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My neighbor swears swamp coolers are done in ABQ, but the math says otherwise
He cornered me at the mailbox on Candelaria last month and told me I was wasting money keeping my swamp cooler instead of switching to refrigerated air. I asked what his July electric bill looked like and he goes quiet, then says $310 for his 1,800 square foot place. Mine was $94 and my house sits at 74 degrees all summer, so I told him I would keep my $600 unit working fine and put the $8,000 install quote toward something else. Swamp coolers just work here because our air is dry, and people forget that when a salesman tells them they need freon. Anybody else still running one and catching grief about it?
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the_julia11d ago
Just work here because our air is dry" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because the monsoon weeks in July and August are exactly when swamp coolers fall on their face. When the dew point climbs past 55 or so, that $600 unit stops cooling and starts just moving damp air around your house, and now you are at 74 degrees only because it is raining outside. Your neighbor's $310 bill sounds less like a swamp cooler verdict and more like he has a leaky house, bad ducts, or a unit sized wrong, since plenty of folks with refrigerated air in ABQ run way under that. And that $94 is not the full story either, you are paying for water, pads, and pump swaps every season, plus you get to climb up there twice a year. I am not saying rip it out, but the money math only looks that lopsided when you compare your best case against his worst.
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