CO60PM

I live in SW Colorado Springs and renting a house without A/C. The weather is very dry and hot during the day, with cooler temps at night. But 2 out of the 3 levels of this house temps during the day were reaching 86º and hotter. I did lots of research on this product and thought this was the unit that best fit our needs. My folks recently moved in with me and they are home during the day. I had to do better for them. We felt an immediate change in temperature, on the middle level where I put the unit. I have a nice lower window in the dinning room and I put the unit right in front of the open window. This floor is very open and it cools the whole floor to a nice comfortable temperature in the mid-70's. This floor is where the kitchen, dining room and family room is and where we spend most of our time. Each bedrooms are cooled by the ceiling fan along with small tabletop fan, in each room, but windows are open at night allowing comfort sleeping, as it gets into the 50's at night. The walkout basement is always cool, but is used for storage and laundry room, since it is not finished. I have been using this for 3-weeks now and have not yet had to clean it, but I am aware that I will need to soon. There was a bit of an odd smell the first day, but the odor was not bad and is not producing any odors now. We only run it in the late afternoon until it starts getting cooler in the evenings. I bought a 15' hose to fill it originally, but use a 2-gallon watering can to fill it before use each day. I have not got my first electric bill since getting the unit, but believe in the reviews that it will be economically better than the window A/C unit that the owners left for me to use. If there is a downside, I'd add that it is loud enough that the TV has to be turned up to hear it, but conversations are held at the normal level unless someone tries to talk from the kitchen to the family room, then it gets hard to hear what was said. I can say that it is a little louder than running a table fan on high. The unit has 3 settings and I need to add that we have not needed to run the unit past the first setting.

I was skeptical about purchasing this because of the mixed reviews, but after alot of research this unit was the best bang for my buck and covered the most square footage.....keep in mind this is NOT an a/c. It does blow very nicely cooled air, but it is a 'swamp cooler'. It works well at my store in NM....My store is about 2000 sq ft with high ceilings. I do have a small a/c unit as well, but it just hasn't been enough..I purchased this to supplement that. I would say overall I am pleased. It has worked to keep the store a tad cooler and more manageable during these hot days.... Keep in mind- IT'S LARGE!! This thing is HUGE! It's also loud....it's light though, on wheels, easy to move around. It has a constant water hook up or easily dump water through the top.... Despite what other reviews say about these not working, they do work. They just aren't as cool as actual a/c- because it's not one.

I do not know why these are not more common in the San Fernando Valley area! My apartment is positioned over an open air garage and nothing but sky above. When it is hot outside, the apartment turns into an oven matching outside full sun temperatures. The 15,000btu AC wall unit is good for about a 7 degree temperature drop and a massive power bill. It often gets over 100 here, so 7 degrees isn't exactly helping much! So I discovered 'swamp coolers' and got this one. It uses about 1/8th the power of my AC and kicks the AC's butt around the block on cooling power. The hottest day was 113. If I had used the AC it would have been 106. Swamp cooler? 85! Very good purchase. Onto the unit itself. It's pretty large and I expected it to be a deafening roar. It was not. It's loud, but no louder than my AC and since the main noise is from the giant fan, it is a white noise and much less noticeable than the oscillating and somewhat grinding sound of AC. I cannot use the auto-fill connector so I top load the water with a giant watering can. It requires quite a bit of loading especially on hot days as it can go through 2+ gallons of water an hour. Small price to pay in my book compared to the power bill. The cooling works best when humidity is below 40% (not a problem here, we average low 20's) and really comes into it's own when it drops to the teens. The interesting bit I found was the amount it cools is relative to the outside temperature. It seems to have an equilibrium of cooling my apartment down to around 82 degrees. So, the hotter it gets, the more it evaporates water causing more cooling. Thus whether it's 90 or 110 outside, inside it's around 82. My final bit, and why it is not a 5 star review is, I'm an engineer. I build, repair, and tinker with things. This unit is all plastic and does not look repair friendly.

A little noisy but it's a fan works great light with wheels can't really say anything bad about this as I've only had it for a week

its great!