Cars can break down at any time, and often they seem to do so when it’s least convenient. This means that if you’re an automotive technician, you have to be working year-round, in all conditions, often with owners demanding their cars be fixed right away. The summer heat can be awful for automotive technicians because there are so many things in the shop that generate heat.
The physical structure of shops usually add to the problem, making it hard to stay comfortable on a hot day. Rarely made with decent insulation, they also have to be open to the outside for large portions of the day, and this means that outside heat can’t be kept out.
If you want to keep your shop cool, you need to have a good cooling solution. But what’s best for your shop? If we look at the characteristics a good shop cooling solution should have, we can see evaporative coolers for auto shops stand out.
First, you need a cooling solution that will actually cool your shop down. It has to be able to overcome the combination of outdoor heat and the things that produce heat in the shop, such as grinders and welders. A fan won’t cut it, since it will just push the hot air around your shop. You need either an air conditioner or an evaporative cooler. Both have the capability to provide cooling for your shop. However, air conditioners are only effective in situations where there is no access to outside air (more on that in a moment…).
You also need a cooling solution that won’t damage your tools or the cars you’re working on. This means that you can’t have a misting system, which would get water all over tools and parts. However, either an air conditioner or an evaporative cooler would work.
Some people think that an evaporative cooler can lead to rust on metal components, but it doesn’t. Read the experience of a metalworking shop that relies on evaporative coolers to beat the heat.
One of the big challenges in cooling a shop is that the door has to be open either constantly or frequently. This means that you can’t count on keeping cool air contained. You need a cooling solution that can throw out a high quantity of air, around 10,000 cubic feet per minute or so, depending on the size of your shop.
An evaporative cooler for auto shops has no problem with this. Many affordable units easily double that quantity. However, it is a challenge for an air conditioner. Most air conditioners count on putting out a small quantity of cooled air and building up the cooling effect over time. Even a large air conditioning unit puts out a fraction of the airflow you need to cool and re-cool a shop throughout the day.
One of the challenges with getting effective cooling in your shop is that you’re not always in the same place. Building in a fan or cooler might work okay for some days, but as you move from bay to bay and workstation to workstation, you might find that you’re not benefiting from the cooling effect.
That makes a portable evaporative cooler for an auto shop your best choice. It can be set up to cool the shop generally or focus on specific workstations since it can easily wheel around the shop to focus on the different places you’re working.
You also don’t want a cooling solution that’s going to cost a lot to run. You don’t want to have to increase prices for your loyal customers or lose out on new ones because you have to pay for your cooling solution.
This is what makes evaporative coolers for auto shops the smart choice. To deliver the same quantity of cooled air, an air conditioner might take 10-20 times as much power. The air conditioner can close that gap a little if you can trap the cooled air, but if you’re constantly losing cool air in your shop, an evaporative cooler costs much less to run than an air conditioner.
If you are looking for a good way to cool your shop, Portacool is the smart choice. That’s why we’re the choice of racing teams, motorsports enthusiasts, and shops across the country. With more than 30 years of experience in providing effective, efficient, portable cooling, we have become a recognized leader in the industry. But while we have distributors in all 50 states and 54 countries around the world, we still make all our evaporative coolers at our Center, Texas manufacturing plant.
To learn more about what makes Portacool the best cooling solution for your shop, visit a local or online retailer or contact us directly.
