If you don't have an air conditioner

Very nifty. I'd change the instructions on the second method with the ice, though- it would be much easier to drill the holes before making the cut- once it's cut, the plastic would tend to depress, making drilling more difficult, I would think.
I've been freezing bottles of ice for a long time- I use them in my cooler bag or box cooler when I go shopping. The squared Electrolit bottles work great, as they don't waste any space. It works much better, when you go on a camping trip, to fill the cooler with frozen bottles than to put a block or bag of ice in there, which just ends up melting, so all your food is swimming around in water.

You can also use the melted ones for drinking water and when camping.

Be aware the cooling action is much better in dry weather. Once the rains start and the humidity goes up it kinda stops working. Another trick is a wet sheet in the freezer and hang it in front of fan. Basically you are making a swamp cooler like you see on the trailers in the desert up on the roof. One thing they did not talk about is mess. You need to expect some dripping from condensation so put something plastic to catch the water and don't ruin Mom table. You get the idea.

CanuckBob wrote:You can also use the melted ones for drinking water and when camping.

Yes unless you add salt to the water.

Zedinmexico wrote:Be aware the cooling action is much better in dry weather. Once the rains start and the humidity goes up it kinda stops working.

Yes- they sell those evaporative coolers here in PV at Costco and Home Depot, but it's so humid here that they wouldn't work well. Whenever I'm shopping at one of those places and see some folks standing there debating whether to buy one or not, I say in passing "Those don't work well in humid climates like around PV".  They thank me for the warning. I see them advertised for sale second-hand "like new, only used twice" on Craigslist and the like, most probably because someone bought one without knowing they are only suited to dry climates and found it didn't do the job they thought it would.

I love my evaporative cooler. I am running a fan on a slow speed and I have a little pump the kind one would find in an in house pet fish container also running at slow speed pumping water on the filters; all for only a couple hundred watts.

I've got the unit on the roof and it pumps this cool air to all of the second floor.

Now should it ever get humid and hot I've got a mini split A/C in the bedroom. The trouble is, even smaller A/Cs use all kinds of electricity and force your electrical bills way up.

Luckily our humidity is very low most of the time when it is hot And that means that one can use an evaporative cooler about 90% of the time and save all kinds of money on our electrical bills

I have a large fan blowing across my indoors fountain and it works very well

lakeside7 wrote:I have a large fan blowing across my indoors fountain and it works very well

What a great idea!