Even in California drought, misters vital to restaurants

A wonderful article written by Everett Cook from the Desert Sun about how misters are vital to Coachella Valley Restaurants. Mindy Reed and her employees have been yelled at a lot this summer. Five or so times, a staff member has been working outside one of her two South Palm Canyon restaurants, Zin American Bistro and Alicante, only to become witness to a car full of people who pull up and shout obscenities toward the restaurant. It’s not because Reed is serving subpar food. It’s because she’s running her misting system on the patio. When California isn’t dealing with a record-setting drought, the misters are welcomed as part of the framework of the valley. But as the drought drags on, the public perception of these cooling systems is beginning to turn. Owners like Reed deal with in-person criticism, and the Desert Water Agency has received calls from residents asking why they’re permitted. Here’s the reality: commercial misting systems don’t use as much water to function as many think and meanwhile, contribute a great deal to a local economy that already suffers during the summer, restaurant owners say. Even if it’s 110 degrees, misters can make patio dining tolerable. In Palm Springs, where being outside is often the draw, that’s important — Reed estimates that 30 percent of her summer business comes from patio dining, and that’s during a season that’s already down 40 percent in sales from the peak winter. “The misters are the difference between staying open and not staying open,” Reed said. “Between my two places, that’s 50 people who are employed all summer. That’s families and tax dollars. If I had to lay all of them off, that’s a lot of people looking for jobs who aren’t able to support their families in the summer.” Many owners presume that misters are a topic of conversation because of their visibility. A stroll down the South Palm Canyon sidewalk in July can feel like the vegetable section of a grocery store — there’s mist everywhere. But in terms of actual water use, the misting systems are insignificant. They’re designed to make the smallest droplets of water possible, because the smaller the droplets, the easier the evaporation into dry air (that’s why when the outdoor dew point and humidity is high, misters don’t work). Once the water is evaporated, the resulting cool air is then pulled into an overhead fan, where it’s distributed across a patio. The resulting temperature drop can be anywhere from 5 to 30 degrees, which also allows the indoor air conditioning system to use less energy. Take Las Casuelas Terraza as an example. The high end systems — used by all of the biggest patios on South Palm Canyon — use somewhere in the neighborhood of one gallon of water per nozzle, per hour (for reference, a single lawn sprinkler running at a medium flow rate uses five gallons of water a minute). Las Casuelas uses around 80 nozzles a day, depending on crowds and the relative humidity outside. If the system runs for eight hours, that’s 640 gallons of water per day, roughly the same amount of water used in 38 showers. Depending on the time of day, there are around 500 mister heads in use in downtown Palm Springs during the summer, combining to use somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 gallons of water a day. If that sounds like a lot, the Coachella Valley Water District has said that on average, each golf course in the valley uses roughly 1 million gallons of water a day. Downtown misters use less water in one year than your average golf course does in one day. For Las Casuelas, these misters help them to stay open year-round. They’ve never closed their doors, and as a result, some employees have been with the restaurant since it opened more than 30 years ago. Because of that base, Las Casuelas has been able to reinvest in sustainability. They use 138 solar panels and monitor when the misters are used, generally on request or when they’re busy. The restaurant has the largest patio in the downtown area, and on many days, the outdoor seating is more crowded than indoor. Without that patio option, they’d have to cut employee hours to the point where many would leave. That hurts those individuals, but also the restaurant business, since owners would be forced to cycle through employees and lose the efficiency that comes with continuity. “We’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in being responsible for how we use our resources here, but at a certain point, there are trade-offs,” said Patrick Service, general manager of Las Casuelas. “We understand the perspective that if it appears wasted, one drop of water is too much for a lot of people. But the trade-offs in terms of jobs and the economy here, it’s critical. This has been one of the best summers I’ve ever seen, and a lot of people are outside. People are still drawn to Palm Springs in the summer, but they wouldn’t be if it was 115 degrees and there was no relief.” The Coachella Valley is actually home to the first company in the U.S. that brought outdoor cooling to patios — MicroCool. Their first installation, Las Casuelas in 1981, became home the first commercial misting system in the country. It was so foreign to the restaurant owners that they left it on during a humid stretch, turning the mist into something more of a billow. Downtown pedestrians were so alarmed that the fire department was called. Since then, dozens of other outdoor cooling companies have appeared in the desert. Business was good for a while, then the drought hit. MicroCool, still the biggest operation in the desert, has seen their commercial and residential installations drop by almost 50 percent. They’ve cut down on traditional private misting now to focus on larger industrial projects like greenhouses. There have also been rumblings from the public to place restrictions on misting systems, but as of now, the Desert Water Agency is targeting larger water users. According to a spokesperson from the Coachella Valley Water District, their board has looked into how much water misters use, but haven’t discussed restrictions on a serious level. “Our conservation strategies are working now, but if we run into a situation where we need to do more, I’m sure misting systems and other conservation strategies would be on the table for discussion for restriction,” said Katie Ruark, DWA’s public information officer.“But it’s not something we’re considering doing at this time.” There are cheaper, inefficient misting systems that don’t use all of the technology MicroCool does — zoning systems, humidity monitors, and something called a variable frequency drive — but those systems aren’t popular with Palm Springs restaurants. Although it may appear to onlookers to be a blatant disregard for water conservation , owners aren’t ignoring their misters and just letting them run wild.Trio, with an 80 head system, previously used the misters at all times to try and draw people to the patio. Now, they only turn them on if requested. Blue Coyote Grill, with 2/3 of their seating outdoors, monitors humidity closely to make sure the misters are running at optimal times. The owner of Lulu, Jerry Keller, had MicroCool come out in the spring and re-evaluate their system after he’d received questions from customers about the efficiency of the misters. They were able place caps on 25percent of the mister heads while maintaining their patio temperatures. It sounded like a lot to Keller until he found out how much water that actually saved per day. The answer? One shower’s worth.