(first posted 7/1/2014) I’ve been hoping to find a vintage automotive “swamp cooler” for quite a while, since I remember these so well from our annual trips to Colorado. And it’s on a ’66 F-100, no less. And at an antique plane show, even. Maybe later… But let’s take a quickie look at the way to keep cool before air conditioning, provided you lived in the western half of the country.
The technology of an evaporative cooler was certainly simple and reliable enough: A canister with a ram tube, some kind of pad of porous material, and a reservoir of about a gallon of water to keep the pad wet. The cool air was then routed into the interior. The drier the air, the better they worked, so they were particularly popular in the South West. I’m not sure where the cut-off point was in their sales; Nebraska or Kansas, maybe?
There were several main manufacturers, and Thermador was one of the biggest. This one is Firestone branded, undoubtedly sold through their one-time huge chain of stores.
These swamp coolers were first made in the 30s, and finally petered out in the late 60s or so, although one can still buy new ones for that typical overdone look, with every available and conceivable accessory that so many restored old cars sport.
How jealous we were whenever we saw a car with one of these strapped to its side window. It was not to be…
Once you are west of the 100 parallel, you would find a swamp cooler an effective way to stay cool in your car and in your home. Having extensive traveling experience in the American West, I can tell you that until they broke and needed to be replaced by a window unit air conditioner – the swamp cooler was still found in many Rocky Mountain motels. By the time of my travels, what confused folks was the need to keep the windows open in order for the swamp cooler to work.
But in this part of the country – work, they definitely did.
Want sell Firestone swamp cooler no rust but is bent on top tank is nice eBay got alots rust not this asking 400
308-355-2129
Do you still have this swamp cooler?
Do you still have the cooler, or know its whereabouts?, I would like to get a look at one, reverse engineer it and make some more, I have the resources to do it, I’m a prototype machinist working for a company that also has sheet metal forming, laser cutting, welding, powder coating ect. Also the owner of the company is into vintage cars and restorations…btw patent will have long since run out no doubt but would do a patent search to make sure… would definately be willing to return origional and provide “new one” to you or anyone who could come up with one
Hi Wade, I need something like this for my VW Vanagon. It seems like there is definitely a market for them, the prices on Ebay get higher every year, and with your skills and equipment, you could fill that niche. I’ve been waiting for someone to make them and for the price to be reasonable, not for hotrod decoration but for use. If you decide to manufacture them, I’ll buy one. Thermador made them too so there are many examples of this easy and green technology.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/115395443/swamp-
This place is cheaper
Wade,
Did you ever get anywhere with this? I’d be interested in collaborating.
Dustin
You still have, interested in the item
Terri could you give more photos only see one ?? Thank you so much paularnold692@gmail.com.
I have one for sale. Garage find. I used it once after I took it out of the box. I’m asking 600.00.
Hi I’m interisted in that Firestone swamp cooler if still availble
I was visiting some friends in Boulder, Colorado a few years ago who had an evaporative central A/C system for their home (the house was probably 1960’s or ’70’s vintage). It worked quite well. The elevation of Boulder contributes to the dryness of the air. They were constantly telling us visitors from sea level to remember to stay hydrated.
I was visiting some friends in Boulder, Colorado a few years ago who had an evaporative central A/C system for their home (the house was probably 1960’s or ’70’s vintage). It worked quite well. The elevation of Boulder contributes to the dryness of the air. They were constantly telling us visitors from sea level to remember to stay hydrated.
A home swamp cooler had a much more powerful fan than that in typical home central air conditioning and many created quite a draft between the cooler and whatever windows were open.
Trying to look for one a window unit for my 59 F1 hundred I was wondering if you knew where I can’t locate one my name is Juan of the Corpus Christi Texas
i have all original firestone swamp cooler for 500,send me ur email can send pics if still looking
Intrested in the swamp cooler if its still avalible.
chuck.carner.rules@gmail.com
Thanks
Thanks for the explanation. I saw a number of these at a recent car show and wasn’t sure exactly what I was seeing.
Swampers are the best for the house! I wouldn’t live in refrigerated air again.
