Can I use a Swamp Cooler in my 3-car garage shop here in SLC Utah?

[Joshua Dinerstein]

My wood working "shop" is found in the 3rd car bay of my homes garage. I am primarily a wood turner but over the last few years I have picked up a Powermatic 6" jointer, a Ridgid granite top table saw, a Rikon 14" deluxe band saw, a Craftsman radial-arm saw and a few other tools to try and complement my Mustard Monster lathe.

So for the specific question. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. So for those not immediately familiar with it we are very very dry here in terms of climate especially through-out the summer months. We are also quite warm here.

Last summer, my first in this house, my shop was blisteringly hot and entirely unusable. I would like to try and do something about that this year. Last year I had no insulation in the ceiling of the garage and none in the walls and tried a window air-conditioner unit. It was amazing how little effect it seemed to have. I honestly don't believe that it made any temp difference at all in the shop. So this last winter I had the ceiling insulated. The walls are finished and so I stopped short of ripping down the sheet rock to try and insulate the walls though I will do so if I have to. The end of last summer when doing the new wiring in the shop I got to be up near the ceiling and you could feel the heat just radiate down out of the attic through the ceiling.

So now that I have some insulation up there I am hoping this will be greatly reduced. But I want to add some direct cooling. With the window air-conditioner having been such a failure last year I am looking at alternatives. The much much larger ductless mini-split A/C units are of interest to me but I was walking thru HD the other day and saw some nice large Swamp Coolers. (Evaporative cooler for those that haven't hear this term before.)

And I got to thinking that might work... But then I wondered about putting that much moisture into the air. I don't particularly want to turn my tools in puddles of rust.

So I thought I would ask here. Is it safe in very dry areas like Utah, New Mexico, Nevada etc... to use an evaporative cooler? Or will it just rust the tools into oblivion?

Anyone ever tried it? They were just 1/5th the price of the mini-split unit I was looking at.

Thanks,
Joshua

[John Pratt]

I run a shop for the Military in Oklahoma and it gets very hot in the shop (above 100 degrees sometimes) and their answer was a swamp cooler. Lets just say that lasted about three days before I saw the rust forming on all the tools. Now we just place several fans around the shop. Thankfully the office area has AC and we take frequent breaks during those times of the year.

[Bruce Page]

Swampers only work in dry climates!
I have a small through the wall/window swamp cooler in my garage shop that works pretty well. The key is circulating in air from the outside and allowing that same volume of air back out.
You can’t take one of the portable swampers, roll it into the middle of your shop and expect it to work without jacking up the humidity and rusting all of your iron. I have seen people set a portable in an open doorway with moderate success.

I also have a large MasterCool swamper on my roof to keep the house cool.

[Steve Peterson]

Find someone with a swamp cooler and hang a tool in front of it to see how long it lasts. I am in central California and used a swamp cooler in my house. I didn't really care for the added humidity when I was sleeping, so mostly I just used it to bring in cool evening air and close up the house in the mornings.

Utah is probably much drier than CA. I have visited AZ and notice that glasses of ice water never sweat. Coasters are completely useless. Maybe the base humidity is so low that you can get the cooling without enough humidity to cause rusting. Hence, the experiment. Swamp coolers will be a lot cheaper to operate. Probably cost around 5 cents per hour vs 50 cents for an air conditioner.

I put a window air conditioner in my garage workshop. The roll up door and one side wall get full sun all day. Ceiling and wall insulation was not enough. Adding 1.5" of styrofoam to the doors allowed me to get the temperature down to a comfortable level. Luckily the walls already had insulation.

Steve

[Louie Ballis]

I think that a swamp cooler even in a dry enviroment would be a really bad i dea as far as putting too much moisture in the air.

I live in a high humidity climate and can have a problem with just the natural amount of water in the air. (I am in north Louisiana- about 70% humidity on average). Car wax does help (alot).

If you do go with a swamp cooler be ready to by plenty of "Barkeep's Friend" a great rust remover, LOL.

[Steve Peterson]

The first day I bought my swamp cooler, I decided to test it on the floor of the living room. It wasn't even 15 minutes before the entire house went from maybe 90 degrees and 20 percent humidity to 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity.

