Has anyone ever made or used a swamp cooler? I haven't but I was talking to a friend about it the other night and a simple version:
- take a 5 gal bucket
- drill 4 each 1" holes in the lid
- install a 12v fan in another hole in the center of the lid
- add 2" of water and ice to the bottom of the bucket and turn the fan on
The fan will draw the warm air in and across the cooler air over the ice, pushing it out the 4 holes you drilled.
Apparently, it will cool down a smaller area like a popup as much as 15-18 degrees.
Back in 1962 or '63, our family of 4 (mom, dad, brother & sis and the Cocker Spaniel) traveled by car out West :cowboy: :chief: on a two-week sightseeing trip. Since most cars were not equipped with A/C at the time, my dad got hold of a contraption that would fit between the bench front seat and the blower fan on the face of the dashboard. We kept the device filled with ice and the air from the fan blew "A/C" throughout the car. That silly dog hogged the middle back seat and barely budged to let us kids in the backseat feel the cold breeze! Sounds like this was about the same idea. 😉
I saw somewhere yesterday where someone took a styrofoam cooler, cut a big circle on lid on one side for a small fan to lay on. They used tape to hold it down onto lid, then on the other side of the lid the had a hole cut for a angled gutter downspout installed to blow cool air out after ice was installed in the cooler.
I built 3 "redneck" air conditioners. They all failed! The ice melted too fast. The 12V battery died early. And most of all they just added humidity to the tent. I did one with a submersible pump and copper tubing and an electric fan, two with a RubberMaid cooler.
We just wound up cutting a hole (neatly) in the tent and installed a small window AC with a Velcro flap. Now we have a portable unit for the tent.
Your two goals are to remove humidity and lower the temp. A swamp cooler will just not last long enough or be strong enough to make it worth the effort (IMO) if its real hot or humid.
Very cool idea Yak and it's cheap. Not that I want to haul more stuff but I don't have a/c in my camper and it's really hot out there.
Here's pictures and details for someones 5 gal bucket setup.
/0/]http://www.theprepperjournal.com/2013/06/21/how-to-build-an-evaporative-cooler-grid-down-air-conditioning/#prettyphoto[2808]/0/
I don't have a/c in the camper and won't cut my roof since it's an ABS roof and they already have problems so I thought I'd try one of these swamp coolers for this coming weekend. The warmer temperatures hadn't been much of a problem since we only use the camper to sleep at night but DGF has little ones who take naps in the middle of the hot day.
I didn't use a Styrofoam cooler because of traveling and having it break.
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I am concerned about how long the ice will last and how often it will need to be replaced. I'm freezing a few plastic OJ containers.
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temperature in the room
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temperature of the air coming from the cooler - just about 20 degrees less
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