If you lived in the humidity belt you might think differently. Right now, at 10:30 AM, it is 86 degrees outside with 65% percent relative humidity. Walking even a block under these conditions and you would likely be sweating profusely. The humidity is probably worse than the heat; all of the moisture in the air makes it very hard for perspiration to evaporate. I grew up in Kentucky before A/C was common in homes and it was miserable in hot weather; you could take a shower and literally not be able to dry off as you would begin sweating immediately. I grant that if you live in a dry climate the swamp cooler is a viable alternative to A/C.
I’ve posted below on the virtues of swamp coolers, but when the humidity climbs, they are not fun. And that’s true here in Tucson. We have what might be described as two summers: A period, starting sometimes as early as April and sometimes as late as mid-May that runs through June, marked by very low humidity and high to very high daytime temperatures. Evaporative coolers work spectacularly well at this time, and add welcome humidity to the air.
Then, around the beginning of July, our second summer starts, the summer rainy season. The winds change (part of the definition of “monsoon”) and moist air moves in from Mexico, raising the humidity. Then those of us who have dual systems switch over to A/C until sometime in September, when the monsoon peters out. Our humidity is nothing like what many areas of the U.S. experience, but it’s bad enough that we still crave air conditioning during the monsoon….
If I could run a swamp cooler for free, I still wouldn’t have one. I worked in a place that had one, and it was horrible. Yeah, it was cooler than outside, but it was humid as hell, and were were soaking wet with sweat almost instantly every morning when we arrived. We complained and complained, and finally the boss (Whose office had a normal A/C unit) had to work with us and out came the swamper, and back came the fans.
A couple of years later, a friend of mine bought a house with a swamper on it, and within a week of moving in, he was getting estimates for real A/C. His wife was the only one who liked it. I was in it for a half hour and it was almost as bad as it was at work, and it was only 90 or so outside. I would hate to think how bad it would have been with the temp up another 10-20 degrees.
Two thumbs up for your post, nrd515. Here in Utah there are still thousands of houses with rooftop swampers. While they do put out a certain amount of nicely cooled air, they don’t cool the whole house. If you happen to be right under the thing, you’ll feel fine, but if you are a few rooms away or on a different floor, a swamper won’t help you much. A few years ago, my sister and brother-in-law came back from church to find that the ceiling in their kitchen had collapsed, strewing wet drywall and insulation all over the place. The culprit? A leaking swamper. It was at that point that my sister insisted that they get central air–which she’d wanted for years. Swampers are also noisy and prone to breakdowns–not fun to fix when it’s 100 degrees-plus outside (you have to climb up on the roof, where it’s even hotter). When we moved back here from the humid Midwest, we let our real estate agent know that AC was a must.
In the Southwest In typical one floor houses built decades ago or even mobile homes the hot air furnace is around the middle of the house. There is a sheet metal box leading up to the roof from above the furnace, above where the ducts branch off to the rooms. There is a sheet metal plate that can be moved from one slot to another to close off the duct to the roof or close off the furnace. The swamp cooler goes on top of the duct on the roof. So the cooled air does not just come out in one place but in every room with a heating duct, which are on the walls near the ceiling, which is actually better for cooled than heated air. With refrigerated AC the evaporator would just be in the air flow from the furnace and use its blower.
I have seen some crap apartments built more recently with the swamp cooler just blowing down through one central ceiling vent, like maybe in a fifty year old single wide trailer. Heat would be from one wall furnace.
Swamp coolers use far less electricity than AC, and are far cheaper, and on 10% humidity days the increased humidity isn’t a bad thing. But useless on monsoon days in the SW. And all that air blows through the rooms and out the open windows, since it isn’t recirculating like a hot air furnace or AC. The window screens will need at least annual cleaning.
The outside car versions require a passenger in that seat to periodically pull a cord that spins the evaporating pads, which are in a cylinder shape, dipping them in the water. The unit doesn’t have any electric power. And you have to be going highway speed. Better than melting in the car when it’s 110 F out.
Good info. We never saw these in the eastern half of the country, due to the humidity here, of course. In my part of the country, we just made do with the car’s built-in ventilation system, which was SO much better than what has been offered in recent years.
Big fresh air vents in the kick panels, vent windows and partially lowered rear windows for air exhaust, and car travel was fairly tolerable at speed on the highway on all but the hottest of days. In my convertible, I used to zip out the rear window for some real flow-through ventilation.
