“Arctic Cool” advertisements on TV promise cooling for a fraction of the cost. Just add water, turn on the fan, and voila ~ happy camper. It’s called evaporative cooling, and it does cool down the air. There’s just one problem: you’re adding a boatload of humidity to the air in your home.
Best case scenario: your air conditioning will have to work twice as hard to cool down that humid air. Worse case: that humid air remains in the house and turns into black mold in the walls. Mold is a major, MAJOR problem because it can get behind the sheetrock and grow without bounds. I’ve seen houses that were literally destroyed within a couple of years, so bad they had to be torn down.
Evaporative cooling is fine outside on the front porch or in the garage or shop. Inside? You’ll pay twice as much to keep the house cool (AC coils cannot cool down air until it dehumidifies the air first), your clothing will get moldy, bath towels won’t dry out, and humidity will linger in the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry.
NOTE: If you go to the above link at Amazon.com, you’ll see the product has almost 9,000 reviews with a rating of 4.5 stars. Proof positive that sellers phish their listings to max out their ratings. Amazon doesn’t care, either: all they want is to sell stuff.
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Excerpted from Going Green, available as an eBook at this list of eBook retailers online.