Do Misting Systems Work in High Humidity? (All You Need to Know)
A misting system can be your saving grace during a hot summer. It cools your outdoor seating area without requiring it to be closed off, and if you use a proper, well-designed misting system, you won’t have to worry about water damaging anything.
However, a mist system essentially works by adding moisture, or humidity, to the air. That obviously helps in extremely dry regions, but is it really useful in an area like the tropics that is already humid?
Well, yes, it is.
The answer is a little more complex than that, though. So, let’s go over how a misting system works, what it's best for, and do misting systems work in high humidity.
How Does a Misting System Work?
If you get the right misting system, the inner workings are fairly complex. It will be much more than just a hose with holes and tight-holed nozzles on it. For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to cover the aerMist misting system, the most effective option on the market.
With this type of high-quality misting system, water is pulled from your home’s water system, and it is sprayed into the air via a high-powered burst.
This doesn’t just spray water everywhere, though. The amount of water that is used in combination with the sprayer is extremely small. In fact, water droplet that exits the nozzle is so small that it evaporates before it ever makes contact with you, your porch, or any of the delicate items you might have out such as your smartphone.
Essentially, rather than just getting everything wet, as those extremely small water droplets get into contact with air, they evaporate. For water to change state from liquid to gas, it needs heat energy. As the water droplet evaporates, it sucks the heat energy from air to change to gas state. .
This process is called evaporative cooling, and through this process, the temperature of the air drops dramatically in the immediate area.
Where Do Misting Systems Work Best?
Misting systems do work BEST in dry climates. That doesn’t mean they don’t work extremely well in humid areas, they just tend to work better in arid and dry locations where moisture in the air is low.
Why is that?
Well, in a dry area, there’s hardly any moisture in the air. This air has a lot of capacity to evaporate a lot of water, but it definitely creates some immediately noticeable problems such as quickly overheating, skin losing its moisture, etc. It can also be easier to come down with heat-related illnesses because of high heat.
When you introduce high pressure misting to an area like that, it doesn’t just add moisture to the air, but it cools it as well. Evaporative cooling drops the temperature of the air almost immediately, relieves dry-heat related problems and risks, and balances out the climate of the immediate area to make it more comfortable overall. Depending on the settings used, a very hot and dry area can almost feel air conditioned with a good misting system.
It’s a key point that the moisture added is cool and done in a way that doesn’t soak everything or over moisturize the immediate area; instead of making it humid like a sub-tropical jungle, it simply cools the area. If that’s not done properly, the area can be just as uncomfortable as it was before, but with a new set of problems.
Why Do Misting Systems Work in Humid Areas?
As we’ve said, misting systems do work in humid areas. The same process of evaporative cooling works in humid areas too. Just because of higher humidity, the capacity of air to evaporate water is smaller and it takes longer to evaporate a small water droplet than in a dry area.
In a humid area, heat evaporates large amounts of excess water in the ground, on plants, and practically everywhere else in the environment. It can make it difficult to breathe because of how thick and heavy the air is, it makes it so sweat doesn’t evaporate, which is how the body naturally cools itself, and overall, it’s just uncomfortable.
To compensate for this problem, a well designed high pressure misting system kit will use smaller nozzle sizes. The smaller nozzle sizes produce even smaller water droplets that add less humidity and take less time to evaporate, they cool down the air particles around them and create a little oasis-like pocket where you can sit comfortably and entertain guests, enjoy an afternoon on your porch, or stop your swimming session for a quick lunch on your cool patio.
What to Look for in a Misting System for These Results
Of course, there are a lot of misting systems on the market. If you go the cheap route, you’ll get little more than a length of hose with misting nozzles attached, and that just soaks everything in the nearby vicinity. It won’t do what we’ve talked about here, because there is simply too much water with too big water droplets that cannot fully evaporate. The same goes for the fancy fans that spit water as they rotate, it’s too much water to be effective, and the results aren’t reliable. You’ll feel hot again the second they turn off and your skin quickly dries, and because you introduced a ton of water to the area, it’ll warm up and dry slowly, increasing the humidity you’re trying to escape.
A proper outdoor cooling system, such as the aerMist misting system, isn’t like that. It functions in the way we described above, working in high humidity, cooling a large pocket of air to a comfortable degree, without making the humidity even worse. There are no gimmicky fan designs or glorified hoses dangling from your patio’s overhang. The system is contained, and it quietly disperses miniscule amounts of cold water for quick, reliable, and comfortable relief you’ll love
