Maggie’s bedroom upstairs is way cool, but unfortunately, way hot in the summer!   She has a couple fans and we are watching for an air conditioner for her, but have not had luck.

Being the ever resourceful young lady, she saw these nifty swamp cooler designs on Pinterest and You Tube and decided to give it a spin.   The ones online are a lot more elaborate… including sytrofoam inserts and such and tubes, but she just made it easy to see if it would work.

She just froze a couple empty plastic gallons of water.   Leaving about a quarter of the jug empty for expansion.  By using a couple, she can rotate them out of the freezer.

She got a nice clean 5 gallon bucket and cut a few blower holes in the side.   Eight I believe.

And she took a piece of cardboard because she couldn’t find a lid and cut our a little hole for an old fan to fit on top.  Pop a frozen milk jug of water in the bucket, turn on the fan and WOW!  It really works!

She’s been using it for a week or so now and she likes it.  It’s very quiet unlike a big air conditioner.  A jug will last a few hours, like 4 to 6 hours.   It really doesn’t cool the WHOLE room, but you can set it near you and it blows lovely cool air on you as you read or work on a computer or watch TV or games.   And she says it’s lovely to sleep with.   Just set it aside your bed and it will keep nice cool breezes drifting over you.

And I’m quite sure it doesn’t waste as much electricity as those big air conditioners do.  Give it a try, make a simple swamp cooler.  You don’t need much, just a bucket, a jug and a fan.   And a drill bit to make some big holes.

Pretty darn cool!   Haha… yeah… cool!