Yesterday's Haboob was nice. Bit of rain, temp. dropped a lot, bit of gusty wind, dust, generally typical of the Desert Summer Monsoon. Today, no. Late afternoon, we discovered a horde of ants had found their way through the seals on the Arcadia door, and had covered the door frame, some on wall surrounding it, none on glass, there were literally thousands of them, solid with them! As my wife sprayed them, today's bluster in full swing, we heard a loud thump, and I figured it was one of the wheelbarrows on the patio sliding around. Then she saw daylight through the hole in our bedroom wall, and we knew......... A gust of at least 80 mph, maybe 100, tore our swamp cooler off it's moorings, yanked the wiring out of the electrical box, and tore loose the water line. I could not have toppled it using my own strength. I disconnected it inside, as it's circuit breaker had also taken out the bedroom, TV, and kitchen lights. Now, back to "normal". How I'll get it back up on it's mountings, I dunno. Frame is bent, maybe a new one necessary. Wonder if Homeowners Insurance..........So it goes in the Summer Desert Monsoon! Frank
@Frank Sanoica I feel your pain. It's hard for me to look at the pictures, hate to see a bent unit. If the motor and squirrel cage are ok, looks like you can remove the panels, and tap out the bent sections. Reseal to keep the water in and get by till you get a new one. How many CFM's ( looks like about 5000 ) I know you're pretty handy with tools, so you might give it a try. Good luck.
@Frank Sanoica if that happened to me it would mean a call to a professional. But from what I've read of your posts I think you are probably much more apt to understand your situation. And as Tim said, maybe you can get it to limp along through these hot days until your insurance can replace it for you. I use two 15,000 BTU, and one 7,000 BTU window air conditioning units, and since they ran my electric bill up super high ($400.) last year, I made the decision to replace all of them in April. Funny that no one seemed able tell me much about window units, but when the time came to dispose of the three units, there were quite a few that were ready to haul them away.
@Ina I. Wonder Older window units had R-22 Freon in them and the price is up to 50 USD per pound. Companies will use a recovery unit to take out the gas and resell it. You can not just toss any unit with this refrigerant in a dump or land fill, it most be recovered. I do this every now and then, if the people want me to haul away an older unit. Have to make it worth my time and stress on this ole body...
Also to add, Frank has a Evaporating cooler which puts moisture back in the air, unlike an Air Conditioning unit which is set up to remove moisture from the air. On his unit, water is pumped to the top of a media filter and trickles down the sides so the air is pulled across the water mist and into the house. A most have in hot, desert climates. My Tech lesson is now over; if there aren't any questions, you may open your test booklets and begin.
@Tim Burr Thank you! I believe it's a 6500 CFM, but we only rarely run it on High, Low speed being plenty adequate unless the humidity is up (as it really is right now, dewpoint this morning was 72 degrees!). I've learned over the years that Evaporative Cooling just isn't all that much less power-use intense than conventional air conditioning, especially in cases where the building is very highly insulated. The reason is that Evap cooling requires more or less constant-running of the unit, whereas compressor-driven A/C cycles on and off through a small differential of room temperature. OTOH, evap. is very simple in concept and easy for a novice to maintain. The A/C system normally contains 3 electric motors (one in the compressor) whereas evap. has only two, one being very small, the other perhaps 1/3 or less the size of the compressor motor. Usually, A/C units' failures are traced to compressor failure or condenser fan motor failure; both are hot work conditions for motors. One thing I have noticed over the years is that condenser fan designs usually involve placing the fan motor upstream of the coils, in the hot air flow, instead of downstream, in the outside air-temp flow, pushing the air through the coils, rather than pulling it. Perhaps your knowledge of this stuff might shed light..... Frank
I can sympathies with you of living where it is hot and hope you get it back up and running soon. When you said about not throwing it out and have to take it to a place and have the gas taken out. It reminded me of a friend who had an old fridge and wanted to throw it away and they told him he first had to take it in and have the gas removed. So he put it in the front yard and put a sign on it for sale good beer fridge will sell cheap. In two days it was stolen so he called the insurance and got paid for it.
Sometimes, I just don't know........late this afternoon, shady at that end of house, I set to work to get the dag-goned thing back in place, by myself. Here it is. Well, I DID have just a bit of help. My wife, ordered to lift nothing heavier than 10 lbs. for two weeks, slipped the wood blocks underneath while I held it up. We did not weigh the blocks. The 3 pad-holders, removed, likely weigh 30-40 lbs. each, loaded already with alkali. With them installed, I doubt that me and another strong guy could have lifted it. The cooler measures 44" X 44" X 44", almost a 4-foot cube. Tomorrow, or whenever I feel like it, (I'm retired, WTH!), I'll re-wire it. Frank
Glad to see the unit back up and you didn't hurt yourself too much. The unit looks in good shape, everything looks lined up. Nice job.
Hope you got it back in place and going good. Those swamp boxes do a real good job in a dry climate if you keep them up but they gave me the worst shock I've ever had. The wife complained of getting shocked everytime she turned the A/C on.I worked for the electric company and told her I'd check it out on the weekend. I turned it on and off a few times but could't find the cause. Went outside barefoot. The swamnpbox was liking bad leaving water standing all along the side of the house. I started taking the side of the A/C off. The sudden shock sent me hurling back toward the wire fence that separates our property from the neighbors. I was on my back, my mind blurry, and both feet burned.Water makes an awful good ground, something I should have known.
@Bill Boggs You could easily have been killed. Very lucky it was not worse. Whole-body conduction of current goofs up the heart rhythm. I have my cooler on a GFCI circuit breaker, a device likely not yet in general use when you had the accident. A GFCI opens the circuit within the tiniest fraction of a second if it detects ground fault current over 0.005 amperes, a mighty small current amount. No matter what caused the ground current, but certainly if it passes through a human's anatomy, it is a life-saver. Frank
Well, we got the month's electric bill, running exclusively on A/C, the old "swamper" not having been fixed completely, and it was $170 compared to the previous month's $70! Today, the stops were pulled out. The evap. cooler is right now running on Low, and delivering air 5 degrees lower in temperature than we had set the A/C thermostat, which was 84`. Tonight, I will have to wear a shirt to sleep in! Frank