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wrote:
James \"Cubby\" Culbertson wrote

... In terms of Swamp vs. Refrigerated, well that's a debate.
I live in Albuquerque and the swamp cooler is OK but not great.
The last few years has seen higher than normal humidities
so at night it struggles.

You might try a different configuration with better controls, eg turn
on the swamp to cool recirculated house air when the indoor temp
rises to 80 F and turn on a small exhaust fan when the indoor RH
rises to 65%.

This works in Melbourne Australia...

Few use swamp coolers there.

We tried out your split-cycle swamp cooler idea a couple of nights
ago using a jerry-rigged humidistat using a SHT11 and a computer
to control the exhaust fan, and the brains of a commercial
refrigerative split-cycle system for the swamp cooler. We closed
all the windows (against standard practice with swamp coolers)

Its a ****ed approach with a swamp cooler, nowhere for the
higher humidity that comes out of the cooler to get out of the house.

and ran the swamp cooler to a fixed temp (22C) and the
humidistat to a fixed humidity (65% at your suggestion).
That night it was 28C and 35% outside.

It was very effective. It would shut off for maybe 10 minutes,
then run for 2. the fan didn't always come on, making me
suspect that the vapour was leaking out other ways.

I discussed it in the tearoom the next day (we have our own
little frugal living research group who meet in the tearoom in
csse.monash.edu.au) and people were surprised it worked, but I did
the maths on the whiteboard and they were sold. We then pondered
the idea of a central attrium with a full floor to ceiling waterfall
for cooling and humidiexhaust fans around the perimeter of the
house. Very low power, and everyone liked the idea of a waterfall
in the loungeroom (particularly with adjustable flow/noise rate).