Preparing for Summer

A critical need here at the house - a working swamp cooler...

I have been keeping our swamp cooler alive for a number of years, as Drew can attest to. (He's possibly done more work on the thing than I have.) Last year I went up there to try to patch up all the rust holes in the basin. I put in half a tub of silicone in holes, and thought I got them all. When I added the water, a number of other holes were discovered. I tried patching one of them, and the hole got really, really big. End of swamp cooler.

We got through last year ok, but I don't really think Tara and the girls can make it all the way through the summer in this place without it. I bought a new swamp cooler. (Our only major purchase with our Tax rebate check until the minivan sells...) Missy, Steve, and Tom helped get the old rust bucket off the roof and the new one up there. I wired the thing up, but it kept tripping the breaker when we powered it on.

I gave up, Drew came over this evening to help. (He brought over a power tester.) There were 2 sets of wires, I figured one was for the pump, the other for the fan. After testing things, we found that one of the wires had a hot and neutral, the other had 2 hot wires. Maybe this is how all swamp coolers are wired, I don't know. Is it some big secret? I had wired a hot wire to the neutral wires, I'm just glad at this point that I didn't burn down the house.

After getting the electrical done, I patched everything up, hooked up the water, and away we went. The swamp cooler now works. We are good to go. Just in time, since the next 5 days we will have high temperatures of 78, 84, 89, 91, and 90.

Thanks everyone for helping, especially Drew...