At some point, the take-rate on a/c (and the added profit from selling it) merged the ventilation system into the blower-driven system that has always suffered from heat-soak from the heater core, making the “vent” setting on most cars less than useless. I feel sorry for folks with non-functioning a/c on old cars today – a very unpleasant situation that is much worse than we had it when I was a kid. Maybe these swamp coolers could make a comeback.
My ’65 Riviera was old school and well optioned with AC among other things. In a sense, it had everything – all the traditional non AC coolers as well. The vents in the front footwells and the little swing vents in the doors allowed in a fairly controlled air flow, and if you opened the power rear windows just an inch or so, the flow through was very good. I can see how folks survived without AC in those cars.
It is also interesting that the take rate on power windows exceeded AC for the first dozen years or so of AC. PW were about $200, where AC was about $600. The ventilation help from PWs were a relative bargain.
I agree that the vent setting on in dash AC integrated cars has always been fairly worthless. As you said, it seems to soak up some heat from somewhere and is worse than leaving it off. Helpful maybe on a rather cool spring day, but no help in real heat.
I have always believed that to removal of kick panel vents and vent windows was a scam to sell more air conditioned cars. “Astro-Ventilation” my rear – I want my vent windows back.
Besides I learned in high school that speeds above about 30 MPH in my Chevelle would allow enough air flow to cause my girlfriend’s skirt to slowly inch up her legs without her really noticing…try that with your “vent” setting on the HVAC controls.
Ah, youth.
Like most conspiracy theories that one is nonsense. Car AC got better and cheaper over the years by multiples. It allows driving on interstates in quiet comfort instead of being loudly buffeted by hot air. Even by the 1960’s in the Southwest no one would buy a new car without it, even if correcting for inflation it was a $3-4000 option. Those kick panel vents weren’t powered. The dashboard ones are. Vent windows weren’t needed and like anything else without value got eliminated. It’s how capitalism works. Including something that no one really cares about any more on your product that makes it cost more than the competition isn’t what happens. The % of smokers also went way down. So goodbye vent windows and four ashtrays.
Now there’s an interesting question, what was the last car with both A/C and a separate vent system. I’ve seen such in a ’68 Ford (and yes it has the factory in-dash A/C, not the hang-on dealer installed system that I think you could still also get at the time).
My grandparent’s were solidly middle class and had a few bucks for some things. They were solid mid price buyers, but apparently AC was not a high enough priority for them (and too expensive) until the late 1960’s. My mom reported them as having one of these swamp coolers. Probably not effective in relatively humid central Iowa, but they did at least one epic trip to California around 1956 and it was put to use. My mom was not a big advocate, and said it tended to spray water at you.
I used to see these often when I was growing up here. Nowadays, I only see them at car shows. I have no idea whether they were effective.
There was another item often seen even into the 70s: the Desert water bag hanging in front of the grille. (Desert was the brand of the bag.) It was made of tightly-woven burlap; after it was filled with water, the burlap would absorb some of it and cool the contents through evaporation. I see these occasionally at car shows; they were once ubiquitous.
There was another kind of evaporative cooler for cars and trucks; it looked a bit like an aftermarket air-conditioner, but larger, and sat on top of the transmission hump. The basics were there: a pad moistened with water from the tank in the unit, and a blower to force air through the pad, thus cooling the air. It drew power through the cigarette lighter. We had one in the early 60s, but I don’t remember if it was at all useful. Again, I sometimes see these at car shows. I’ve attached a picture of one of these.
A lot of us who live in the drier areas of the Southwest still rely on evaporative coolers for our homes. (A/C rules in cars now!) The same principles are at work: A pump recirculates water over and through an absorbent medium, while a blower draws air through the medium and sends the cool air through the house ductwork. When the relative humidity is below, say, 10 percent, the results are really, really good. When it’s that dry, we can keep the house at 76 degrees even when it’s over 100 degrees outside. When the humidity creeps upward, though, the cooler is less effective. We expect that to happen by this weekend, as the Mexican monsoon makes its annual push into the Southwest. Then it will be time for those of us who also have A/C to switch over and watch our electric bills climb….
Hey, I drove cross country with an antique water bag in ’95. A great-aunt had used it driving west sixty-ish years earlier. We triumphantly filled it with some Pacific water, not that it was much use on the beak of a ’71 Catalina.
