[stevehull]

Well I got results on my water precooler and to be succinct, Randen was exactly correct - my well water temp is too high to get a significant effect.

Basically the drop in entering air temperature was too low to be significant at all. The problem is that the entering water temperature here in central Oklahoma is just too high (mid 60s F).

I got an approximate sized evaporator cooler from an old ac unit and duct taped together a box to hold it in place in front of the existing evaporator coil. Used metal foil tape here to seal any air cracks. Thus all entering air would have to pass through new precooler. This added resistance did decrease the air flow velocity a bit (5%), but when no water was passing through the precooler none of the output parameters changed a lot. The exiting air temp did go down a bit, condensate volume went up 2%.

When water flow was introduced through the pre-cooler, it worked best when I reduced the air flow on the fan to the minimum setting, but then I got significant frost build up on the evaporator coil with two hours. The condensate volume shot up to almost a 30% increase before stopping abruptly (froze up).

The good news is there were several "a ha!" moments during the evaluation that I will comment on in another thread.

Bottom line - a well water precooler will work, but you require at least a 20 F decrease between the entering air temp and the water temp.

With the shop at 75 F, the precooler caused condensate output volume rate to increase (~ 2%), and the output air temperature did decrease by about 5%.

Yesterday I did do a test when the shop was very hot (88F). In this situation, the water precooler did augment condensate flow. My problem is that this is a difficult comparison as I don't have a similar test cooling off the shop without the well water precooler when it started hot. I may yet do this.

Now I need to build a data logger! One issue here is that I need to figure out how to measure condensate rate over time. My current method is a small glass jar (10 oz; 300 ml), a 250 ml graduate cylinder and my watch (precise, accurate and cheap). Collect condensate output volume for ~ 15 minutes. An accurate scale and measure weight over time?

Steve