[AT] Vehicle cooling before AC

[Spencer Yost]

I learn so much from this list. I have never heard of these things once in my entire life. I mean, I’ve seen evaporative coolers on buildings and seen small portable units used in the work areas and barns but I have never seen one on a car. This is brand new to me.   I guess it’s because I am from the muggy east and my trips out west have been few and far between.

Thanks everyone for the schooling...

Spencer Yost

> On Feb 13, 2019, at 8:15 AM, Mark Johnson <markjohnson100 at centurylink.net> wrote:
> 
> Fixed swamp coolers are still used for home/small business A/C in some parts of Arizona (they don't work as well in Phoenix; all the irrigation and lawn watering have raised the humidity from historic levels). The energy cost is somewhat less than Freon-based cooling, but it does require a good supply of water, which can be problematic in the desert. At $15-20 per foot of well depth, in 'good' drilling, and twice that through limestone, a 400 foot hole is an expensive way to get water...and using large quantities of rural/municipal water for cooling is going to get expensive rather quickly. 
> 
> I have also heard tales of folks who turned them too high, and the resulting humidity resulted in a mold storm in their house.
> 
> Arizona story: The Titan Missile Museum, south of Tucson, is today kept cool with a rather large swamp cooler. The site was originally cooled with somewhere between 50 and 100 tons of conventional A/C, necessary because the liquid fuels in the missiles had to be kept at 62 F or lower - somewhere just above 70, hydrazine can explosively decompose. Of course, today there's no fuel in the display bird, so it suffices to keep the complex in the low 70's for tours. 
> 
>> On 2/12/2019 7:22 PM, Ralph Goff wrote:
>>> On 2/12/2019 4:46 PM, bloomis at charter.net wrote:
>>> A California thing for sure. If you check out low rider cars, i.e. early 50 models, particularly Chevys, a lot of them have them on the restored products. Same so with 'eyebrows'. Well a bit huge but you get the point.
>>> Bradford
>> Those big tubular things hanging on the side of the car were known as "swamp coolers" I believe. We never saw them on vehicles but there was something similar on the 
>> 
>> early tractor cabs. Known as a cab cooler. It had a big foam sponge filter that was kept soaked in water by a pump. The cab fan drew air through it and blew the somewhat 
>> 
>> cooled air into the cab. It was better than nothing but nowhere close to a good air conditioner. 
>> 
>> Ralph in Sask. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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