I have an auto ‘air cooler’, just like the one in the picture below.
It was used maybe 3, or four times – when my Father & I went hunting in the ‘Sierras’. out ‘Family’ car was a 1963 ford galaxie 500.
It is a Craftsmen brand, and has ‘legs’ adjustable for different size ‘tunnels”
(American V8 rear wheel drive). I have a 1990 Honda Prelude, I’ve replaced all
(AC)components except the ‘condenser’, (which has been discontinued, until),
I am either going to use it – Prelude much less interior area than our ‘Galaxie. 500’.
It was always stored in the box it came inthe box it came in until this past March.
When the box had gotten some ‘dry rot’, and was falling apart.
For the ‘right price’, I would consider selling it. Otherwise I’ll use it in my Honda.
I believe it to be in (at least)) as good condition, as the one seen in your photo.
Am I mistaken or is the photo cooler an old ‘option’ from Pontiac?
The cooler does have some sentimental value, and I would be just as happy using it in the ‘Prelude’. So I will not entertain any ‘low ball’ offers.Ken
It is located at my house in Daly City Ca. (San Francisco)
My direct line is 415-706-9542
Well that is gonna hurt your fuel economy a bit I bet.
I have AC on my current vehicle, but had to apply belt dressing since the belt would slip if I was driving above 30 with the AC on. What I really need is to tint the windows so the interior stays cooler, but I do not have the money.
These only recently seemed to have made a resurgence with the overdone restoration crowd. The funny thing is I’ve been seeing them here, in the Chicago area at cruise nights lately! Because a swamp cooler is so realistic in a climate with 9 months of bitter cold and 3 months of ludicrous humidity lol
I’ve lived in swamp cooled/Central AC/and no cooling of any kind houses here in NM. I enjoyed the moisturizing benefits of swamp coolers but god forbid you are at the mercy of a landlord who you have to count on to change the pads. By the time I moved out of my last swamp cooled place the cooler was nearly useless from having the pad clogged up with calcium and lime.
The new construction with central air that I’m currently in uses far less electricity than most modern swamp coolers and has the benefit of lower maintenance.
The great debate raging through the southwest for the past few years has been environmental impact of swap coolers vs AC units. Depleting precious water supplies or adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere at the power plant? A few cites have even incentivized swamp cooler removal by giving credits on your water bill to switch to AC.
I know of at least one more of these in the Portland area, on a 1951 “bathtub” Nash.
I see swamp coolers on older houses in the Bend area where the dry climate makes them more useful, so I suspect they may also be more common on classic cars east of the Cascades as well.
My dad had a “bathtub” Nash, (we used to call it “The Big Yellow Nash”), and he always bragged about his “four, fifty-five” air conditioner. Four windows down , fifty-five miles an hour.
Didn’t Legionnaire’s Disease originate in a wet A/C unit?
Yes, which is why you have to maintain them and some put a tablespoon of bleach in their units a few times a year.
I believe it originated in the cooling water tower of a commercial unit. It wouldn’t have been a swamp cooler but your point is well taken because it could happen. The biggest difference I see is that a water cooling tower continues to recycle water. IIRC with a cooling tower system cools another refrigerant which is why it took them a spell to find the source of the disease. It isn’t the same but I can see a reason for concern unless steps are taken. For my mom I always cleaned, then changed, the pads. As mentioned elsewhere, a swamp cooler uses a lot because it uses it one time. Much safer but not as economical.
Used to see these all the time but not much any more. When a fluid evaporates it loses heat. Simple rule and it works unless it is so humid that it makes things miserable. My mom used this till she died. SW Kansas.
There is one place you see them frequently everywhere I have been. Look at the top of restaurants. Swamp coolers provide the makeup air when there is a big vent exhaust over the grill or pizza oven. Nobody has to use this but humidity isn’t much of a factor in the dry heat of a pizzeria or burger joint. There are a lot of ways to cool your home and some are almost free if the choice is made at the right time. As easy and low cost as refrigerated AC systems have become in cars it’s easy to see why these have disappeared. Where this was really popular was with the old beetles.
Excellent find. Haven’t seen one in years.
Never saw any car swamp coolers back in the day. Did see a lot of waterbags on cars.
