George E. Cawthon wrote:
Tim Killian wrote:
wrote:
I live in Colorado, and am having problems with my evaporative cooler.
After running for about an hour or so, the fan always shuts off, even
though the water pump continues to run. This applies for all settings
(high cool, low cool, high vent, low vent). After resting for an hour
or more it will work as normal.
The fact that the water pump is still running seems to tell me that the
problem is not electrical. Any ideas? is this normal for swamp
coolers?
Any help is much appreciated!
Most coolers have an adjustable pulley on the motor shaft. A good
installer is supposed to set the pulley diameter adjustment so the motor
runs at it's rated current. It sounds like your motor is overloaded and
that is tripping the built-in thermal cutoff. Have somebody who knows
what they're doing go up there and adjust the pulley for the proper
loading.
Yes the motor is overloaded, that's why it gets
hot and shuts off. But if it has been working ok
before, it has nothing to do with the pulley.
I live in New Mexico and have a similar problem. Just this season, when
the fan is on "high" (I only have 2 settings), it will all of the
sudden slow down to low (for 5-30 seconds) and then speed back up again
to high. This has never happened before and I have lived in the house
for 3 summers. I do the maintenance myself, but I didn't notice
anything untoward when I was setting up the cooler this spring. It
sounds like it might be the motor and/or bearings? But how do I find
out? And is it easy to replace the motor? Thanks!!