Summer has finally arrived here in Colorado, and over the weekend it went from rainy and mid-70’s to dry and mid-90’s. And, being as the local utility company has raised the rates for electricity into the realm of painful, I’m determined to not use the AC at all this year.
See, my AC is a 2-ton unit which pulls about 13 amps of 240v just for the compressor/condenser. When you add the 10 amps of 120v furnace blower and whatnot it’s about a $120 a month just to keep the house cool in the summer. And $120 is like a whole bag of groceries per month! (sigh)
Anyway, where I live in Colorado is essentially a desert – which means evaporative coolers work really well and can usually pull off 10-15 degrees below ambient on just a water pump and a fan. So, last night my roommate and I both bought a Bonaire “HI FLO 800 CFM” portable evaporative cooler from the local Home Depot for $250 each.
Mine is in my office and the one my roommate bought is in the living room, and other than sounding like a waterfall while they’re running they do a fantastic job of cooling the house off with a mere 5 gallons of water and 1 amp of 120V each.
As an added bonus they also raise the humidity a bit, so less getting struck by lightning every time you walk across the floor and touch something metal.
All in all I’m pretty happy with my $250 purchase, and in theory it’ll pay for itself before the end of August when it cools off again.
Listening to "Confie (Hold On)" by Kalax