3 ms·
Swamp coolers can get really nasty and smelly due to being the perfect breeding ground for spores and other nasties.
by slau 2y ago
Swamp coolers can get really nasty and smelly due to being the perfect breeding ground for spores and other nasties.
- therobots927 2y agoI wasn’t aware of that. I haven’t had any issues and the swamp cooler at my place is old. It’s very dry here, but I guess if you were to not run the cooler for a while the water may sit and you could see stuff start to grow in it. If the water is running 20 hours a day I’d be skeptical that anything would settle there but I could be wrong. As soon as we stop using it for the season I drain the water out of the reservoir.
- DougN7 2y agoI wonder what would cause that. It seems intuitive that it would happen, but like the other commenter I don’t recall any bad smells when we used on growing up. But it was also a very dry climate, so maybe that is the solution?
- paulmd 2y agosame as humidifiers and they make bacteriostatic additives that help control this (although eventually it does need to be cleaned regardless).
- therobots927 2y agoThanks, I’ll look into additives
- hagbard_c 2y agoI suspect a UV lamp over the evaporator would solve this problem. It would not need to be lit continuously, just at a regular interval short enough to quash any fledgeling fungal or bacterial growth. There may be swamp coolers which have such a sterilising function integrated, otherwise it'd be a useful hack with market potential.
- therobots927 2y agoYeah that’s not a bad idea. And often swamp coolers have electric sockets inside so it wouldn’t be too hard to wire it out. If I wasn’t renting the place I’d probably give it a shot