Okay, I know people who live in humid climates shake their heads in disbelief at the very idea that you can cool the air by making it more humid, but yeah. It's true. At least in desert-like climates like what we have here in Colorado. I wanted to weigh in as a homeowner on my experiences with both.

Years ago, in my first home, we had NO method of climate control whatsoever. Also? We had a black roof. And giant windows on our master bedroom, on the front of our west-facing house. That first summer was the most miserable three months, let me tell ya! We just could not get our house to cool off, no matter what we did. I remember lying in bed at midnight, glancing at the thermometer and seeing that it was 84 in the house, and only 79 outside. Ugh!

So, the second summer we were there, we got a bid from a company to install a swamp cooler on our roof. Our next door neighbor wanted one too, so we got a 20% discount for getting them both installed the same day. As I recall, the cost was right at about a thousand bucks. And this was thirteen years ago, so I'm sure it's quite a bit higher now. The install went well. We had a big ugly swamp cooler on our roof, but it was on the back side of the roof, so you couldn't really see it. The vent opened up into our upstairs hallway, and the control was placed right inside the door of our master bedroom.

We basically kept it on from May until September, and it would turn on whenever the temperature reached a certain level. We kept a couple of windows open around the house, which sort of sucked the cool air to those areas. It worked pretty well, I have to say. The unit used a fair amount of water, but hardly any electricity. It was noisy, and the temperature never cooled below about 74 or so, but it was definitely energy efficient.

Okay, so in my second home, we got central air. This is a large house, too, so we have two furnaces and two air conditioning units. We had the builder do the setup so that it'd be ready for us to install our A/C - I think they put in the coil or something - honestly, I can't really remember. I DO remember it was THOUSANDS of dollars less for us to have our buddy install the units than it was to have the builder do it for us.

On move-in day, Paul and his buddies finished the install. I don't remember it being too crazy complicated, although I was walking around 9 months pregnant with twins, which may be clouding my memory! The bill we got from our HVAC buddy was around three grand - and that was with the whole "buddy discount" thing going on. Paul did a bunch of the work, too.

I really, really love having central air, though, I have to say. It's quiet, it cools off the house *immediately*, and it gets REALLY cold in here. I think you could probably store meat in here if you set the thermostat low enough! Our chips and cereal stay crunchy, too, which never happened when we ran the swamp cooler!

To wrap it up...

Swamp Cooler

Pros: Cheaper. More energy efficient. Makes your plants and skin look nice, and vacuum tracks will stay in your carpet until you vacuum again.

Cons: Noisy. Makes everything feel a little stickier because of the added humidity. Turns your crunchy food stale almost instantly. Useless on humid (i.e., rainy!) days. Have to keep the windows open for it to work. Pain in the ass to clean, unless you enjoy lugging a ShopVac up onto the roof. Also: ugly! Many HOAs do not allow them at all.

Central Air

Pros: Quiet. Always works. Makes the house ridiculously cold. Many units are more energy efficient nowadays - we even got a rebate from Xcel Energy when we bought ours.

Cons: Pricey. Harder install. Uhhhh...have to keep the windows closed all the time. Hmmm. I'm having trouble coming up with any more, because I love central air so much!

Labels: central air, HVAC, swamp cooler