Holden sold a waterbag holder as a dealer installed accessory. Here’s a scan, along with other eyecandy to add your new HD Holden.
I was just thinking that. I never saw them on cars in Victoria or southern NSW back in the fifties or sixties, though when we lived near the Murray a lot of houses had evaporative cooling. But waterbags, yes. It seemed almost every second car in the country areas had one!
Having been born in the 1970s and from Pennsylvania, these things are con ompletely foriegn to me. I have only recently heard about the existance of the swamp cooler from watching a show about restoration of cars in the southwest. Sounds like a simple and effective solution to me, though it would be completley ineffective in the summer here. Cool find on a cool truck! Pardon the pun…
A swamp cooler is kind of like Communism: it works well in theory!
The swamp cooler I can understand in principle. though having lived all my life in the humid Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, I’ve only ever seen one and that was at a car show, probably just for effect. But I’m still confused on the water bag. Was the idea that the cooling effect from the damp bag cooled down the air flowing around it, coming into your engine? Or was the purpose so you’d have a bag of chilled drinking water when you stopped? Perhaps a stupid question but I can see it being either.
It was for cool drinking water.
It was also used as a source of radiator water on long desert trips, as overheated radiators were not uncommon. Of course a jug of water in the trunk would have served the same purpose, but I wasn’t prepared to argue with my father.
I’d never heard of the swamp cooler until I moved to SoCal in 72. That summer before graduate school, I stayed with my great aunt and uncle in Ojai where summer days are in the upper 90’s and nights in the 60’s. Their house had a swamp cooler that worked amazingly well in this dry climate; the house would become comfortable within a short time of turning it on as the afternoon heat was at its most intense (at night, the mountain air made it cool and comfortable for sleeping).
I started seeing the auto version at car shows years ago and as someone mentioned above, along with continental kits, spotlights, etc., they are showing up more and more as folks pile on the accessories in their restored cars.
I used to see these in the STL area, of all places, one of the most miserable places to live in the Midwest as far as humidity is concerned, far worse than Cincinnati, and it’s no picnic here!
Our barracks at Beale AFB in NoCal back in the 60s & at least ’til I left the air force in 1973 were swamp-cooled. They worked very well. Many homes were swamp-cooled, too.
Thing is, you need to keep the unit clean, like Principal Dan said above, as the air will tend to smell in short order!
Well, you learn something every day.
I’ve read the term (probably on CC) before but never seen one or understood what they are or how they work.
Thanks for the knowledge
I too have only seen these contraptions at car shows. I have never lived in a home or apartment that didn’t have central a/c. I was born in the mid-60s and do remember going to my grandma’s house on a steamy hot day…windows painted shut, screen doors on the front and back open for cross-ventilation, and one little oscillating fan on the floor in the living room. It was like an oven in there, but my grandma seemed immune to it. My rotund aunt, on the other hand, was not amused. I read an article once, attributing some of the increasing obesity in Americans to central a/c…being chubby is not as uncomfortable as it would have been decades ago.
By the way, I agree about STL being almost unbearable in summer…just a smidge hotter and more humid than Cincy…yuck.
You may be on to something about Americans getting fatter due to A/C. I’m not exactly slender myself, whereas my wife is on the slim side. Our 1920’s-era apartment lacks central A/C, making do with 2 window units. And during the warm summer months here in Richmond, she’s often quite comfortable in the evening with the window unit shut off and the room ventilated by a ceiling fan and open transom window, whereas I tend to overheat quickly in the same conditions and turn on the A/C. In short order she complains of being cold. Rinse, repeat.
I suppose that’s a First World Problem… 🙂
(To keep this vehicle related we have the same problem with the non-automatic AC in the Kia. She’ll turn the temperature conrol up after a bit…I turn it back down…she shuts both dashboard vents, I wonder why the vents are shut the next time I’m in the passenger seat…)
Dual-zone, automatic A/C is a good thing…
If Kia had offered it on the Forte Koup, I’d probably have checked that box. Alas, they do not. Or did not on the 2012 model, at least.
The things one misses when practicality tells you to buy an inexpensive new car rather than a used, better-equipped vehicle. I think in the future I may go back to my past behaviour of telling practicality to shove it.
This is why I really miss the Left-Right hvac zones in my 99 T&C. The Mrs. and I could each have our own temp setting blowing on us and life was good.
