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Shiny gadget of the month: Mistbox

By June 22, 2016February 7th, 2019Article

How to stay cool and save money this summer with Mistbox

Summer is here (although it’s felt like it for some time now) and you’ve probably been running your air conditioning pretty hard at times, which adds to your monthly energy bill. However, your AC costs don’t have to be so high. Mistbox is a nifty little gadget that you can hook up to your AC condenser unit that sits outside of your house. It claims to help you save anywhere between 20-40% on your AC costs.

The technology is not anything revolutionary. In fact, it’s been used for commercial air conditioning for a while now. The way it works is by helping to cool the air around the condenser unit—which normally would be sucking in hot air to cool off the refrigerant—making your AC unit work harder. By cooling the air around it with a fine mist of water (don’t worry, it only uses pennies of water a day and can even be set for a low-water mode during water restrictions), Mistbox will help your AC unit run more efficiently, which reduces your power usage and, therefore, your costs.

It might sound like something that could be intimidating to hook up, but Mistbox actually has an easy five-minute installation and a programmable control system that runs off solar power, so once you set it up you don’t have to mess with it again. Essentially, you’ll hook Mistbox up to the outside of the condenser, hook your garden hose up to Mistbox, and you’re good to go.

At $399, it has a relatively low initial investment compared to other energy-saving upgrades to your house (like windows or insulation), and with the cost savings on your energy bill, Mistbox can pay for itself and potentially offer you some ROI in the first season alone! To add to that, Mistbox even qualifies for a 30% federal green tax credit, come tax season. You can even use the Mistbox app to track your savings. Even better, the only maintenance you need to do is to replace the water filter annually. That’s really it.

I think this seems like a pretty cool gadget. Go see for yourself at their website here.