Swamp Cooler Repair Las Cruces looks back in history.

Have you ever looked at your swamp cooler on a hot NM day and wondered aloud, “Who comes up with this great stuff?” If so, grab a chilled Texas tea, prop up your feet and sit a spell. Our swamp cooler repair pros have a tale to tell. It starts in Ancient history and ends with that SoBellas Home Services maintained unit you love so much.

You see, back before there were electric powered fans and steel encased HVAC units, humans cooled things down with the aid of rudimentary, evaporative coolers. Most of those coolers consisted of nothing more than large leaves and water-filled pottery. Things went on like that for some time.

However, humans eventually tired of those basic options and started looking for alternatives. Enter one Oscar C. Palmer. He was the brains behind a circa 1900s business in Arizona called the Palmer Radiator Manufacturing Company. As you can well guess, it made car and truck radiators. But that wasn’t all that the business and its owner were known for.

Palmer also created America’s first swamp cooler. It hit the market in 1908. According to A.G. Melendez’s book, The Multicultural Southwest: A Reader, Palmer’s early models did not have a lot of components. Among them were coal, chicken wire, a drip pan and a fan. Thus, many people tried to make their own homemade versions.

There were also companies that cut in on Palmer’s swamp cooler action. A few of them were Polaraire, Wright and Mountainaire. You can read more about them in books like Bob Cunningham’s,The Box That Broke The Barrier: The Swamp Cooler Comes to Southern Arizona.

As you can tell without even reading those books, Palmer’s model was eventually improved upon. However, those improvements did not negate the need for swamp cooler repair and maintenance. That’s where our SoBellas Home Services swamp cooler repair team in Las Cruces can be of great service. To continue learning more about it, please contact us at 915-348-4999.

However, if you are tired of that leaking box of water on your roof, give us a call and ask about converting to refrigerated air conditioning.

Is it time to Convert?

When the New Mexico Summer days begin to reach the 100 degree mark, and are then followed by the annual New Mexico monsoon season rains, the humidity becomes unbearable if you’re coming home to a swamp cooler! The one main nemesis of the evaporative cooler is HUMIDITY! When the humidity rises above 60 percent, swamp coolers become useless for cooling!

So what is there to do when trying to remain comfortable all year long? Make the switch to refrigerated air conditioning!

The first objection people sometimes have is: “It will cost too much money!” We are here to clarify and dispel the myths and truly explain “What does it cost to convert to Refrigerated Air Conditioning?” The two main factors that can affect the cost to convert to A/C are the size of your home and the energy efficiency of the unit.

The square footage of your home will determine the size of unit needed to cool your home; these units are measured in tons (of air). For example, a 1,200 square foot home could use a 2-2.5 ton unit, while a 2,000 square foot home would typically need a 4 ton unit. Since the air handlers usually can’t cover more than about 2,500 square feet, homes larger than that require two units. Two story homes work best when there are two separate units to control the different level because of the rising heat between floors.

The cost for the various unit sizes may vary considerably, based on the SEER rating, the size of the unit as well as the brand of equipment. The SEER rating is an acronym for Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio and is best paralleled to Miles per Gallon on an automobile. The higher the SEER, the more efficient the unit will be on electricity consumption.

When converting to refrigerated air conditioning, it is typical to need to replace the heating system as well as the blower motor in this unit will now become the source of air flow for the air conditioning as well. Therefore is make sense to handle this replacement now rather than later when it will cost much more because of the fact that replacing the unit with a AC coil attached makes the project much more difficult than if it was replaced during the conversion. Also older units don’t have the capacity needed to handle A/C.

Here in the Southwest, a 14 SEER unit is the Federal Department of Energy minimum SEER allowed to be installed; upgrading that to a 16, 17 or higher SEER unit will add cost to the A/C equipment purchase, but will also save you money in energy cost during the unit’s lifetime.

Other factors that may influence the cost of AC conversion are your current electrical capabilities in the home as well as the ductwork in your home. Some homes converting from swamp cooler to refrigerated air will need a panel upgrade to the electrical service to handle the A/C’s energy consumption needs.

The first step in converting a swamp cooler to refrigerated air is an in-depth home evaluation of all the above mentioned components to truly understand what it takes to correctly convert your home to refrigerated air conditioning in compliance with State of New Mexico Mechanical code requirements.

Call SoBellas Home Services for a no cost, home evaluation. We’ve been serving homeowners in Las Cruces New Mexico and surrounding areas for many years, and have built a reputation for quality and honesty. Don’t forget to ask your adviser about our finance special that will allow you to purchase an entire conversion with no money down and interest free financing!

The guys in the yellow booties are here for all your air conditioner repair needs, along with expert swamp cooler conversions. Look to the pros if you have any questions about converting to refrigerated air conditioning with SoBellas Home Services of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Call us with questions like, how much does refrigerated air cost or anything about Las Cruces refrigerated air conversion.

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