swamp cooler question

oddmary · 05-03-2011, 10:06 PM

we hollowed a 40" school bus.
27 ft is walled for living space. (1296 sq ft.)
we're looking at a "turbokool".
or low profile sears house type 110v

will the "turbokool" cool that much space?

and can it run while driving? and without leaking?

also are the new pads stinky or bad/toxic for my pet birds?

i sure appreciate any help you offer.

thanks !

94-Newmar · 05-04-2011, 04:41 AM

It all depends upon where you are located and the relative humidity of the air you're trying to exchange. They don't cool the air per se, they add humidity to the air to make it feel cooler than the ambient temperature. Swamp coolers have pros and cons just like anything else would.

You can google "swamp cooler pros cons" and read an endless amount of articles. Here is one I found: SRP: Evaporative coolers

Ed-Sommers · 05-04-2011, 07:48 AM

I would think that a forty inch bus would be easy to cool with whatever you want.

Ed

Quote:

Originally Posted by oddmary

we hollowed a 40" school bus.
27 ft is walled for living space. (1296 sq ft.)
we're looking at a "turbokool".
or low profile sears house type 110v

will the "turbokool" cool that much space?

and can it run while driving? and without leaking?

also are the new pads stinky or bad/toxic for my pet birds?

i sure appreciate any help you offer.

thanks !

**RJay** · 05-04-2011, 08:10 AM

Swamp coolers perform better in low humidity climates because it uses evaporation to cool the air. Adding humidity(moisture) to air raises the heat index and making it seem warmer.

Pinz6x6 · 05-04-2011, 09:55 AM

Living in NM swamp/evaporative coolers are common on homes due to our low humitity here. They are useless on humid days and on the really hot days when the mercury hits triple digits and you really want to be cooler.

The latent heat of evaporation is how they cool, humidity does not allow for good evaporation. In high temps. they just plain struggle, I bought the biggest one I could for my small house, it still stuggles. I do have a small 12V one for RVs that I bought cheap at a garage sale, it works OK in the spring and fall.
Wild birds flock (pun intended) to the one on top of my house for H2O they perch on the side and drink off the pad. Most pads are Aspen shavings, paper or plastic. I no longer have my Macaw, but I can't see anything in the pads that would have harmed him.
I have to think that the H20 will splash as you drive.

SSteve · 05-18-2011, 05:54 PM

Funny, Ed!!

Seriously, your 27' of space is actually closer to 216 square feet (27*8). Anything that professes to cool 300 sq/ft or more will probably do nicely.

We bought an ULTRACOOL model 25 at Home Depot and fitted it to the driver's-side window. It is intended to augment the roof A/Cs, but it does work great!

As mentioned in other posts, for a swamper to work well, humidity must be very low. The lower the better.

Steve

VanDiemen23 · 05-19-2011, 11:42 PM

You also must have air leakage - preferably a vent at the top to let the warm air out, but cracking the windows a half-inch will do. If the air is not moving around you it won't seem cool for long.

Without a vent open expect a lot of whistle - swamp coolers move several times more air than a refrigerated system.

Old VWs had a factory swamp cooler that fit on the window. It looked like a big torpedo hung out in the breeze.

wa8yxm · 05-20-2011, 07:09 AM

With a Swamp Cooler a lot of answers start with "Depends"

I have a bedrom about 10 by 15 I'd guess in this motor home and I used a swamp coolor in it when I was in Arizona and it made about a 10 degree difference.

However the humidity there was so low I had to use saline nasel spray due to dry nose condition. Kind of painful w/o the spray.. not a problem with.

I pumped over five gallons a day of water into this small room with that cooler.

(And more with a "Cool mist" type vaporizer and still had dry nose)

However in Michigan, where the humidity is usually measureable by my meter (it don't like less than 20something percent) they basically do not do well.

Right now it's 38% where I"m parked, and I'd not expect it to cool well at all.