[Kabrasco LaFonz]

I am interested in a large custom lot property, and someone mentioned to me that those huge box contraptions on top of 70s-80s houses are "swamp coolers" but I didn't ask what they are. I assume they are antiquated compared to central air... and a house I saw today does not have AC yet it has these gizmos. Has anyone ever converted a house like this to have central air? Is it a $5K project or a $25K project? Also, I noticed some houses from the 70's don't even have gas hookups, again, would running a natural gas line to the property and installing in appropriate rooms (dryer, kitchen) be a prohibitively costly enterprise?

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by Kabrasco LaFonz

I am interested in a large custom lot property, and someone mentioned to me that those huge box contraptions on top of 70s-80s houses are "swamp coolers" but I didn't ask what they are. I assume they are antiquated compared to central air... and a house I saw today does not have AC yet it has these gizmos. Has anyone ever converted a house like this to have central air? Is it a $5K project or a $25K project? Also, I noticed some houses from the 70's don't even have gas hookups, again, would running a natural gas line to the property and installing in appropriate rooms (dryer, kitchen) be a prohibitively costly enterprise?

We specialize in the RNP - large lots 1/2 acre and bigger.

Here is how it works. .

These homes were built and are still being built in the boonies where the water lines do not reach. Nor gas. Nor sewers. Nowadays you can only do it on 1.1 acres but up to 92 or so a half acre was possible. Water comes from the well, energy is all electric and sewers are septic tanks and fields.

Virtually all were refrigeration air conditioned. Many had swamp coolers as weil. Basically you use the swamp cooler which is four or five times cheaper..until it gets too hot or too wet. Then you go to refrigeration. This is the standard way today in southern AZ.

So if you find a place that has only swamp cooler you are dealing with a DIY lunatic fringe. Get a really good inspection...you are going to have trouble.

Swamp coolers and refrigeration AC have almost opposite needs for air handling. With a swamp cooler you go for maximum air exchange. You pull in large amounts of outside air and then exhaust it reasonably quickly. You turn over the house volume every few minutes.

Refrigeration is the opposite. You exchange as little air as is possibile and keep interchange with the outside to a minimum.

So guess what? Two completely different air handling systems. And that is how it is mostly done. Unfortunately the much more complex one is the refrigeration system which has well insulated ducts to each room. The swamp cooler just has a big central plenum and an open window or duct in each room.

So generally don't buy a house that has onely swamp cooling.

Gas is cheap if it borders the property. If it does not you can't afford it. Generally presume you can't afford it and be pleasantly surprised if it works out.

Always stay on the well if it is workable. Always use septic if it is available. Sewer hookups are expensive and do the home owner no good.

And if you are looking at that stuff get an agent who knows about it. It is easy to get burned and badly.

[Kabrasco LaFonz]

Thanks very much for the info.

[YellowHorse]

I prefer the "swamp coolers," they use less electricity and living in a desert, you have almost no humid days that would require the AC.

We built our home in '05, (we live in a desert) and only put in a evaporative cooler on our roof, absolutly no AC.

Our neighbors who have an AC, spend as much as $300 a month cooling their house, I've never spent more than $80.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by YellowHorse

I prefer the "swamp coolers," they use less electricity and living in a desert, you have almost no humid days that would require the AC.

We built our home in '05, (we live in a desert) and only put in a evaporative cooler on our roof, absolutly no AC.

Our neighbors who have an AC, spend as much as $300 a month cooling their house, I've never spent more than $80.

Works fine in unreconstructed desert. Does not work in monsoon season in Las Vegas or Phoenix. Here swamp coolers work great until the end of June..then for 60 days they don't work well at all. Then they work again until the cold weather.

Water here is also quite hard which requires a high waste rate or a lot of cleaning of the filters or both.

[Buzz123]

Originally Posted by YellowHorse

I prefer the "swamp coolers," they use less electricity and living in a desert, you have almost no humid days that would require the AC.

We built our home in '05, (we live in a desert) and only put in a evaporative cooler on our roof, absolutly no AC.

Our neighbors who have an AC, spend as much as $300 a month cooling their house, I've never spent more than $80.

You live in high desert. Your average high in summer is only 95º, so you can get by with swamp coolers. Before a/c was readily available Las Vegans got by on swamp coolers, but they were miserable. They don't cool adequately enough for this area, and it isn't unusual to go to sleep and wake up soaked in water. In Albuquerque, at 6,000 feet, that was all we had too and they were fine most of the time, but not always. There was a trend in the 80's in Las Vegas to add swamp to the a/c as a booster in order to use less a/c and thus save money. You'll still see those around. I had one in my garage, and one on the roof of the built in patio of my last house, but I turned it off and plugged the hole of the interior one because no matter what I did, it smelled bad, and it spewed mold into the house. It was also high maintenence as the water lines would get so hot on the roof they would constantly break. Humidity doesn't require a/c...heat does. Swamp coolers don't do the job here. I'm surprised you still see houses where that's all they have. And most of those old homes you see that don't have gas didn't need it when electricity was cheap so the heat, the range, everything, was electric. Easier that way for the builder. Now most homes cook and heat with gas but you don't see many gas a/c's.

