Just popping in to say these things work awesome IF, and this is a big if, you’re in a dry climate. As the name implies, the cooling effect comes from evaporation of water into the air. So if you’re in a climate where the ambient air is already saturated with humidity, their efficiency falls off a cliff.
Their colloquial name “swamp coolers” couldn’t be further from the truth. They should call them desert coolers.
I really appreciate that insight. I do live in a very humid area… was thinking of getting one of these for my closed-in porch… but… sounds like it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Yeah, I appreciate that they at least do make reference to this in the product description, but they downplay it a bit. If you look at a graph of swamp cooler efficiency across different % humidity, the contrast is obvious.
Basically anything over 60% and you’ll only get a few degrees cooling.
I live in Louisiana, the air coming off them is slightly cooler and anything helps but then the CFM is the most important aspect. Because a breeze of 90deg air is better than no breeze. This one only puts out 1000cfm so isn’t that great of moving air for the price. A similar priced round fan moves 3000+cfm which I think when its 90 deg outside I’d rather get hit with 3200cfm of 90deg air vs 1000cfm of 87deg air.