UGA Poultry Housing

It is very important to keep in mind that we have far, far more control over bird cooling with our fans than with our evaporative cooling pads.

We tested pad cooling in an empty 54' X 500' house with 14 tunnel fans with a maximum air speed of approximately 700 ft/min on a mild summery day. We started off with 10 tunnel fans and dry pads (110' X 5' X 2 - good condition). Velocity through the pad was approximately 220 ft/min (measured at 15 locations, every 10 seconds). Turned on the pump (no timer) which dropped the incoming air temperature to approxiamately 74 F (measured at 8 locations every 10 seconds). The water flowing over the pad did not change the velocity of the air through the pad...no restriction. Then turned on all 14 fans...the average pad velocity increased to approximately 280 ft/min...and the cooling stayed the same. Then turned off four fans, air velocity through the pad dropped, but the cooling of the air stayed pretty much the same.

In this situation, like most others, an evaporative pad is going to do what an evaporative cooling pad is going to do. Its our ability to pull heat off our birds with air speed over which we have the greatest level of control 😃.