BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...

Subject: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Jun 13 - 07:56 PM

Just saw a "swamp cooler" in a catalog... $199... My office is on the 2nd floor and I have AC up here but never turn it on because I can't get it to just cool my office no matter how I close off vents...

Do these things work???

I mean, I know they work (or kinda work) but never seen one like this... Takes 4 gallons of water...

Whaddayathink???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 13 - 08:11 PM

I had one, but I don't think that it worked as well as advertised even if you put ice on the blower outlet. It was also difficult to fill, because the filler tube was placed close to the bottom on one side and I had to use a long funnel. It was equipped to be filled by a hose, but I never used it as it was too much trouble and I was living in an unairconditioned apartment.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: catspaw49
Date: 17 Jun 13 - 09:51 PM

No



Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 13 - 10:45 PM

Never heard it called "swamp cooler", but we had one for our 37 Chevy when I was a kid. It was mounted on the passenger side window, and you occasionally poured water in it. Air rushing in was directed into the car...I seem to remember it didn't help much..........still, we bought one (just called a 'water cooler') for the house soon after. A hose was attached to the intake at top and adjusted to a slow drip thru the 'excelsior' (shredded wood) batting as a squirrel-cage fan blew the slightly cooled air into the house. If you were very hot and stood in front of it, you felt better than NOT being in front of it. I remember once going with my father to a distributor for a new batting to replace the rotting one.

We finally got a real AC after several years.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Jun 13 - 11:10 PM

In the right climate they do work - up to a point.

LiK's mom used one in her house up to the day she died, and she was "satisifed" with the cooling, but that was in North Texas where the outdoor humidity was generally fairly low during hot weather.

Hers was about a 3.5 foot "cube" that hung in a window, connected to a water tap with a float valve so that the bottom automatically was kept filled, and a small pump flowed water to the top of the three "excelsior" air filters (the three outside vertical sides of the cube).

In dry weather, the air coming into the house might be 15 - 20 F (8 - 11 C) cooler than outside. I never got a humidistat in, but it felt like the humidity indoors didn't rise more than perhaps 10 - 15 percent with her unit.

The temperature drop for the incoming air is pretty much fixed by the humidity, and a too small unit won't bring in enough cool air to do much good. An excessively large unit may add enough indoor humidity to defeat the effect of the air being a little cooler, but "up until the moss grows" on the walls there's probably some positive effect. A unit that just recirculates the air in the room may "bootstrap" the humidity up faster than it cools anything, so this kind of cooler usually works better if it brings in outside air continuously.

In a "hot muggy" climate, like in most big eastern US cities I'd expect it to be pretty much useless due to the humidity that settles in between all the tall buildings, and maybe in southern coastal areas, although I've heard of some use in Florida(?).

For a little more ($150 - $200?) you can probably get a "real" 6,000 Btu "window" air conditioner to "spot cool" a room, without messing with the water leaks and mildew. That's about as big as you can go on a (US) 120V - 20A outlet although you might stretch it to 8 - 10 KBtu on a "dedicated" outlet(?). Of course it will eat a little on your electric bill, but even in Kansas I'd generally go with the compressor.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 08:10 AM

Don't get one until we see where this climate change goes. You might need a few coal stoves instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: artbrooks
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 08:15 AM

Since it depends on air flowing over water, it doesn't work that well in a humid climate - really just increases the humidity you're already dealing with, unlike a "refrigerated air" unit which pulls water out of the incoming air and releases it back outside (for those really muggy days, make sure it has a drain if you have a "real" AC unit). Swamp coolers work great out here in New Mexico, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 09:14 AM

Bobert, like Art said, it doesn't work well in places like North Carolina that are hot and humid in the summer. It would be an abysmal failure in the Smokys. Or in New York City. But in Tucson, it's great!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 09:27 AM

I musta gotten a dud, because here in the high desert of Idaho it didn't work well a-tall.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 09:58 AM

First of all, my days of having a window unit are hopefully in the past... I hate them... I like looking out my window...

I hadn't really given much thought to the water aspect... I have seen big ones used inside greenhouses here in North Carolina and when the P-Vine goes to see her doctor there is a monstrously big one the size of a small house next to that medical complex...

Guess Mr. Ceiling Fan and I are stuck with one another...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 11:29 AM

Bobert... there are 'portable' ACs to be had.

http://www.myportableairconditioners.com/

They sit on the floor, but need a hose discharge thru a window. You'd still get most of the window clear.

(I saw one at COSTCO last week.... Google will find lots of models.)

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 03:01 PM

I presume a swamp cooler is an evaporative cooler- dripping water in front of a fan, all within a box. We had one in our student shack when we were attending university in Austin, TX.

We build it ourselves. It worked "after a fashion," as someone said above, as long as the humidity was low.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 08:43 PM

A "room swamp cooler" of the kind that's appeared periodically since the 1920s, that sucks air out of the room, cools it a little(?) by evaporating some water into it, and blows the same air back into the room has little chance of providing much benefit. Most of the air it sucks in will already be wet from previous passes through the unit, so the humidity will already be high. Evaporation of more water has to cool both the incoming air and the water already in it so the temperature drop is much less than for wetter intle air than for dry inlet air, and repeatedly passing the same air just gives you wetter air that's not much cooler.

The end result of running one of these regularly, for fairly long times, is a hot muggy room with fuzzy green furniture and walls in it.

