Swampy Mighty Kool swamp cooler

[xcnick]

I got a message reminding me of the home made one done with 5 gallon buckets. I do believe that one would work the best.

Interestingly I have yet to use mine and it could be the biggest waste of money I have in the van next to the TV. However it just struck in a way there is something to review as something I don't use but always carry.

It sits very nicely under the goucho and I have no reason to remove it. How much space something takes up is very important in our vans.

[Gooseberry]

I did the bucket one but it just turned the van into a wet sauna. You need to keep the bucket outside and pipe the cooler air into the van.

[jony101]

I been using swamp coolers for 3 years and as far as cooling a whole area, its not going to happen. It cools a very small area. The lifesmart has the same weakness almost all the portable swamp coolers I see have. It has no where to plug in a intake flexible hose. You need outside air for it to work, otherwise you have to place it by the window or open door. With no outside air you will get the "sauna effect describe.

From my own experiments, the best material to use is "celdek" which is hard cardboard, It has a 5 year useful life and never gets clogged or loses efficiency. It wont work on the bucket designs because you cant shape it into a round design and I like to use at least 3" thick celdek, some use 6 inch thick celdek.

My latest design I build uses a 9 inch car radiator electric fan (7 amps max) holds 2 gallons of water and I even install 2 water pumps for redundancy. This is what a real 12 volt swamp cooler should look like. The design flaw on mine is the 1 six inch intake, I actually need 2 intakes so it can suck in more air. Its about as powerful as a fantastic fan and I can throttle it down to about 1 amp when i don't need full power.