SF-613

I never heard of swamp coolers before coming to the desert southwest,this is not a product for everyone.First of all a normal swamp cooler here is a huge contraption outside the house.This is a rather small device in comparison.I live in small adobe with limited air circulation.In the summer months the air can be dry hot and unbearably still.This device works on the principle of moving air across a screen that is saturated by water.Its the same physics as a desert water bag people once hung on the outside of vehicles,or a bota water bag one takes camping,or those head bands that are saturated etc.Evaporating water is cool ,a fan that blows across evaporating water moves a slight cool breeze.This is a relief in the dry desert.It does not cool a large space it's a small unit,it does provide a small oasis of a slightly cool breeze in the area where you are sleeping or sitting.If you don't live in the desert,or you want something more robust,this is not for you buy a large and expensive unit instead,or an ac unit.But so far I am very happy with this unit,ofcourse we are still this side of the dog days and will happily report back in July when I will know just how effective a recommendation this inexpensive and relatively small device deserves.ADDED:After weeks of operating without a problem there was puddle under the unit.Looks like the cause was the bar that holds the water curtain ..this bar is easily rotated and appears to have rotated to an angle where instead of flowing thru the curtain the water flow to the outside of the curtain to the carbon screen and out of the unit.I rotated the bar back alittle and it works fine now without a puddle seems like a minor design flaw have to subtract a star,but still this unit has definitely made the summer more bearable,however it does appear to lose effectiveness at higher atemperatures.have not tried replacing the water screen material yet as others have suggested.Added late July the unit leaked again good thing I have it on a waterproof pan,this is the second time this has occurred,obviously my previous assumption about the outlet bar position is wrong,I am thinking now that the tube at the pump worked itself loose,will check this out the next time a leak occurs..still like the unit,but there is a flaw somewhere in the design.

My boyfriend has this unit, and it performs so well that I ordered one for myself. It's great in the master bedroom on the hotter/west side of this house. I have central A/C and overhead fans, but we've had 33 straight days where the outside temperature has been at or over 100 degrees here in Texas, so I need all the supplemental cooling I can get. This evaporative air-cooler fits the bill. NO leaks! I like the fact that the unit has casters so we can roll it into whatever room we're in. Ice-water added to the reservoir helps the outgoing air feel a bit cooler, and the ionizer is an added plus. The 'swing' button oscillates the air. I would give it 5 stars, but the remote control seems rather cheaply made and the water-level indicator is difficult to see/read--- which might be why some folks have had problems with leakage. This unit is NOT designed to cool your whole house, but it will sure make the room that you put it in much more comfortable during the dog days of summer.

I live in the High Desert and figured this would be a nice cost effective way to cool off. The fan is a kind of big but easy to move around because it isn't heavy and it has wheels. It was working pretty well for a while, then we got hit with a lot of humid days which just made this product mostly ineffective, no fault of design or anything but like many other reviewers said humidity is the enemy of evaporative coolers. On a typical desert day with single-digit humidity it was decent though.The two things I didn't like was the noise and the range. The fan itself isn't any louder than you expect but for some reason after a few days could hear a constant dripping sound. I guess the mesh material wasn't absorbing as much water as was being pumped to it and it was just falling down into the reservoir which got old, fast. I think another reviewer mentioned changing the material but I didn't feel like opening it up. The range tended to be a little underwhelming, I had to be within 4 feet to feel the cooling effect. Any further away and it felt the same as just running the fan. I tried turning the speed up but it was just too loud, too bad it didn't drown out the dripping.Anyway, I still use it as a fan, it's nice and I got it on sale. If it's less humid next year maybe I'll update the review.