depends on your climate as to how well they work or don't work.
Swamp coolers are not effective/efficient/work in high humidity environments and in those environments adds more unwanted humidity making an already uncomfortable environment a humid, unbearable tropic forest environment.
Dry desert, sure, don't try that here in muggy PA or even the south eastern states like NC, SC, GA..
Swamp Cooler 101"the evaporation of liquids caused heat loss. What he described in his letter is evaporative cooling
Swamp coolers work by harnessing that cooling reaction — you just need a way to circulate the now-cooler, more humid air through the house.
with a swamp cooler, it's much simpler. The main thing inside is a blower — a fan at one end of the box that brings air in from the outside and pushes it into the house at the other end. Before the air goes into the house, it passes through a set of damp pads, where the evaporation takes place. The cooler air goes into the house and the warmer air is pushed out. A small pump keeps the pads moist, so the water doesn't just evaporate away completely.
Swamp coolers are an open system. They rely on the flow of air through the building to direct the cool air, and since they always need hot, dry air to evaporate the water, it needs to displace the air already in the house.
Swamp Cooler Downsides
For all their benefits and cost savings, swamp coolers still only work in the right climate, and that unfortunately doesn't include areas like Philadelphia.
It needs to be not only hot but also dry
If the air gets too saturated with water, the water condenses. One hundred percent humidity outside the house means it might rain, and while a swamp cooler won't cause a downpour in your home, it won't have any cooling effect either — just the hot, sticky feeling you might associate with swamps. Your perspiration doesn't evaporate into the saturated air."If you have one and are in the right environment use it.
If you don't have one and are not in the right environment, don't buy one, it will fail to make you feel comfortable..
True story, couple of yrs ago, when 6 out of 9 HVAC systems failed in the large warehouse building I was working in during a blistering hot and muggy summer the company rented a dozen huge portable swamp cooler fan systems which sprayed a fine mist of water into a high power fan air stream.. Yeah, that didn't work as I predicted to company management, didn't drop the temps in the building and basically made a huge amount of noise and everything felt even hotter and sticky/muggy..
