Like every year, summer arrives unannounced. With its long, sunny days, it is a real pick-me-up for social life, but when the temperatures become forbidding, doing anything really becomes a heroic feat.
If you want to effectively lower the temperature of your rooms, while spending little and without waste, you need to find the cooling system that works best for your specific needs. Yes, but which one to choose?
Let’s find out together the main differences between air conditioners and coolers, how they work and which system is best for you.
Differences between air conditioners and coolers
There are many differences between coolers and air conditioners, they work so differently that, in many cases, one system does not exclude the other and they can be used in different situations.
An air conditioner lowers the temperature inside a (possibly) well-insulated space, while a cooler can create a localised cooling zone in spaces of any size, even with open windows or in outdoor spaces.
In essence:
- Inside an air conditioner, fresh air is first generated and then distributed via a fan.
- In a cooler, on the other hand, warm air cools naturally by passing through a water-soaked panel, creating a localised comfort zone.
How a cooler works
In a cooler, the flow of warm air (naturally present in the air) evaporates as it passes through a water-soaked panel, generating fresh , clean air in a very localised area, or it is distributed through fans, depending on the type of cooler. There are, in fact, various types: in some models, hot air is channelled and forced through a cold water or ice-filled tank, to be subsequently expelled and distributed at a lower temperature.
However, the most widely used and cost-effective cooler is the evaporative cooler. An evaporative cooler, in fact, is able to cool a room while costing little and without waste.
How an air conditioner works
An air conditioner cools the air through the compression of a refrigerant. How it actually works is a little more complex than that: the outdoor unit is charged with a fluid (initially in a gaseous state) that is cooled by compression, generating heat that is released outside the house (this is why you should not overdo it with air conditioners in summer).
The compression generates a very cold liquid that is conveyed inside the house in the various air-conditioning splits, brought back to a gaseous state by a lamination valve and distributed inside the rooms by a ventilation system.
So the system is slightly complex, and that’s not all! Because there are also air conditioners: similar, but more complex and broader in function.
Which cooling system to choose?
The choice between a cooler and an air conditioner depends mainly on two factors:
- Plant costs and consumption
- Volume and nature of the space to be cooled
The reality is much more complex than that: we could, for example, also take into account the quality and nature of the air, the outside temperature and the humidity in the environment. However, these two factors are the most impactful, and with these alone you can already get a very clear idea of which system might be right for you.
Let’s take an example: if you only wish to cool a limited area, perhaps outdoors in a commercial space – such as a patio, a veranda or a specific section of an industrial building – a cooler is the best choice. On the other hand, if you need to permanently cool an entire house or an office, an air conditioner may prove to be the best choice.
Is that all? Clearly not. Air conditioners tend to consume much more and have high costs. Evaporative coolers, on the other hand, work best in dry, low-humidity or outdoor areas, they are generally much cheaper and consume much less energy. Furthermore, air conditioners are a more complex system, needing proper installation and frequent maintenance.
The advantages of evaporative coolers
Fresh, clean air wherever you want it, even outdoors, sustainable and at a very low cost: although they are less efficient than air conditioners, evaporative coolers are an advantageous system in many ways.
- Firstly, they consume less energy: the most efficient models consume about as much energy as a light bulb.
- Secondly, they use water to cool the air – rather than refrigerants – and exploit the natural phenomenon of evaporation.
They are therefore much more environmentally sustainable systems, and the best models are also equipped with an antibacterial filtration device with which to restore better air quality.
In addition, evaporative coolers are easier to install and require much less maintenance than air conditioners.