Do you really want to get cool air from this contraption?!

Well... yes, as a matter of fact I do.

If you live in a hot dry climate, the old swamp-cooler did a pretty good job bringing a modicum of summertime thermal comfort to this nation until AC came along. We relied on one in Santa Fe (it wasn't very different than the one here) and were very content to fire it up when the need arose. 

Nothing much has changed with these things since they came into use a century ago-

- pour a little water over an open matrix
- blow air over the matrix to evaporate the water
- evaporating water cools the air moving thru the matrix

They have to be used as an open system, i.e. you provide hot outside air to the cooler - thru an open window or just standing free like the photo - then blow the cooled air into the room. That cooled air then flows out another open window. If you try to operate it with no exhaust like you would an AC, the house turns into a swamp and there's no cooling... hence the name swamp-cooler.

I can't install AC in the shop because we don't have sufficient power. Neither do I want to install the current generation of wall-mounted evaporation-cooling in the shop to provide yet another heat loss during the winter. Enter Honeywell and Amazon.

Honeywell has a semi-portable alternative to air conditioning that I'm going to try. If it works I'm going to kick myself for not doing this sooner.

This thing is basically just a fan, a mesh matrix, and a water tank. The tank holds 2.6 gal of water to feed the evaporation matrix and a pump to get it to the matrix. Plus it has wheels to allow it to be moved. 

I plan to set it at the open doorway to the shop and just let it blast away toward the interior space. I don't have a window to open, so the open doorway will also serve as the exhaust. The air leaving the cooler, which is chilled, ought to stay mostly at a lower level in the shop than the warmer air being displaced. I expect the warmer air to exit the shop interior near the top of the wide open door. At least that's my plan. I can only hope mother nature agrees.

This better not be what my beloved refers to as 'magical thinking' which is something you're supposed to have gotten over by the time you're 10 years old!

I bought a 'Used- Like New' customer returned cooler from Amazon (which means someone already decided it didn't work for them!) so the pain of consigning it to a dumpster won't be as bad as having paid full Amazon retail of $170. With my 4500 points from a credit card it came out about $100. All things considered these things are hugely over-priced for what they do. [Wireless remote?! You gotta be kidding.]

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