Does This Weird Curtain Hack Help Keep Your Room Cooler During Summer Heat?

There is a method of working that is more like the wet curtain idea than the swamp cooler idea, and it is used in greenhouses all over the world. In its most common form, it looks like a wet cardboard wall, which is essentially what it is. In front of windows or vents, you build a wall of thick cellulose pads. At the top of the pads is a pipe that distributes water to the pads to keep them moist, and at the bottom is an open channel that collects all the runoff water and drains it to a sump where it is recycled through the pads.

Since a lot of water evaporates along the way, you also need to have a way to constantly replenish the water in the sump, usually something like a hose activated by a float switch when the water level drops too low. At the other end of the greenhouse, large fans exhaust air from the structure, constantly drawing it through the wall of wet pads where the energy in the water is converted to latent heat in the form of steam, cooling the air. All the little technical details needed to make such a system work are contained in this model. The same qualities that make evaporative coolers work in a greenhouse also make them ideal for transforming a patio into a work or play space. For indoor spaces, it gets a little more complicated.