[tiger08]

I have been working on swamp coolers since I was 9 years old, even built a couple of my own. Many people have the wrong impression of them because they dont service them correctly or use the wrong type of pads in them. A properly serviced cooler with the right upgrades will work great most of the time here. I have a two stage model that will give temperatures within a couple degrees of the outdoor wet bulb temp. For instance, if it is 110 outside and the wet bulb temp is 65, I am usually getting 67 or 68 degrees out of my cooler! Usually there are only a few days out of the summer that we have to switch over to a/c. I have converted over a few homes to central air that originally had a swamp cooler, and it's quite easy if the cooler was already ducted in. I wouldnt completely remove the cooler though, it is nice to have both so you can switch over from one to the other. I know alot of people prefer gas heat, but I removed our gas rooftop unit and replaced it with a heat pump. It worked out cheaper in the long run on utilities, and the new heat pumps are far more dependable then they were years ago. So in my opinion, you do not need to run gas to the house if you are all electric.

[tiger08]

Originally Posted by Buzz123

You live in high desert. Your average high in summer is only 95º, so you can get by with swamp coolers. Before a/c was readily available Las Vegans got by on swamp coolers, but they were miserable. They don't cool adequately enough for this area, and it isn't unusual to go to sleep and wake up soaked in water. In Albuquerque, at 6,000 feet, that was all we had too and they were fine most of the time, but not always. There was a trend in the 80's in Las Vegas to add swamp to the a/c as a booster in order to use less a/c and thus save money. You'll still see those around. I had one in my garage, and one on the roof of the built in patio of my last house, but I turned it off and plugged the hole of the interior one because no matter what I did, it smelled bad, and it spewed mold into the house. It was also high maintenence as the water lines would get so hot on the roof they would constantly break. Humidity doesn't require a/c...heat does. Swamp coolers don't do the job here. I'm surprised you still see houses where that's all they have. And most of those old homes you see that don't have gas didn't need it when electricity was cheap so the heat, the range, everything, was electric. Easier that way for the builder. Now most homes cook and heat with gas but you don't see many gas a/c's.

I have never seen a cooler put mold into a house. If you want to eliminate smell and scale build up, you have to add a purge pump, dumps about 4 gallons of water every 8 hours that the cooler runs. Copper water line do not break, plastic does. I am sorry if you had bad luck with coolers, but they are really not as bad as you are saying. I install several of them every year for people in houses and garages. I have installed quite a few in my neighborhood, and I set them up and service them properly and my customers love them. Some of the homes I have installed them in here, have been higher class areas where people really like to cut there power bills down.

[tiger08]

Originally Posted by olecapt

Works fine in unreconstructed desert. Does not work in monsoon season in Las Vegas or Phoenix. Here swamp coolers work great until the end of June..then for 60 days they don't work well at all. Then they work again until the cold weather.

Water here is also quite hard which requires a high waste rate or a lot of cleaning of the filters or both.

Swamp coolers work well into June, most of July, and most of August with the exception of a very few days when the humidity is up. Once again, proper setup, proper evaporative media and proper maintainance. If a purge pump is used, coolers do not need a high water bleed rate, they only dump a few gallons a day. I cant see why anyone would want to close up their house tight and run a machine that on a hot day will pull up to 5,000 watts of electricity or more, when they could run an evap cooler for about 1,000 watts or less, and still keep their house in the low 70's most of the summer.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by tiger08

Swamp coolers work well into June, most of July, and most of August with the exception of a very few days when the humidity is up. Once again, proper setup, proper evaporative media and proper maintainance. If a purge pump is used, coolers do not need a high water bleed rate, they only dump a few gallons a day. I cant see why anyone would want to close up their house tight and run a machine that on a hot day will pull up to 5,000 watts of electricity or more, when they could run an evap cooler for about 1,000 watts or less, and still keep their house in the low 70's most of the summer.

Dual systems are common in some areas. They are relatively rare here. Why is that? Because they don't work well in July and August. The efficiency drops off as the RH gets above 10%. At 105 and 20% you can maintain about 80 degrees. Above 105 or 20% RH you are out of luck...and cooling.

This is not rocket science. The performance figures are well known.

Two stage systems are reported as 10 to 20 % better...but are vastly more complicated. There are systems that combine evaporative and refrigeration but I understand they have some troubles here with the hard water. Ain't cheap.

If you are a real tough pioneer type save almost all the money. Run a fan and drink lots of water. Evaporative cooling at its best.