Shopsmith Forums

I realize many folks call them swamp coolers, yet they cease to be effective when the humidity is high as they work from evaporation occurring when used in lower humidity environments, which is definitely not low in swamps which makes me wonder why they were ever called that in the first place, but I digress.

Rust is our enemy and JPW is our friend. For those of you who have evaporative cooling experience in your shop, how are your tools not just your Shopsmith gear holding up to rust formation?

My challenge as I get older is how to work in my shop when it is 95°-108° outside. Ventilation alone is not cutting it for me this year, so I am contemplating evaporative cooling for the shop area, which I have more time to tinker in now that the kids are grown and out on their own.

I am thinking an external unit with overhead metal duct work inside to distribute the air as I do not want to lose floor space to a free standing mobile unit or raise RH to a point where I am fighting rust more than I have to.

I would love to hear what you folks who live in areas where evaporative cooling is feasible have configured that works for you.

As you can tell from the dot on the attached map, I am almost on the border where it feasible and is not recommended.

Everett

I use them (standard way of cooling in New Mexico). Our air is so dry most of the time, we have no rust problems period (with automobiles or shop equip). We do have a few weeks a year that our humidity is "high", but still nowhere near what Texas or East of the NM/TX line has.

They are called swamp coolers because of the humidity they create, not because of them being used in a swamp ....

If you do use one for the shop, remember the more CFM you push the better they work (and you have to have at least that much "exhaust" CFM air leaving the building for them to be effective ...

JMHO

While I don't use one for my shop(garage), I do use one to cool my house. I love it. I leave my master bathroom window cracked a couple inches for exhaust.

I can see that notion in the naming convention but it still seems to be a bit of an oxymoron of sorts for me as creating a swamp like atmosphere does not make me envision a cooler environment. LOL

Do you have any temperature or humidistats on yours to keep humidity below a certain level in the shop.

We spend a good bit of time drying out our wood and the appeal of wooden tool boxes for machinists was that the wood would absorb the moisture so their tools wouldn't rust. If the tool boxes absorbed humidity, so would my stock I would think. It may be insignificant, I just don't have experience with it yet.

Any concerns with the wood absorbing excessive moisture from humidity coming from the evaporative coolers in your shop?

Any advice on what kind of evaporative cooler to get? They offer metal ones, galvanized, even fiberglass ones that will not corrode as bad with the minerals in the water, or rust out.

Do you have a preference or recommend one over the other?

Skizzity wrote:While I don't use one for my shop(garage), I do use one to cool my house. I love it. I leave my master bathroom window cracked a couple inches for exhaust.

We use refrigerated air for cooling our house. A number of years ago when I upgraded our 20 year old unit, we added electronic air filtration, and a humidifier to ours.

It was the best decision I ever made on cooling. We are generally semi-arid with low humidity by most standards. Refrigerated air works by removing the humidity and has to work overtime when there isn't much, which runs up the electric bill. The humidifier provides a comfort level in the home by keeping it about 30-35% On the flip side, in the winter, we back down the temp to about 66 and it feels like 70 to most folks as the warm moist air is more warming than hotter drier air.

No way can I use refrigerated air in the shop with doors opened and moving things in and out all the time. Refrigerated air requires a relatively sealed recirculation environment to work best.

Our daughter lives in Colorado Springs so next time we come to visit, maybe we can have coffee or something and get to visit some with you.

Everett

everettdavis wrote:I can see that notion in the naming convention but it still seems to be a bit of an oxymoron of sorts for me as creating a swamp like atmosphere does not make me envision a cooler environment. LOL

Do you have any temperature or humidistats on yours to keep humidity below a certain level in the shop.

We spend a good bit of time drying out our wood and the appeal of wooden tool boxes for machinists was that the wood would absorb the moisture so their tools wouldn't rust. If the tool boxes absorbed humidity, so would my stock I would think. It may be insignificant, I just don't have experience with it yet.

Any concerns with the wood absorbing excessive moisture from humidity coming from the evaporative coolers in your shop?

Any advice on what kind of evaporative cooler to get? They offer metal ones, galvanized, even fiberglass ones that will not corrode as bad with the minerals in the water, or rust out.

Do you have a preference or recommend one over the other?

Evaporative coolers are hard to understand by people who have never used them. They work, and work very well, by evaporating water to cool the air (won't get into the physics as not important), but because of that evaporation, you introduce moisture content into the air, but also remember, that the air (should be all of the air being forced into the building) is exhausted back outside. So instead of "cooling" the air in the building, you cool outside air and then "exchange" that cooled air with the air in the building. We usually start with 10 to 30 percent humidity during our hot months, you add about another 10 percent using a swamp cooler, so your air is somewhere around 20 to 40 percent humidity as it moves from the swamp box to back outside (I have had wildlife hanging around the window that the cool air exits from LOL). So, yes it adds humidity, but the humidity is usually not as much as most of the rest of the country. Using a dehumidifier while the swamp box is running is pointless since you are actually adding moisture at the rate of 3000 to 5000 cubic feet per min.

These units have become very popular out here over the last few years:

http://www.lowes.com/pd/MasterCool-2-00 ... m/50342060

They are relative inexpensive, direct fan (no squirrel cage, single pad for easier maint. etc.

They will work in your part of the country, just not as efficiently as they do here. But remember one huge benefit they have ..... they are EXCHANGING all of the air in the building every few mins. so as saw dust is being created, it is pushed out ....

everettdavis wrote:
Our daughter lives in Colorado Springs so next time we come to visit, maybe we can have coffee or something and get to visit some with you.

Everett

That would be pretty cool. I would like that. My wife and I enjoy our coffee. You could see my little rinky dinky shop, hehe.

My shop is located in my basement, and used only in the winter when the weather is cool. I can't handle heat, so any time the temp gets past 80, I'm not working.
In winter, I get the right temp in my basement to do my woodworking projects. Summer isn't good for anything except sleeping somewhere in an air conditioned room.

I have an older one I picked up at a yard sale a couple of years ago, it needed a new pump.
I took the pads out of it and only use it on the fan setting
where I live in Calif. this type of cooler isn't really very effective.

I cool my house with a swamp cooler. As others have said it does not add that much humidity to the house that is not otherwise there. With 15% humidity outside it is typically 30-40% inside. Today is cool for July. It is only 72* outside at 5PM so the cooler is not running overtime. Outside humidity is 22% and inside it is 32%.

Before I built the dedicated shop I used a my garage. It had one window so I bought a window mount swamp cooler to cool the garage. The south and west walls of the garage are brick so it got quite warm in the summer. I ran that way for 7 or 8 years with absolutely no rust issues.