Another Swamp Cooler!

At the legion to get ice and cool off now. Forgot my reading glasses so no telling how many mistakes I'll make on this. Anyway the generator uses way too much gas to be used to cool the dungeon so... I built another evap sort of like JW's. Actually I didn't get the idea from him though because I'd thought of using an ice chest to build one before he built his, but didn't have a spare and didn't want to have to buy one. On RN's last trip he left another large ice chest so I used my old one to build the new evap out of. It had already been butchered to an extent when I used it as the holding tank for the solar heating system I built a few years back in Plano. Unlike JW's swamp cooler I am building the whole thing in one cooler and not using a second for the holding tank. The small pump  OGT left won't need to pump water so high so should function better and probably use a little less electricity to do it.

So far I'm about 89% finished I guess. Still need to add the pump and manifold to circulate the water over the pad. For now I've been just dampening the pad every now and then with a jug. It seems to cool pretty good, but the pad area is a lot smaller than the one I built before which causes a good bit of restriction and the fan just doesn't put out a lot of air. I really need a small blower instead of the fan. At least now there is some ventilation in the dungeon where with the AC unit only I had the overhear vent closed up and there was none. That meant that when it was closed up and the AC wasn't running it got REALLY hot in there. The little evap should help a good bit with that and should do a fair job at night. At least with this new one I can keep the AC window unit in the window as well as the evap to so if I REALLY have to run the AC for short periods I can. Probably after sun down when there is still some light and just long enough to get the temp down in the dungeon. (maybe 30 minutes,)

Probably more pictures later. Hopefully after there is shade in front of the dungeon later I can finish adding the pump and get it fully functional. I will have to add water a good bit more often since it won't hold anywhere near the volume the old one did, but I wouldn't think over every three hours or so and with the smaller pad maybe a lot less often than that?




Update First night wasn't so cool! It was real humid because of storms in the area and then the lack of air output because of the fan didn't help any either. Had to resort to running the generator again after I woke up about 1:00 AM and couldn't get back to sleep because of the muggy heat. Code name for the new cooler is Haf'ta Du, but I sure need a small blower to get it to do that because a fan just doesn't have the static pressure that a blower does. Not much way to add more pad area so that is out. Maybe a cooler twice the size would have been better, but there wouldn't have been room for it.



Update2

Added my other fan inside in front of the discharge to act like a Turbo and it works well. Probably doubled the output of air. Problem is I loose the use of that fan for redirecting air on me and that's not a good thing. It isn't likely that even doubling the output will do the job of cooling this place during the day, but there is a chance it will at night. Guess I'll see tonight.

A couple of storm pictures from yesterday evening. Note in the first another rainbow over 9 points. For some reason that mountain seems to produce them. Also looks sort of like a pyramid with the  rain  falling toward the other direction.


Update3 The cooler did very well last night with the second fan boosting it. There was enough of the cool air blowing on my bunk that I didn't need the fan blowing directly on me. Of course day time comes and it doesn't have a chance, but will probably keep it a few degrees cooler, but very humid so I may switch to ventilation only during the day and turn the pump on at night.