Hessaire MC18V Portable Evaporative Cooler, Green, 1300 CFM, Cools 500 Square Feet

I don't normally give five stars even for something I think is a great product at a good value. I reserve the fifth star for durability. Previous owners have testified to the durability. First the disclaimer. It is NOT air conditioning. You don't get that for under $200. It is an evaporative cooler. It passes air through a damp media and when the water evaporates it absorbs heat. It's not magic, it's physics. The more water that evaporates the more heat that is absorbed. Since water does not like to evaporate in high humidity situations this cooler loses its effectiveness as the humidity increases. If your normal relative humidity STARTS at 40% don't even think about using this cooler. Also, for the same reason, you don't want to try to use it in a closed room, not even a closet. As the cooler operates the evaporated water adds to the humidity so after a short time the room becomes so humid the cooler quits working. The air coming in the back needs to be 100% new, not recurculated. Back the cooler up to an open window and also turn on some bathroom or kitchen exhaust fans to encourage air to come in the open window. I only use mine outdoors. That's how they work. Here's why this one is so good. An evaporative cooler only needs water, a pump, a fan, cooling media and a switch to control it all. This one has a reservoir large enough that you can get several hours out of a full tank. It has a water pump that keeps the water circulating over the media no matter how much is consumed. The fan serves two purposes. It pulls air into the back through the cooling media and out the front to cooler the user. This fan is plenty large enough to do both. The real key to its success is the size of the media. It follows. The larger the surface area of the media, the more the water evaporates, the more water that evaporates the more air that is cooled. Evaporative coolers need to be big because they need their media to be big. When you see the little one cubic foot miracle coolers being sold they're a joke. The media and fan are far too small to be effective. And finally the controls. A single rotary switch with five positions. Hi/lo wet, hi/lo dry and pump only. Why pump only? For prepping the media before cooling but mostly for maintenance. The nasty thing about evaporative coolers is that when the water evaporates it leaves everything that was in the water behind. If you have very hard water your media could turn into a brick in a single season. Since bricks aren't absorbent they don't make good cooler pads. You can keep the mineral deposits under control by circulating acidic water over the pads periodically either vinegar or Limeaway depending on how bad it is. Drain the water after cleaning. The pump only position allows you to pour in your solution, turn on the pump and walk away. Come back later, drain and refill and you're good for weeks more use. If you have RO water, soft water or filtered water cleaning becomes less of an issue. Two features this cooler has that most don't that I'm utilizing is the float inlet and the analog switch. They give you a garden hose adapter so you can hook a hose to it, turn the water on a bit and the tank fills and stays full with no need for refilling. I did it with 1/4 inch irrigation tubing because it's much smaller and easier to keep out of the way. The switch is unique because it doesn't involve any electronics. You can plug the cooler into a smart plug and turn it on or off with a phone app or voice assistant. The cherry on top is that it's made to last so it's repairable with available replacement parts. Try that with ANY Chinese made products.

Unless you can put it in front of a window or a source of dry air and have a door open on the other side of the room, it is just a big humidifier. It needs to work like a dairy barn. Fan pulls Outside air in though the pad and into the room. Only difference is the fan is on the other end of the dairy barn exhausting and pulling outside air through through the pad.not blowing into the barn. If it just circulated inside air though the pad it wouldn’t cool and if there was no exhaust it would be a soupy mess lol. If the air going thru the pad is not dry and it’s humid then there will be little to no evaporation occurring on the pad and thus no evaporative cooling effect If you’re in a dry place this will come in handy don’t need anything there just turn it on.

I live in Arizona and the summers are brutally hot. Enough to kill chickens without proper cooling. I have tried misting fans, but they left everything a wet mess. I purchased this evaporative cooler for last summer and it performed incredibly well. Typically lowering the temperature in and around my coop and run by a minimum of 15 to 20°. I have wireless thermometers throughout so I know where the temperature is at any given moment. This machine ran continuously from May through September. The fact that I could plug it into a continuous water source was a deal changer for me. I only shut it off to do a routine cleaning every other week. If you have a chicken coop, and you live where I live, this is the answer to keeping your flock, healthy and happy.

Get the microbes under control and this is a nice cooler. This thing worked very well from the get-go. It's a fill-n-plug-n-play affair, with the only other (optional I suppose) assembly being the attachment of the casters (wheels, super conveen). Fill the reservoir and plug it in, and you're off to the races. However, upon shutting it down, letting it sit, and starting it back up again, it will likely make your place smell like a fish tank in short order. Fairly troublesome to get rid of the smell, but with the right approach I was able to get the microbial content of the water and pads to a place where the air is fresh in addition to being moist and cool. My first efforts, adding vinegar (supermarket, food grade, not cleaning grade which is more acidic) to the water (say 1/2 cup) and spraying the pad with a 10:1 (or thereabouts) vinegar:water mix, were not enough. Sure, this routine would cut the smell temporarily, but every time I let the cooler sit (as in, overnight) it would stink when started again (as in, the very next morning). I went on like this for about two weeks, adding water each day and getting more aggressive with the vinegar. At least a little stinky every time. What finally worked was a combo of vinegar and Dial's 5255 Fresh Air evaporative cooler deodorant cake, a portion of which you simply maintain inside the reservoir (these are available here from Amazon sellers for less than $10, but apparently not available from Amazon itself — I would suggest NOT paying $40 or so for equivalent products). At first I just added 1/4 of the Dial cake and continued my routine. Not really any change. So I drained the water and added another 1/4 cake as well as the 1/2 cup of vinegar again. I think draining the water was key, as it looked super funky when it came out, like it had a bunch of dust and stuff from the pad in it. But refilling it with fresh water in addition to the vinegar and 5255, I was suddenly able to turn it on each day without any smell (or at least without an abnormally funky smell for an evaporative cooler). I still spray the pad with the weak vinegar mix every couple days, and add vinegar every week or so, mainly out of precaution and wanting to stay ahead of it. But it works well now, and I'm glad I stuck with it because I much prefer the moist cool air of a swamp cooler to the harsh, frigid air of an AC. If you buy this, or some other equivalent cooler here on Amazon, I would recommend this same "break-in" routine. Run it for a few days and drain it. Or maybe go more aggressive and drain the water each day for the first couple weeks — it just seems to need to be cleaned to a point where low-key disinfectant chemistry can do its job. The Dial 5255 cakes are cheap, and so is vinegar, so I would also recommend those — vinegar vapor is also useful for general deodorizing, and the cakes don't seem to smell at all. Four stars because I think this should come with instructions like what I've written, and a free 5255 cake. Apparently you have to make your own fifth star. Best of luck!

I was so excited to get this cooler, as the one I had looked so much like it. I loved the fact that that this unit was so simple, no frills, less to go wrong. I just got it today, the temperature was 85'. It just does not cool!!! I hate to think how uncomfortable the rest of the summer will be when temperatures reach the high 90's. I wish now that I would have gotten my old one fixed.