For those of you who live in a climate where swamp coolers are useless – be thankful. However, the desert southwest is not one of those areas. Born and raised in the midwest, I’d never heard of these beasts until I moved out here. The basic premise is water-cooled air by evaporation. Simple physics… air passes over water, water evaporates dropping the temperature of the air, and voila! The desert-version of A/C. When a home has a decent cooler, they’re not bad, especially when they function through the central air ducts. But some units just blast a wind tunnel of damp cool air out one duct right beneath it and sounds like a 747 landing in your house.

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