Evaporation is a natural cooling process. In fact, when mammals sweat, they’re employing this principle to lower their body temperature.

In livestock barns, evaporative cooling systems rely on cellulose pads to cool air pulled in by fans. Properly cleaning and prepping your cooling pads can help maximize the efficiency of your system and reduce maintenance costs.

In this article, we share several key tips for taking care of getting the most from your cooler pads.

Clean Your Evaporative Cooler Pads Regularly

Cooling pads must remain wet with water in order to cool warmer air as it passes through. It’s common for most water supplies, particularly well systems, to contain dissolved solids.

These solids can include limestone, calcium, magnesium, and other dissolved minerals. While they’re not harmful, the dissolved solids will coat the cellulose material inside the cooling pad. This build-up will eventually reduce the efficiency of your cooling system.

You should clean your cooling pads at least once annually; however, depending on how frequently it's used to cool your barn and the hardness of the water supply, you may need to clean it more frequently.

Cooling Pad Cleaning Instructions:

1. To clean your cooler pads, start by scrubbing them with a soft bristle brush. Avoid scrubbing with too much pressure — you don’t want to damage them.
2. After scrubbing, use a low-pressure hose or nozzle to remove remaining limescale or build-up that wasn’t dislodged by scrubbing.
3. In cases with a significant amount of lime or calcium build-up, you may need to use a cooling pad descaler or other cleaning agent. Be sure to only use a descaler that is designed for treating cooling pads; chemicals like bleach will damage cellulose.
4. After you’ve cleaned the pads, be sure to also clean or replace the in-line filter and flush the reservoir to remove excess mineral deposits from these as well.

Maintaining Cooling Pads

Cleaning your cooling pads is important but preventative maintenance can make cleaning easier and less frequent. There are a few things you can do to help extend the life of your pads:

1. Dry the pads once every 24 hours. Algae growth can occur alongside mineral deposits, clogging cooling pads. Algae requires moisture to grow, and allowing the pads to dry out once a day can help slow or prevent algae from growing.
2. Avoid direct sun exposure to the pads. Sunlight is an essential part of algae growth. UV radiation can also cause cellulose cooling pads to become brittle over time.
3. Treat water and regularly flush your cooling system. Hard water causes mineral deposits. By using treated, filtered water sources to fill your cooling cell system, you can drastically reduce the potential for limescale and calcium or other mineral deposits from forming. Flushing the cooling system, including the filters and the sump, also helps clear build-ups, reducing their impact on the cooling pads.

Always perform regular inspections of your cooling system, checking the pads, filters, and sump pump for signs of scale and other build-up.

How Often To Replace Your Barn’s Evaporative Cooler Pads

Whether it’s time to replace your cooling pads comes down to three factors:

1. The type of cooling pad media
2. Your water hardness
3. The overall condition of the pad

Hard cellulose cooling pads can be replaced less frequently than wool pads. Aside from the cooling pad media, water hardness will be a significant factor in how frequently they should be replaced.

The more dissolved solids in the water pumped into the cooling systems, the more frequently pads will need to be replaced. Low mineral content will mean less frequent replacement.

Finally, the condition of the pads will be the most telling sign of when they should be replaced. Damage and degradation of the media can make it difficult for fans to pull enough air through the pads. It can also make cleaning them more difficult, in turn leading to difficult to remove algae, mineral, or bacteria growth.

Replace Cooling Cell Pads With Farmer Boy

When it comes time to replace your evaporative cooling pads, Farmer Boy has everything you need to renew your cooling system. Provide an optimal environment for your poultry, hogs, and cattle with Farmer Boy.

Shop our online selection of evaporative cooling pads and systems. Planning to overall your current barn cooling system? Give us a call at 1-800-845-3374 for large custom orders and construction services.