Evaporative A/C's

[MW]

Can anyone give me a tip on a good evap A/C? It needs to be big enough to cool 4 bedrooms and 2/3 living areas, approx. 220sqm in overall area to cool.

Has anyone put one in recently and can recommend one?

The two I am looking at are a Breezair or a Brivis, does anyone have any thoughts on these two brands good or bad?

Cheers!

[Sojourner]

We are looking at doing the same to our place at present, my information from a chap that works in the industry is that "Breezair" made by Seely at Edwardstown are the best, the quote that I have for the Bonair system is $200 cheaper than the Breezair, yet I still think the Breezair system is the better way to go.

[MW]

Yeah I have a mate who works at Seeleys and he says their Breezair sh1ts all over the Brivis, but I wouldn't mind an independent opinion!

[Kahuna]

We have a Brivis, works ok but don't like it's initial start up routine.Seems to take forever to start running after you turn it on.Apparently this is a feature as it goes through a bit of a routine of soaking the pads,cleaning itself etc and I always wonder if the thing is actually going to start blowing air. Wall controller is not particularly intuitive or user friendly but the unit does a good job when it gets going.Nice and quiet too.

[godoubleblues]

I have a Brivis and I cant fault it, it came in cheaper than some of the other brands when I got it installed, about 3 years ago
agree with Kahunas comment about start up but once it is going it does the job well

[Psyber]

Remember that evaporative systems stop working if the general humidity rises, and they tend to breed bugs like Legionella and fungi if your are not stringent with the maintenance. In Adelaide I always preferred a good reverse cycle, refrigerated, split system for efficiency, comfort, and relative silence.

However, I'm not up to date with the technology as we've lived in the Dandenong Ranges, where it is usually 5 degrees or more cooler than Melbourne, for 7 years and we don't need air conditioning. We appreciate the Hydronic heating in the winter though, especially when it snows outside.

[MW]

Remember that evaporative systems stop working if the general humidity rises, and they tend to breed bugs like Legionella and fungi if your are not stringent with the maintenance. In Adelaide I always preferred a good reverse cycle, refrigerated, split system for efficiency, comfort, and relative silence.

However, I'm not up to date with the technology as we've lived in the Dandenong Ranges, where it is usually 5 degrees or more cooler than Melbourne, for 7 years and we don't need air conditioning. We appreciate the Hydronic heating in the winter though, especially when it snows outside.

Yeah I have considered reverse cycle ducting and all but signed up for it until I researched the running costs....apparently reverse cycle is 60-70c per hour average and evap is 10-20c per hour. I have gas heating already so may opt for the ducted evap instead.

My old place had ducted evap and yeah on the really humid days it is ineffective but if we used the fan mode it seemed to be fine.

[Psyber]

Remember that evaporative systems stop working if the general humidity rises, and they tend to breed bugs like Legionella and fungi if your are not stringent with the maintenance. In Adelaide I always preferred a good reverse cycle, refrigerated, split system for efficiency, comfort, and relative silence.

However, I'm not up to date with the technology as we've lived in the Dandenong Ranges, where it is usually 5 degrees or more cooler than Melbourne, for 7 years and we don't need air conditioning. We appreciate the Hydronic heating in the winter though, especially when it snows outside.

Yeah I have considered reverse cycle ducting and all but signed up for it until I researched the running costs....apparently reverse cycle is 60-70c per hour average and evap is 10-20c per hour. I have gas heating already so may opt for the ducted evap instead.

My old place had ducted evap and yeah on the really humid days it is ineffective but if we used the fan mode it seemed to be fine.

I only had ducting in one house. In the others I had a couple of fully independent split systems, and just ran the one at the end we wanted cooled. We usually went for a large floor mounted one in the living area and a small wall mounted one in the master bed room. Cooling the whole house is never economical, so we went for cooling smaller regions effectively

[bazza1]

I have a Brivis, and it works really well, i have also had it serviced twice and a part replaced in the the 4 years i have had it, i have been told there is a problem with a certain part but once you have it replaced you should have a worry. They might have fixed the problem by now though.

[THE MOLE]

I dont think that there is a great deal of difference between the brands in evaporative coolers, pretty much a wet bag and a fan and all going to do the same job.
Brivis have a lot of electrical parts in there systems and from my experience that means that much more can go wrong. Breezair manufacture all there own spare parts and they are quite expensive. Bonaire uses all generic spare parts which are off the shelf items, so spare parts wise, bonaire definately comes out on top.
Im in a/c sales so if anyone needs a hand, im happy to help

[Felch]

I had a Breezair Harmony installed in my last place, had it for 7 years without a problem. Worked excellent, would highly recommend one. Our house was 4 bedroom, and quite large, and it cooled it no probs.

[dont think do]

Evaps, are cheaper to run but we all know that once its gets above 38 they struggle to cope this would depend on the house and angle of the sun on windows etc etc.

Having just built and being at Angle Vale which can get a bit warm we put in a reverse cycle that runs on 5 zones so we can chose what parts of the house to heat/cool.

If you already have ducted gas then its much cheaper to go the evap way, and the reason why they take a while to start up, is they need to pump water on to the pads as they cool the air by passing it through the wet pads.

The Breezeair from what I have heard are as good as they come, but with the summers we have anything is better than nothing.

[THE MOLE]

Evaps struggle on the humid days as there is already moisture in the air. We seem to be getting more and more humid days every year.
A lot more people will have the evaporative for the whole house, and have a split system for the main area. Including myself.
The main problem with r/c ducted is if you want to only run a small area, you still have to run the whole machine, even with inverters the minumum is around 5 kws so running costs are quite expensive