Quote Originally Posted by Hummer View Post
That sounds like a good system, especially if the cooler is on the north or east side. Ours are on the hot metal roof pushing air down. A few years ago I replaced our standard evaporative coolers with two high efficiency Breezair coolers. They have much thicker 4" solid pads that last 8-10 years and the units are self flushing based on mineral content of the water, so they stay clean. No pad slippage, far less maintenance and very low energy use, a small fraction of AC cost. I figure it'll save me 90 trips up and down the roof over ten years.

Our original Essex coolers were good for a max 12-16 degree differential, so when temps got over 100, the house was 85-89 degrees inside, pretty miserable. My neighbors have AC and spend four times as much on electricity. Every day I'm glad we popped for high efficiency Breezair evaporative coolers.
Yes, one of the smart things I ever did. Move the swamp cooler to a normal location that I can easily maintain. It was 10 feet off the ground for a few years. (window)

I had a HVAC sheetmetal guy make me a duct that is angled from the cooler down into the ground level window. Works great. Pull all of it out and plug it up for winter. A bit of a pain.

I don't like the idea of them on the roof anyways, seems to me it would defeat the purpose. Hot roof, little cooling.

Mine is an old sears model, rotating pads. I bought extra pads a few years back, so I think it's good for a while yet. I oversized it for the house, I can always turn it down.

I have it now plugged into a smartthings zigbee outlet, it comes on and off based on a temperature sensor in the house.

Solar on the house covers all tv's, computers and swamp cooler running. Little energy used on a sunny day.