Swamp coolers depend on dry outside air blowing past the pads. Portable coolers that sit in the middle of the room are nothing but a gimmick. It is impossible to remove any heat from the room unless something vents to the outside.

Steve

[Zach England]

Dang, I just gave a huge one away on craigslist.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Didn't that Legionnaire's disease problem about 25 years ago come from some poorly maintained evap coolers?
.

[Nathan Palenski]

You need to exchange heat with the outside. If you’ve insulated your shop your window unit may be more effective now. How many BTUs is it? How big is your shop in cubic feet? What’s the average temp in the summer during the day and night. Using those three numbers you should be able to figure out how under gunned you are.

I manage a small data center with a 10 ton roof unit. Our last cooling review showed we need just over 12 tons to cool the equipment we have in it right now. We are under cooled but since the temp drops at night the AC becomes more efficient and pulls the inside temps back down. We start the day at about 70 and on a really hot day are at about 78 by 4pm. If we had mission critical equipment or any budget to speak of I’d upgrade but we’re forced to use a certain contractor and the minimum it’s going to cost me just to get a 12 ton unit is ~$30k.

While its not ideal, a good solution would be to open your garage door for a few minutes in the early morning to let any hot air out, then close it and then crank up your window unit. It may not be enough to effectively cool the room when its hot but it’ll delay the inevitable temp rise from the afternoon sun.

[Joshua Dinerstein]

Swamp coolers depend on dry outside air blowing past the pads. Portable coolers that sit in the middle of the room are nothing but a gimmick. It is impossible to remove any heat from the room unless something vents to the outside.

That was my plan. To put it in the window in the garage. So that it would pull in the hot dry air from outside and then crack the door across the garage. My parents have had one up in Cache Valley, in Utah for over 30 years, since I was 10, so I am familiar with them and how the operate. I was just wondering at the impact of using them in a work shop. All of that cast iron is an interesting problem I have never really had to think about before.

Thanks for the reply!

Joshua

[Joshua Dinerstein]

Dang, I just gave a huge one away on craigslist.

ARRGHHH! Just my luck. I looked on KSL and found a window one in Santaquin for $50. I hadn't thought about a used one until you mentioned craigslist.

Joshua

[Jim Rimmer]

I run a shop for the Military in Oklahoma and it gets very hot in the shop (above 100 degrees sometimes) and their answer was a swamp cooler. Lets just say that lasted about three days before I saw the rust forming on all the tools. Now we just place several fans around the shop. Thankfully the office area has AC and we take frequent breaks during those times of the year.

Josh, you might heed John's comment. I grew up about 30 miles from Lawton, OK and it is pretty dry there, also. I was raised in huoses with swamp coolers but never saw the effect on wwing tools.

[John Pratt]

I think the humidity levels here (southern Oklahoma) are close to that of Utah but I may be mistaken. Let me add a caveat to what I said earlier; I have no knowledge of the smaller window units and it may work for your location. The attached pic is what the Military bought for my work shop. It is quite large but then again the shop at work is 4000 sq/ft and this unit is only rated for 2600 sq/ft. It didn't take long at all for the CI on the floor tools to form a thin rust. That was with other fans on and good venting of shop air. Even when we had it running, I didn't notice a real difference in confort levels. Of course that may have just been me being focused on what was happening to my tools rather than the room temp.

[SCOTT ANDREWS]

I'm located in the desert in SoCal and I run a swamp cooler in my shop all summer long with no problems of rust on any of my tools.My shop is only 22x28 and I have about the middle size window mount unit.You do need to keep your cast iron tables waxed more than twice a year.When I'm done in the shop for the day,I leave the garage doors cracked about a foot and the rear exit door wide open for about an hour.This routine has worked well for 3 years now without problems.
Scott

[Dan Friedrichs]

Portable coolers that sit in the middle of the room are nothing but a gimmick. It is impossible to remove any heat from the room unless something vents to the outside.

Not true - heat in the room is removed when the water evaporates. It's just like how sweat cools you down - as the sweat evaporates off your body, the energy used to convert liquid to gas is removed from your body, cooling you down.