Controlling Cooling Produced by Six-Inch Pad Systems

One of the challenges with six-inch evaporative cooling pad systems is controlling the amount of cooling they produce. With fogging systems or fogging-pad systems cooling can be controlled by simply limiting the number of fogging nozzles operating; i.e., half the nozzles, half the cooling. But with six-inch pad systems controlling cooling is not that simple. One problem is that a pad system’s circulation pump can put a large amount of water on the pads in a very short period of time. For insta...nce, the circulation pumps on the typical broiler house with six-inch pads can put approximately 100 gallons of water on the pads in less than one minute. 100 gallons of water is enough to drop the temperature of the incoming air ten degrees or more on most days. Further complicating matters is that just because the circulation pumps shut off doesn’t mean that a pad stops cooling. In fact, cooling actually increases after circulation pumps turn off as the water which was previously placed on the pad slowly wicks throughout the pads increasing the percentage of the pad which is wet thereby increasing the cooling produced.