My grandparents lived in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles and the whole-house swamp cooler worked like a champ on 100 degree summer days. An uncle lived in El Paso, TX and he had three, two for the house and a separate one for the garage. They do work well in the dry southwest!
This bathroom heater was the most common Thermador product, found in most California homes built for about two decades following WWII.
Just like the one I had in my shack in Van Nuys. Built in 1947.
Used a portable swamp cooler and ceiling fans in the SFV. No central AC. And a window AC in the bedroom. Worked well for years.
BTW: the water bag was for if one overheated in the middle of nowhere, not for cooling the interior of the car.
There’s a guy who runs a small business making automotive 12 volt swamp coolers, down in Mesa Az . I drove a non air conditioned bus and used one of his products, and it worked quite well, as long as the humidity was low enough. If you’re driving a non air conditioned vehicle in an area that gets dry summers, check this out . http://www.swampy.net
One in Tucson as well…http://southwest-solar.com/door/
cant figure out how to load the spring on a thermador…Ive seen some with one cord and some with 2 .lease help
There is a guy on Craigslist Northern VA. That makes “swamp-Cooler s. Bet he knows. He has all the parts too
My 42 sporting a 1939 Model Thermador. The early models blocked most of your vision out the passenger window however most roads were only 2 lane back then. As I have been told, the person sitting next to the unit would get splashed with water spray every time the rope was pulled to refresh the unit.
Good afternoon,
I am looking to buy a an air flow as shown on your picture….
Please, may i have more information ….the size,….. is it fit to a Chevrolet 1938?
What is the price?
Contact by phone: Johny at (Louiseville, Qc.), Canada : 1-(819) 228-1666 or
by mail: michelineemond931@Gmail.com
Thank you for your intérest to my question…I am waiting…..your answer.
Front intake had a damper to control air flow
Popular Science November 1940
I’ve always found it fascinating that when you need cool air in the desert you can add water, and if you want cool air in the jungle you need to remove water.
Here is a swamp cooler next to the Captain’s desk in Navigation Plot aboard the USS Hornet. It is the metal box in the back corner. Now how effective it was in the Pacific I have no idea.
Always heard evaporative residential coolers called “mud machines” out in West Texas. On units that were not kept clean (most of them it seems), you could see mud start to crust on the air vents. These things must have had a side effect of helping to build up a good healthy immune system.
I’ve come across many of these, as my sideline occupation includes home renovations and I’m always on the lookout on eBay and craigslist for older high-end kitchen appliances and plumbing fixtures I can use for remodeling jobs. As such, I often search on Thermador, a high-end brand that’s changed hands several times over the years and is now owned by Bosch. Today they mostly make cooking appliances, dishwashers, and refrigeration equipment, but they clearly once had a major business in car and home swamp coolers, air conditioners, and in-wall heaters. I see many of the last three in good condition being sold at nearly give-away prices. Thermador’s other big innovation was the wall oven introduced after WW2, a household cooker divorced from the stovetop burners above it that was mounted at a convenient height and location, often by cutting a hole directly through the bricks. These quickly became popular and imitated enough so that cabinets designed to accommodate them became the norm rather than punching a hole in the wall; nonetheless, the “wall oven” moniker has stuck to this day.
Swamp coolers were never common around the DC area, which isn’t surprising since our summers are as humid as they are hot. Nonetheless, I recall cheap swamp coolers being sold as “portable air conditioners” in the back of the comic books I read as a teen; today, similar adverts are run as clickbait.
Pardon my sarcasm, but the lady in the Thermador kitchen appliances ad really looks as if she is dying to cook! As for the rest of your comments, GREAT! My great-uncle Paul came up to New York in 1951 in his 1950 Dodge Wayfarer with a swamp cooler attached. My brother (11) and I (8) were fascinated. Our Wayfarer did not have such a device. Ahem, we did have, however, RAYCO seat covers, the deluxe steering wheel with horn ring, the deluxe radio and the deluxe heater – much chrome on it.
You might have noticed that mid 1950’s Cadillacs had a wide, deep die cast grille for the cowl vent. My ’56 had two 4 in. by 14 in. cowl flaps that allowed outside air to flow under the dash and kick panel vents. Combine that with two big vent wings on the door and you had plenty of air entering the cabin. Lower the two rear windows, electrically of course, and you could keep the interior of the car pretty cool even if the a/c wasn’t on, or working any more. Earlier models used an air intake behind the grille which had a duct to the heater. Hence the “fresh air heater.”
