Dehumidifier Bags + Swamp Cooler

[bhoza01]

I will begin my foamie build in the next month or so. Thanks to y'all I am feeling much more confident about my build. I am really, really excited to get this thing going.

One factor that is troubling me is what I'm going to do about cooling it down in the summer. We live in Oklahoma and we plan to mostly camp in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. All three states are sweltering hot and pretty humid.

I want to keep our 5x8 TTT very simple and easy. I plan to setup a deep cycle battery and 100w solar generator, just to charge cell phones and listen to music once in a while. We plan to use our trailer as a home base on hiking/climbing trips, so it'll basically be used for sleeping and not much else. Therefore, I don't really want to sacrifice ease-of-build, money, and weight by going crazy installing a heavy, energy hungry AC unit. The trailer will have enormous screen windows and a nice exhaust fan up top to keep the air flowing. I'm thinking that even on a really hot night, a couple 12v or battery operated fans should keep us cool and comfortable. My girlfriend, on the other hand, is skeptical.

Back when I ran butcher shops we used huge industrial silica bags in our walk-in coolers. Surprisingly, they worked very well. From what I remember, in summertime it dropped the humidity from about 80% down to about 65%. Curious if anybody has tried something similar in your trailers. It looks like large bags of these "magic crystals" are pretty readily available, and are had pretty cheaply. My thought is that I could hang a couple silica bags in the corners of the trailer. And those, along with the exhaust fan, might make it dry enough to run a 12v swamp cooler on really sweltering nights. But, I'm sure it's not quite that easy.

What are your thoughts? Anybody tried the dehumidifer bag and evaporative cooler combination? I'm trying to go light and cheap here.

PS, typical Oklahoma nights in summer get around 75 degrees. The dew point's around 70 degrees. Average humidity is about 55% (85% at night, 45% during the day).

[GuitarPhotog]

Not that easy. To be effective a swamp cooler needs humidity ranges <40%, which you'll never get to even with all the dehumidifier bags in china. They worked in the walk-in because there was limited air circulation and the refrigeration condensed most of the water out.

Not to mention that the evaporative cooler will add humidity to the air.

<Chas>

[bhoza01]

Ahhhhh, makes perfect sense to me.

Looks like we'll crank the windows open and let the fans rip.

Thanks!

[Tomterrific]

I like the swamp cooler but instead of cooling air it'd cool people. You might has seen a post about sewing tubing onto a sheet and pumping water through the tubes to cool a body directly. A trough on the top of the camper could be configured as thermosiphon setup to operate sans electric.

Tt