Love my swamp cooler...

[peyton]

The US army "liberated" Iraqi army tents in 2003. Old Sarge went to "Joe's don't ask where it came from" warehouse in Tikrit and bought every swamp cooler and all associated equipment.
The tent city was laid out to accommodate the water truck that came through to refill the tanks.
Since everything in the Army requires soldiers it became a real pain to make sure they arrived on time to fill the tanks.
Sergeant Major in charge stated that soldiers that missed this duty would be burning *** barrels for the next year!!
The tents were felt lined and remarkably cooler.

 

[Jimmyjones]

Not sure I see the point of the open/cracked windows. How does this impact the efficiency of the swamp cooler? I don't have a thermostat per se just High/Low settings for the cooler or fan only. The pollen rains down in late spring and early summer along with a fair amount of dust {welcome to Arizona}. Keeping the windows closed keeps it outside and we don't suffer from allergies. Seems like leaving the windows open would just provide a path for the cold air to vent outside {and pollen and dust to come inside} where it does no good{???}.

One thing I do notice is that to open a door you need to pull enough to break the seal so to speak and the door will tend to slam shut if you don't close them gently yourself. Oh well, we both seem to be getting the desired results for not much cost of operation and as always...

Opinions and YMMV

I live in a hundred year old house made of dry stacked moss rock, no insulation. I run a small (1800/3600) window mounted swamper in the summer. I open the windows/doors where I want the cooling. During the day I cool the living areas, at night I close down the main house and open the bedroom and 'master bath' windows to direct the cooling through there. Has worked for me for over 20 years. Keeping some windows open reduces the humidity level in the house and keeps the doors from slamming.
The air your pumping into the house needs to go somewhere.

 

[Stevens]

I have always heard them called Desert Coolers, that was on trips to Africa various dry countries. They sure wouldn't work here in South Louisiana, humidity 77% right now. They do work great in the Sudan though!
Steve W

 

[Bob L]

A number of years ago, the glass company that I worked for built a new warehouse in Phoenix. Most of the automotive windshields were packed in shipped in large corrugated boxes which contained from 12 to 45 windshields. The first summer it was opened, I received a call because the boxes containing the windshields, which were stacked 4 high in the warehouse were falling over. If you ever did much with corrugated board (cardboard), you soon realize that cardboard is like a sponge and will soak up the humidity in the air and lose it stacking ability. When they called me in a panic, I asked is anything had changed in the warehouse and they explained that they installed swamp coolers in the roof and the humidity in the warehouse was about 70%. I told them to shut them off and down stack everything until the warehouse humidity dropped down to normal for Phoenix. Expensive Lesson learned.