Working in a swamp...

Honeywell CS10XE swamp cooler

I used the Honeywell swamp cooler for the first time a few days ago and have to say it worked really well. Aside from a whine about how the original buyer prep'ed and packed the unit for return to Amazon, the cooler worked flawlessly. In fact, I think if you were to stay in the blast of the cooler for long it would get very uncomfortable.

On roasting day (23 Aug) the outside temps ranged from about 85°F to as high as 95°F. Inside the shop, though, the temp never got above 86°F. And that high was probably cockpit error as I'll explain below.

Outside humidity was about 35% (higher than usual; we had just had a really good T-storm a couple days before) and the humidity in the shop ranged from a high of 50% to a bounce off 39% (see last paragraph). Humidity was probably near the top of the most effective range for a swamp cooler, but indeed it worked.

I set it up as I had planned- door wide open, cooler blowing toward the rear. The air movement was aimed low. The air moved toward the rear, then vaguely upward at the rear of the shop, and finally back toward the wide open door and out. Having everything wide open may seem counterintuitive to anyone familiar with refrigerated AC, but such is the lot of those of us hugging our swamp cooler.

Even though I had gotten some, I failed to add anti-bacterial to the water tank when I initially filled it. After using it 2-3 hours and then letting the fan run for an hour to dry the matrix as the manual recommends, I shut it off and locked the shop. When I checked  things a few days later I remembered to check the tank and found bio-stuff had started to grow.

So I cleaned the tank, added the bio-stat I bought for this purpose, and refilled the tank. Hopefully when I next check things it will look pretty much like it did when I closed it up.

I did get a small surprise at one point. I noticed the humidity had drifted down to as low as 39%. I glanced at the cooler and saw it was not in Cool mode (water being recirculated from the tank); only the fan was blowing. Oops! Cockpit error. I added another gallon of water and set it to Cool mode again and all was well. Really hard for a swamp cooler to work without a swamp. 

In the what's-coming category, Hurricane Laura is about to hit the Houston area. When Texas (or the Sea of Cortex for that matter) gets a hurricane, we often get a marine layer moving in our direction. I expect we're going to get some horrendous T-storms as a result of this Cat 4 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. At least that's what happened after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.