OT: Swamp cooler question

taken

accurate.

The rocky hillside protects me pretty much from the dust.

I have a float valve on my filler, so I don't know loss while aerating, but I'm sure it's a lot :-( ...Jim Thompson

Yep

I sensed that without it it was runnin bad. Thats when I checked the current draw, talked to the air man, and did not get him to come out. After the mod I did notice it working better. I would still like to install a simple sun fence to keep the brick under the deck from getting hot.

greg

Precooler attachments are readily available for any A/C We had one years ago and it worked well in Parker AZ.

Plexi gets ugly pretty quickly. Squirrels clawing their way up (or trying to, then phsssscratch, all the way back down), birds sitting on the side and then feeling a bowel movement, and so on.

taken

accurate.

Me too. Electricity is cheap. ;-)

I spent about 14 weeks in the Brevard County area summer 1977. I would rather not do it again.

A coworker of mine does (on the outdoor unit of course) and is impressed with the savings. Sacramento area.

Actually more of a calcium/lime deposit issue. Must use softened to deionized water. Works best when the mister materials disolving into the water is balanced with deposits cost wise.

Ok, guys, now that it is installed for a while I waited for some hot days. Those came this week. Long story short it worketh. It keeps the inside temps from rising too much but I found that once you let the inside temp get too high or it has crept up to 80F or so by 7:00pm the swamp cooler has a hard time pushing that back down. Despite the fact that lots (as in 3000cfm) air comes out of it at 65-70F. This surprised me a bit, considering the vast amounts of cold air coming out. I mean, you could sit in front of the vent all shivering but the room cools down only very slowly.

We have strategically opened windows and dutyfully did the "Champion test", holding tissue in front of screens to see whether the air flow was ok.

Any tricks of the trade to improve the cool-down of the house, other than buying a bigger unit?

Move to a dryer climate ?:-)

Seriously... there should be only one exit for the air... at the farthest end of the house away from the cooler. ...Jim Thompson

That would be the office where I am sitting now. I have tried that. The office did not get a very noticeable cold draft like the living room does (ok, a little, very little), the tissue test showed almost no air push, and the living room area humidity began to inch up.

You have heat from the walls and objects affecting cool down. Also radiation. The faster the air is moving inside, the more heat is being picked up from the furniture and walls. Kind of self defeating. I typically get 30 min for each 1-1.5 degree cool down with my refridgerated air. I start to get serious exterior heat affecting inside temps around 5:00 PM. I would say turn it on around 4:00 PM.

Paint your roof silver, insulate. Paint your whole house silver.

greg

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That I understand. But since we keep the swamp cooler running all day long things inside the house don't become too hot. The house inches up from 70F in the morning to 80F by sundown. Probably more if we were to get 100F+ days again. However, the massive kitchen counter is not nearly as heated up by the evening as it was before we had the swamp cooler (we don't use the regular central A/C much).

Oh, it runs almost 24/7. During the night usually without the water pump (vent only) and during the day on high or low cool. If we'd turn it on at 4:00pm the house would be freaking hot and it probably wouldn't bring it down at all.

Right now it seems that the swamp cooler can make the temp rise during the day fairly shallow, muffles it quite a bit, but it isn't really able to cool the house down much unless it has all night to do that. Overnight it does get it down, from 78F or so to around 70F.

Then we'd have all the county supes here in less than a day, with their jaws dropped :-)

Then you have an inadequate exit opening. If it's not at least breezy throughout the house, you have inadequate flow. ...Jim Thompson

If you have attic crawl space, reflective material up in the attic helps.

greg

It's a sliding door. I tried everything from fully open to almost closed. Nada.

Not much I can do about that, it's a 300W-400W motor. Couldn't fit a bigger unit at that spot. There is a very noticeable breeze in the living room and adjoining kitchen. When I close all the windows there and open the office there's a slight remnant of a breeze in the hallway to that office. But once you step into the office itself ... gone.

That we have. There is a metal roof (Decra, looks like shake). Underneath is aluminim-backed insulation. It looked weird when the roofer had laid that out but the shingles weren't on yet, the house really beamed into the neighborhood. A pilot said that if we left it that way they could use it as a landmark from far away.

Failure to follow instructions :-(

What's the CFM rating? What's you house square-footage? You probably need a 4500CFM to 6000CFM rated device. ...Jim Thompson

What instructions?

The upper part of the house where this cooler sits is probably a little over 2600sqft. Unit is 3000cfm, so I knew it won't be able to cool all this, and it doesn't have to. I don't mind heat and neither does my equipment (well, the Wavetek 23 kind of did and croaked but no big loss). In the evening all we need to cool is the living room and kitchen, all of which probably totals 500sqft.

But as I said, there was simply no way to jam a bigger unit in there. What I am wondering is: If all windows are closed and I open the office and nothing arrives, where does all the air go? It really gushes air into the living room.