My google-fu is weak today.
I was talking to a colleague today about the old air conditioner we had in my house growing up. It was a window unit, but it the part that was outside the house was GIANT. Probably 4 tall, and 3 feet deep outside the window. Inside it was a simple squirrel cage fan. The sides the unit (outside part) were the removable plates that had straw batting in them. The unit itself had a water line hooked to it from a tiny hose (the size that feeds most ice makers) that would keep the unit with 3 or 4 inches of water. A pump in the unit would suck the water up and spray it on the top of the three sides with the straw batting. The water would trickle down the straw batting into the bottom reservoir to begin the process all over again.
We always called it a water cooler; but Googleing for water cooler doesn’t exactly help much. Can any of you guys find me a link to a picture of a unit like that?
Do any of you ahem mature people out there remember units like that? I’m 48 by the way.
Was it like this?
Try googling “swamp cooler.”
Contrapuntal; for some reason your link didn’t open for me; but I did google for Swamp Cooler and that’s it! Thanks.
When I was a kid we had a swamp cooler as our only means to cool our tiny 5 room house. The pump didn’t work so my brothers and me had to regularly run out side and spray the straw down with water. There wasn’t a fan cover on the inside. You just knew not to stick your hands in there. You had to turn in off and on by plugging it in or unplugging it. The funny thing is we never knew we were doing without.
My best friend was the lawyer’s kid. He had central air in a huge house that was a renovated inn. He’d come over to our house in the summer. We’d be playing outside and come inside to stand in front of the air conditioner. My mom would laugh because the lawyer’s kid is standing there with his hair being blown back from the one speed setting our swamp cooler had (full blast, baby!), and he’d be saying "Man I wish my dad would get an air conditioner like this!
Ahh Thanks Contrapuntal and gotpasswords for helping me bring back a good memory.
Odd thing is, I have seen those things all over Louisiana, which is humid as hell. I’d think they would be ideal for a dryer climate.
They are used all over the West and Southwest to this day. New homes are built with central air, but most older home are retrofitted with swamp coolers. A lot of very nice places (resorts, golf courses) with outdoor patios use variations on evaporative cooling to allow people to sit outside in the summer.
I can’t imagine how one would be at all useful in Louisiana.