with a solution that works exceptionally well for my own setup.

First off, I wanted a solution that didn't involve making or buying craploads of ice. Blowing air past ice probably works a little bit, but in my shop, I'm running a 2500CFM fan moving massive quantities of air... it just didn't seem like it would be enough.

A true, high quality misting fan will keep you very cool not because it blows water on you, but because it 'atomizes' the water to such a fine mist that it instantly evaporates. The phase change from liquid to gas actually sucks heat out of the air, it is an endothermic reaction. Anyway, this effect is how and why evaporative coolers work (also known as swamp coolers).

The problem with all the high quality misting fans... they are all just way too big to run in a small shop. In particular a small shop that already has a strong air current blowing through it.

What I did was buy a 'misting hose' - a 10' length of tubing with brass misting nozzles, that hooks up to my garden hose, as recommended by DustyG near the start of this thread. It quickly became clear that this setup pumped out way too much water. Furthermore, since there is no pump, all we are getting is the native water pressure of my house - which is not as high as you'd need for true mist.
I was able to make it work though by cutting away most of the tubing, and only using a single misting nozzle. I put a small box fan in front of my intake air and run it on the lowest speed possible, with a single misting nozzle pumping out mist/water.

It works like a dream. By the time the mist hits me, it has already all evaporated. I'm now able to work all afternoon , even on days hitting 34C (94F).

In my opinion, evaporative cooling is ideal for the 'spot cooling' that we need. It is perfect that I am already refreshing all the air in the shop all the time - otherwise the humidity would rise and you would stop getting the cooling effect of evaporation. Instead, with constant airflow, it just straight up drops the temperature of the air hitting my back 10-15 degrees.

The key things I had to tweak - first making sure you are not spraying too much water/mist into the air. There was no ready-made product that would give me the right amount, I had to cut down the misting tubing I bought to a single nozzle.
Next was to make sure that the intake fan was running on very low speed. It seems like having an intake fan can sort of mess with the internal air flow in the shop. If it's blowing air into the shop faster than the exhaust is blowing out, all the ventilation gets thrown out of whack.

It seems like you gotta find a solution that works for your own particular setup. This one works like a dream for me. My only concern really is that the humidity in my shop inevitable goes up and this might be hard on the oxy concentrators.
Fortunately I only need to use this set up on the hottest of afternoons, which here in Canada only happen for a few weeks between July-September.