Dactylion wrote:Last year I had what I thought was a really well thought out bucket cooler, using a submersible pump and the blue pads. It cooled very well for the first three hours, then the dust started to clog the pads and it lost a lot of efficiency. After day two it was useless and I had to dump the murky water still in the bucket into our evap pond, use fresh water to rinse out the pad, use more fresh water to fill the bucket again-- pretty soon this thing was very water and labor intensive. And 2011 was "the year without big dust storms" compared to other burns.
Has anyone addressed this "dust loading" issue in their designs? Other than making the pads easy to remove?
(As with all giant threads like this one, if this has been addressed already please tell me which page it's on-- Thanks.)
I based my design on a big cooler that yellowdog has been using on the playa for years.
He said they have never had your problem.
He also said that they change pads ever year because they get dust COLORED, but not clogged, and they've never noticed a reduction in air flow.
I don't know why your water would get murky.
He said the dust just precipitates into a layer at the bottom of the cooler.
Maybe if the silt layer is getting deep enough to cycle mud back up onto the pad, it's creating some kind of buildup over time.
I do know that playa mud is super sticky.
My experience has been exactly the same as yellowdogs, so I don't know what else to tell you. Sorry.
