Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post: The Lure of the Swamp Cooler Continue reading the Original Blog Post
I've always figured that they weren't very the efficient, especially since none of my relatives that lived in Eastern North Carolina ever had one. I have wondered if you loaded some dry ice into one, would that make it more effective?
saturation efficiency in the evaporative media and the water wants to approach dew point temperature...which if you are in the swamp and that is 85 degrees.... ....but who cares with a cool name like Thermadore and a logo with 'wings'....that apparently happens above 50 mph
I have one, but I've never put any water in it, and I've actually only driven down the road with it on the car once. I believe whether it works decently well depends on your humidity, but around here at 55% humidity today I doubt it would do a lot.
Arizona…….where we have a dry heat…. Almost useless bandaid for pre AC automobiles. Now just another accessory for a “bomb”.
In 1962 my family (mom, dad, and 4 kids) drove cross country from PA to CA and back for a vacation. We drove it in a 1960 4 door Ford with a six and automatic and no a/c plus a Sears Ted Williams tent trailer. My dad wasn't much of a mechanic but he was a talented scientist who worked at Oak Ridge after the war. So, knowing that it would be a hot drive he made what he called an air conditioner i.e. swap cooler using a glass windshield washer reservoir and pump from I think a late '50's Oldsmobile. The air conditioner debut was highly anticipated when we started to cross the desert. Well, this was one of my dad's few failures but to save face his response was it wasn't hot enough for the "air conditioner" to work. My sisters and I all joked with my dad about this until he died at 100+. And yes, it was hot enough.
Currently sitting in the house in AZ with the swamp cooler going. It has been a life saver this year. It is great until the monsoons hit and the humidity climbs. I don't see any corrosion on the 'things' stored inside, so it doesn't bring the humidity to wild levels. However, I'd expect the automotive version to cause rust in all the interior crevasses that never got paint. This would be really bad if you drove along raising the interior moisture, then rolled up the windows and parked. I'm no thermal whiz, but I'd guess that the sizing, flow and mounting constraints were a serious issue in design.
It doesn't seem like it would be significantly different from a car that's stored indoors in a constant higher-humidity environment. Significant rust caused by a window-mounted humidifier sounds like a stretch.
I’ll tell you what did work in 1958 when our family drove to Minnesota from California and back in August. We went the northern route and home the southern thru Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. We drove in our 56 Ford. It has a vent which feeds the interior fresh air on each end of the grille. Dad attached a wet radiator soaker burlap bag in front of the grille on each side. When you opened the inside vent at 60-70 mph the sweating bag water blew thru vents on both sides of the interior. My brother and I cracked both back windows for flow and we were pretty cool in the car when it was hot outside… I never forgot the ingenuity of my dad…
yep...post war dads all thought alike....we had a '50's something split window VW bus...with the vent inlet above the windshield and a distribution duct that had outlets in the interior. Evaporative aspen pad placed in the duct inlet with a spray distribution bar in front of it. A garden sprayer filled with distilled water and myself as a operator we crossed back and forth across Mojave desert, in August, with the interior of the micro bus quite comfortable....
my brother found one for cheap at a garage sale and used it on his 2 seater Toyota 4WD truck. he said it worked great in the small cab, when I told him what it was worth he had me sell it for him on ebay.. it was real nice with the decal and everything.
I have never used an automotive one, but wonder when they are being operated, is there a window cracked open on the other side of the car to let the air out? These things won't work unless you get airflow through the cabin. As for "swampies", anything over about 30% relative humidity it's just a fan. I have the household version in my workshop, it keeps it real nice when it's hot, but it doesn't get above 20% relative humidity here in summer.
we shared a few cool ones with some long-time locals in palm springs, and one of their big beefs: "we never had air conditioning until all those movie stars started moving out here. swamp coolers were all we needed!"
Bomb lowrider trinket around this area This one was hiding outside of the main show area at a show I went to a while back and then It just happened to cruise by the house when I was out taking photos of the smoke of a wild fire a few weeks ago. I'm not sure why they would drive that car down that gravel road though.
Here's the style I used in my '40 Merc, it sits on the floor, fill it with ice & water and off you go. Worked great, especially if you wanted a frost bit right knee. Mick
That was the slogan our dad told us this giant thing hanging on his 49 Buick sedan was for in those old hot summer days in the Westside of Long Beach. Hello, When our dad got his 1949 big 4 door Buick Roadmaster, it was the largest car we had seen. There was plenty of room for two brothers to play and have fun as our dad took the whole family on his many road trips. Despite the complaints of our mom saying it is hot inside, due to no A/C at the time, driving through the Mojave Desert areas and even into hot Baja, Mexico locations. Our dad and everyone’s solution was to roll down all of the windows for some fresh breezes. It worked, but the breeze turned into warm breezes in the hotter areas. So, after our vacation days, our dad came home one day with a black cooler attached to the passenger side window/door of the 49 Buick. The idea was for water to be place inside the tube and the wind would come inside to cool off the water and send the breeze into the car. In the local coastal cruises, it worked as the cool ocean air cooled off the car. Not freezing, but just cooler than before the large tube sticking on the window and door. (In 1949, our dad was tired of having two boys messing around in the back of the 49 Buick Roadmaster with the windows rolled down. He was also tired of my mom saying how hot it was driving around. So, he like many others at the time decided to put these giant window coolers on the outside of the car to cool down the cabin while driving around.) I can’t remember the brand name, but it was filled with water and shot the cool mist inside the car as you were driving along. It worked for a while, but then everything inside of the car got a little moist if you ran it a long time. Also, every time you stopped, the water dripped outside of the car. But, it was my mom’s window space that was taken and that did not go over well on that side of the front seat. There was a large blob covering, at least half of the window. Then as we drove on, it was slightly cooler, but water began to drip inside. So, of course our mom was the first to tell our dad to get rid of that leaking contraption. Being the fanatic that my dad was about his cars, he got rid of the cooler and went back to the open windows for cooling. He did not get air conditioning until several Buick model years later. Jnaki Despite all of the current cruiser cars with the cooler attached to the passenger window, they were not good for cooling down the inside of any car with the windows rolled up. One cool thing was, (pun intended) if we were in the back seat, if we rolled down our rear side window, we got some cooling mist from the leaking water drops. That did give us the feeling of moisture on our faces and the wind blew it cool. YRMV Within the next week or so, the black, outside of the window cooler, was history and we did not see it again. We had to be happy with the wind in our faces for the next several years. His next Buick was a 57 and it too did not have A/C. We still went on long road trip vacations. (But, sadly it was to be our last family road trip. My brother and I were now driving and those cars provided their own adventures... ) as the new 1963 Riviera was the first car our dad owned with a real COLD A/C system. Yippee!
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