u/Dusty-Boots

hey y'all ! i imagine you folks have had a BUNCH of inexperienced people like myself dipping their toes into this topic during the heatwave in europe, so i appreciate you giving this a read if you're doing so. I've always been very curious about preventative solutions for problems and approaches that conserve resource costs, like insulation or capturing my own rainwater or solar power some day.

From this, this has led to me having a passing interest in the concept of low-tech passive coolers ever since I saw them represented in a video game. As I've always been pretty DIY interested, I've always wondered what it would cost to either put one of these together, or just generally whether itd be more inexpensive / resource efficient than traditional AC, aside from upfront setup cost. today I looked into it a bit further and i think the technology I've been thinking about is called passive evaporative cooling, or "swamp cooling" as I believe its called over in the US

So here's what I'd love some insights on: naturally, as its an evaporative technique, its going to raise the overall humidity in the room, and I've heard that you want to keep ventilation kind of to a minimum when using AC or any kind of cooling so you dont just lose it; ie keep doors between rooms closed and windows closed as much as you can. The problem here is I'm a little concerned about mould blooming - you make yourself more comfy from the heat, sure, but going back to mould issues that we'd experience before in our previous flat would be HELLISH (last summer the landlord refused to fix the bathroom extractor fan so made us keep both windows open in that bathroom ALL hours of the day and night all summer and the mould STILL managed to grow, so I've understandable become a little tentative).

My first thought to this was, well, itd feel maybe a little counteruitive, to run one unit to manage a different unit, but what about running a small dehumidifier (just to manage the water vapour levels in this one room) while the passive cooling was also running? That way youre making the air in the room cool, and then pulling the humidity out of said air before it has a chance to cause mould damage.

So my overall question is this:

with the expensive / heavy resource-draw nature of traditional AC ruling it out for me at this stage, does a passive cooler (a small water pump and a fan)'s amount of electrical draw, plus that of a dehumidifer sound like itd overall be more energy efficient?

Or at this stage am i just creating problems for my problems hahaa

(my backup solution was gonna be looking at putting together an ice box cooling unit (just utilising a small fan + an insulated cool box with ice bottles that i periodically swap out when needed from the freezer in our home), which i wouldnt imagine would be an EXCESSIVE amount of energy draw from the additional mass being frozen every day to provide the cooling, or any additional water being needed other than just to fill the bottles the first time.

anyways , thanks so much for reading, and do give me your thoughts.

Signed: a very sweaty, poor, and environmentally conscious british guy hahaa