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How Do Evaporative Coolers?

An evaporative cooler is essentially a large fan with water-moistened pads in front of it. The fan draws warm outside air through the pads and blows cooled air throughout the house. These cooling pads can be made of wood shavings - wood from aspen trees is a traditional choice - or other materials that absorb and hold moisture while resisting mildew. The large fan draws air through the pads, where evaporation drops the temperature approximately 20 degrees. The fan then blows this cooled air into the house.

Small distribution lines supply water to the top of the pads. Water soaks the pads and, thanks to gravity, trickles through them to collect in a sump at the bottom of the cooler. A small recalculating water pump sends the collected water back to the top of the pads.  Since water is continually lost through evaporation, a float valve - much like the one that controls the water in a toilet tank - adds water to the sump when the level gets low. Under normal conditions, a swamp cooler can use between 3 to 15 gallons of water a day.

Normal air conditioning is a closed system, taking air from inside a house and recycling it. For air conditioning to function properly, doors and windows should be closed. Evaporative cooling, however, takes air from outside the house. For evaporative cooling to work properly, the cooled outside air must be allowed to escape. By choosing which doors or windows in your home you leave open, you can to help direct the flow of cooled air to areas where it is needed.

In addition to the dropping the temperature of the air, evaporative cooling offers an additional cooling benefit. The constant movement of the air created by the blower - the cooling breeze it creates, if you will - makes the occupants of a room feel 4 to 6 degrees cooler than the actual temperature. This is the same effect you feel when you turn on a ceiling fan or a simple window fan. For this reason, the "effective temperature" created by an evaporative cooler will feel 4 to 6 degrees cooler than temperatures shown on the chart.

An added benefit of evaporative cooling is that it works best in the hottest time of the day. As the temperature outside increases as the sun climbs, the humidity normally drops. In the early morning, for example, the temperature may be 70 degrees, with a relative humidity of 60 percent. By mid-afternoon, when the temperature has climbed to 90 degrees, the humidity may well have dropped to 30 percent - conditions that make evaporative cooling work more effectively.