Coming soon: a portable evaporative cooler from Humongous Fan
Humongous Fan is adding a portable evaporative cooler to the product line. It rolls on four locking casters, carries its own water in the base, and throws cooled air wherever the crew happens to be working that week. No refrigerant, no ductwork, nothing for a mechanical contractor to put on the schedule three weeks out.
It came out of a question we keep getting from customers who already have overhead air moving. The HVLS fan is doing its job and the floor feels better, and there is still one spot that cooks. A welding cell, a loading area, a mezzanine. Overhead air alone does not fix those.
How evaporative cooling works
An evaporative cooler, or swamp cooler if you have spent any time on a shop floor, pulls hot outside air through a wet media pad. The water evaporating off that pad takes heat with it, and the fan pushes what is left out the front. There is no compressor and no refrigerant circuit anywhere in the machine.
That is why it draws a fraction of the power a comparable ton of mechanical cooling does, and why it runs off a standard outlet. A permanent system sized for the same space can mean new electrical service, ductwork, or roof penetrations before anything gets installed.
The tradeoff is moisture. The machine cools by putting water into the air, and two things follow from that. Dry incoming air gives you the biggest temperature drop, and the cooled air has to have somewhere to go once it has picked up that moisture. The second one is where people get into trouble.
The spaces where it belongs
An industrial evaporative cooler works anywhere the air has an exit, which covers most of the plants and warehouses we get called into:
- Warehouse pick modules and packing lines
- Dock doors that stand open all shift
- Radiant heat sources: ovens, presses, welders, furnaces
- Auto shops, dealership service bays, tire bays, body shops
- Barns and stables
- Arenas and livestock buildings
- Hangars
- Gyms and fieldhouses with no mechanical cooling
- Tents, pavilions, and covered patios
- Temporary cooling during a shutdown or a heat wave
Running one with the doors open
This is the part buyers get wrong. Open a door, a window, a bay, whatever the building has. The cooler is pushing humid air into the space and that air has to leave, or humidity in the room climbs until the machine stops producing much of a drop.
Which also means a sealed, humidity sensitive space is the wrong place for one. Clean rooms, data closets, finished offices. Buy air conditioning for those and be done with it. In a humid climate on a humid day you still get the airflow, with less movement on the thermometer than the same unit gives you in Phoenix.
Cooler, fan, or air conditioning
A fan moves air across skin so sweat evaporates faster. The person feels cooler while the thermometer reads the same. That effect covers an entire building for very little money per square foot, which is why an HVLS fan gets specified first on most jobs.
A cooler drops the actual temperature of the air leaving the machine, in a cone out front. Spot cooling for one station or one bay.
Air conditioning drops temperature and pulls humidity out of a sealed space. It costs the most to install and the most to run, and in a building whose doors are open all day a lot of that money ends up outside.
In most of the buildings we walk, the fan already handled the bulk of it. What is left is one loading area or one welding station that still cooks in July. That is where this cooler fits.
What is confirmed so far
The unit is in final validation. Locked in:
- Rotomolded housing rated for a work environment
- Reservoir in the base, so it runs without a hose while you are moving it around
- Four heavy duty casters, locking fronts
- Directional discharge
- Made in the USA, same as every fan we build
Airflow, tank capacity, run time per fill, coverage and price all get published the day it releases.
Upkeep
Media pads are the wear item on any evaporative cooler. Hard water leaves scale on the pad, and scale is what quietly kills airflow and cooling performance on a neglected machine, so rinsing the pad and draining the reservoir belongs on a schedule instead of waiting for the end of the season. Anything left sitting full of water through a hard freeze turns into a repair bill.
What people ask before they buy
What size do I need?
Size it to the area you want cooled and to whatever is generating the heat there. Total building square footage is the wrong input. Cooling one packing station is a different calculation than covering a 30 by 40 bay, and our team will walk through it with you.
How much water does it go through?
Depends on fan speed and how dry the air is. Most portable units either get refilled by hand or run off a garden hose with a float valve. Consumption numbers for this one come at release.
Can I run one with HVLS fans?
Yes, and that is the setup we recommend. The fan keeps the cooled air from sitting in a dead pocket while the cooler handles the hot zone.
Get the release notice
Specs, pricing and availability go to our list first. If you want on it, or you want to talk through whether a cooler or a fan solves the heat problem in your building, contact our team and describe the space.
Until then, the full HVLS fan lineup is here, and the HF1200 12 foot industrial ceiling fan is the size that fits the most facilities.
