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My Swamp Cooler is Getting Killed by Hard Water

  
  
  

swamp cooler pad deposits resized 600If your swamp cooler is looking like it is being taken over by mineral deposits, well…that’s because it probably is. Swamp coolers aren’t something you can just plug in and forget about until the winter. Rather, you will need to do some periodic maintenance.

Hard water certainly isn’t pleasant for swamp coolers. In fact, I know plenty of people who pipe soft water into their cooler. Really though, the cooler works off of evaporation, and what is left in the cooler is lots of salts.  You can do several things to keep the environment inside the cooler operating as well as possible.

Most pumps have a bleed function that purges old water from the reservoir and pumps it out of the drain tube to the exterior of the unit. This will keep fresh water entering the unit at a low volume while getting rid of old water high in salts. You can run the tube outside, maybe to a garden, or somewhere you won’t just be wasting the water.

You can also buy water conditioning products which will help to keep the scale low. Most are blocks that you just set in the reservoir and it will slowly erode away.

If your pump does not have a bleed-off function, you can just periodically (every few days) empty the reservoir and refill it.

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Comments

I have been using swamp coolers a lot of my life the key to having efficient cool house is #1 maintain maintain oh and did I mention maintain them just cannot stress the importance of the maintenance part too much #1 thing is a pump that drains the cooler every 6 to 8 hours the build up that is in the water depends on the start of the source if your pulling the water from the mountains as I am the water has plenty of minerals in it our water here is so hard I can see build up in a few hours of operation a second pump on a timer to purge the water is imperative in Utah I also recommend a system that produces copper silver and or zinc ions this can easily be achieved be cautious of proper voltages in the millivolt is plenty of electrical charge I have read some people using AC power to do this? I suggest using dc system Im currently working on plans to do a system using a rechargable 9 volt system with a battery which by my calculations would only use a 9 volt battery per 2 weeks so there is plenty of capacity to charge the battery many times over compared to the system requirements there is a great value to fight using just a silver dime as a anode and a copper plate as a cathode with a diode and a resistor to cut the ion generator to a minimum mildew mold germs and the bacteria will all be kept to a minimum!!! This system can keep you swamp cooler from awful smells and dangerous levels of pathogens
Posted @ Tuesday, May 14, 2013 6:16 PM by merrill
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