On the other hand my ’70 Mustang had no vent windows and very poor cowl vents and very little air flow. It was miserable on very hot days.
I’ve noticed that older large cars, as well as modern pick ups, have a wider cabin with the corresponding width roof. This shields the passengers from the sun more effectively. I once took a trip to Tijuana one summer with my two brothers in my Pontiac Astre coupe w/o a/c. The roof was about the size of a card table. There was no way to escape the sun which beat down mercilessly making all of us miserable.
My one story house was built in the 1970’s with a wood shake roof. The house has three sliding glass doors and large windows on all sides. Cross ventilation was quite good. The air in the attic would be vented through the slats and shakes, keeping the wood dry and the house cooler. When we had the roof redone with comp shingles they laid down plywood sheeting with the shingles and the air became trapped in the attic, the sole gable vent and vents in the eaves couldn’t move the air effectively. The house was now much hotter in the Summer, at times reaching 90 degrees without using the a/c, which had been designed for a lighter working load. The a/c was only able to keep the temp down to 80 degrees on the hottest days and it really raised the utility bill.
In the San Jose we can have pretty hot days but much cooler nights. We added a large capacity whole house fan last year. It can vent 2,200 sq. ft. while our house is only 1650 sq. ft. Utilized properly we can cool the house down to 70 -75 degrees most evenings. We run it with the timer for a couple of hours after we go to bed and it can get down below 70 degrees some nights. It uses much less power than our a/c system. (I’m sure we need a new larger unit.) I don’t like it too cool inside, when we are on vacation my Wife likes to set the thermostat down to 65 -68 degrees and freezes me.
The air in the attic would be vented through the slats and shakes, keeping the wood dry and the house cooler.
I doubt you were getting any meaningful airflow through the slats and shakes. There’s too much overlap, otherwise they would leak water in the winter.
When we had the roof redone with comp shingles they laid down plywood sheeting with the shingles and the air became trapped in the attic, the sole gable vent and vents in the eaves couldn’t move the air effectively. The house was now much hotter in the Summer,
What color are your comp shingles? Most likely dark, or even black, like everyone else these days. the worst possible color, of course, as they absorb vastly more heat the darker they are. Wood shakes are light, and they also have some insulation value from the wood itself. The darker the roof, the hotter it gets, and the quicker it wears out, for obvious reasons.
Some of my rentals had older but white comp shingles on them when I got them 23 years ago. I figured I’d have to replace them soon. They’re still on there, and must be some 40 years old. But I did replace two of them that were totally shot, with medium-dark brown shingles, and they’re already showing significant signs of deterioration.
The best way to vent a roof is with vents at the rafter bays, in the soffits, and then a continuous ridge vent, so that cool air comes in at the bottom and the hot air exits at the top, the natural convective current.
Whole house fans are good in climates where it cools at night. And you probably could use more insulation in the attic, which is the most critical place for having it, both to keep cool as well as warm in the winter. That can make a very big difference.
Best item ever added was a power vent in the attic, keeps house cooler. I have full length ridge vent, fully vented soffits, tons of insulation and baffles so air can flow, the fan was the final piece that makes it all work.
I think my next roof will be white and possibly metal. Makes snow management much easier and white has to be cooler.
Growing up in southern Ontario I had never heard of swamp coolers, but in May 1973 a friend who was from India invited me to go with him for his first visit since he came to Canada. We arrived in Delhi in the middle of the summer. I don’t think it dropped much below 40 C at night (104 F). We were staying with his family, and although they had some window air conditioners, electricity was rationed, so they could not run them much. They did however have a “swamp cooler” which ran all day and was very effective until the monsoons arrived along with humidity.
Their cars were Hindustan Ambassadors without air conditioning. It was so hot that if you opened the window it felt like a having a hair dryer blowing in your face. One of his uncles had a rare imported car, a mid 60s Ford Fairlane with AIR-CONDITIONING. It was heaven. When I went back for another visit in the late 70s his grandfather had an Ambassador sir air conditioning. The automobile world is now very different in India.