To get significant reduction in the temperature of the air, the inlet air must start off with air at the lowest available humidity level, which nearly always means "outside air." For a swamp cooler of modest but useful size that pretty much mandates a "window unit" or at least a "through the wall" arrangement.

Since you're continuously "adding outside air" it works best if the house is a little bit "leaky" so that some air can leak out and the house won't blow up like a balloon, so a swamp cooler generally will work better in an older house than in a "modern one" that's tightly sealed. The transition in the US to intentionally "low leak" construction was around 1950, but houses built for some time after that by now have probably developed sufficient vents due to general decay and decrepitude.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 08:45 PM

You are da' man, JinK... When you talk about mechanical things, I listen...

Thanks...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Jun 13 - 10:18 PM

The house my family moved into ca. 1942 had a swamp cooler attached; but it didn't really do much good, so we opened a couple of windows and trashed the thing in the middle of the first full summer.

LiK's mom was satisfied with hers for about 30 years, and it did really help in N. Texas.

A problem with the existing AC might be just that it takes a long time for a small AC to bring the room temp down, so turning it on when you go into the office may not get it comfortable by the time you leave, and if it's a central air setup getting the right vent settings to have "unequal" temps in different places can be difficult.

For around $200 (US) you should be able to get a 6,000 Btu "window unit" and for a little extra get an "apartment sleeve" that you can install below a window (or anywhere else). The sleeve goes through the wall to the outside in a hole approximately the same size as the "front end" of the AC, and you just slide the AC in and plug into an existing (or added) outlet and cool just where the air comes in. (It's usually recommended that you have a separate 20A outlet for the AC, since existing outlets may overload when you add one to them.)

Run the outside condensate to the rose bush and you can forget about watering it, since the AC will run mostly when the rose needs the water. (My dad puzzled an AG department gardner with the birch tree beside the house for years. He made several visits back and never did figure out that it was "drip lubricated" by the AC, and always left muttering "You can't grow a birch tree in the middle of Wichita.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 03:55 AM

From Wikipaedia (always a reliable source ;) )
In the United States, the use of the term swamp cooler may be due to the odor of algae produced by early units.
And my first thought after reading this thread was that it was a nickname taken from the abode (known as "The Swamp") of Hawkeye & B.J. in M*A*S*H*.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 03:59 AM

What you need is a bevy of mudcat floozies with big ostrich feather fans standing around you waving away.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 05:23 AM

Nigel -

That Wiki comment: ... may be due to the odor of algae produced by early units looks like it was written by some young pup who never actually used one - that worked right. I wonder if it might have been a bit tongue-in-cheek.

The tradition, at least in my areas where they were used, was that the humidity produced by one made it "like going into a swamp" where everything sort of dripped and oozed. Mildew or moss growth was more of a problem where this method works best. If you're getting algae the outside humidity is probably too high for one to work very well.

It is true that they sometimes developed an odor, but changing out the excelsior fixed that pretty easily, and there generally was very little odor since the fungus doesn't grow when it's "really wet" (i.e. when it's running constantly) and in many climates it dried out so fast that there wasn't enough moisture to grow fuzzy stuff when it wasn't being used. The odor problem appeared most often when people tried to use one "intermittently" and kept the thing consistently "about half wet."

In the areas where they worked best, you turned them on around mid June and turned them off (and drained them immediately) early in September. No stops in between, for more than a few hours at a time.

Some local water supplies do "just naturally stink" and evaporation concentrates whatever "other stuff" is in there, and poor distribution of the "drip" through the media could produce some algae; so the odor was a known possibility, but never much of a problem in units I've seen in use.

(Or maybe it was just that grandpa smelled so bad we never noticed the cooler odor. (?))

John

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: artbrooks
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 08:31 AM

Here (in the Southwest) they are generally whole-house units that sit on the side or on the roof and feed into the ductwork. They have a large fan that sucks outside air through moist pads, a water feed line and a pump that sprays water on the pads. I've never seen one that recirculated inside air.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 09:10 AM

Va. Tam has the right idea... A room full of Mud-floozies fanning me... Bring 'um on...

Like I said earlier, John, I'm not into window units and my office is so full that there is no wall space to cut open...

I might try tinkering with the vents and use the existing central (2 zone) system... I hate using it because it is expensive to run...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 10:58 AM

We turned ours off when the temperature went down at night, and turned it on when we got up, before the air temperature started to increase.
As SRS says, they worked in low-humidity areas, and they should be mounted to suck in outside air, as artbrooks notes.

They helped in the more arid parts of Texas.

They would not be any good in Bobert country, or "Swamp People" country (anyone here watch that program, besides me?).

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 12:12 PM

Bobert.. do look into my suggestion above about portable AC units... much easier to install and wont block entire window.

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 12:58 PM

I did, Bill, and I am pondering on them... What I don't like is the condensation line... I guess I need to see if they make one that catches the condensation in a container like de-humidifiers...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 09:58 PM

Okay, so your office is upstairs, right? Attach a hose to the condensation line and run it to the top of the stairs. Voila! Instant waterfall feature! Increases the value of your house by a lot!

No, no, don't thank me. I'm just your ordinary genius....

Subject: RE: BS: Single room 'swamp coolers'...
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 10:05 PM

I'm worried about you, Rap... Me thinks that there is is another reason why you are building plastic airplane models...

Glue, dude???

B;~)