Evaporative Air Cooler, 3500CFM 3-in-1 Swamp Cooler with 7.5Gal Water Tank, 120° Oscillation, 3 Speeds 3 Modes, 4 Ice Packs, 12H Timer, Remote, Portable Air Conditioner for Room, Home & Office

I got this unit to go along with a backup solar system I have for when there are summer storms around here. I've been lucky with the storms with the power being out only a couple times during the past three years, and for only two hours at the longest. But there have been people not too far away that were without power for four or five days. And four or five days in the desert heat can be hard, especially with no power or A/C. My A/C unit on my roof is great, but it draws 2000 or 3000 watts, and doesn't work when the power is out. The power company is great, gets right on it when the storms come, but it's very nice to have good backup power. This unit draws 80 Watts max and keeps the place cool if the power is out, using a battery pack and a couple small solar panels.This unit arrived with a damaged lid or top. But after cleaning up the pieces of the broken lid, I put water in it, turned it on and was very pleased with the results. I sent photos of the broken lid to the product support department, and asked them to send me a new lid. They were very nice about the whole damage thing and sent an entire new unit. I repaired the broken lid and now have two of these units.One of the reviews I read about this unit said, "it doesn't cool," which I also thought was the case until I noticed the magic button on the panel that says, "Cooling." The person with the bad review must not have seen that magic button.I'm in the desert were the temp at the moment is 106 degrees F, and sometimes gets as high as 110. My place is small, only 500 sq ft and well insulated. I've been running this unit for two hours and the inside temp is about 87, temp on the unit is reading 84, and that is with no ice packs being used. The 87 degree room temp is not much above the 85 degrees that I normally have set with the regular A/C, and I've noticed no problem with this unit keeping the temp at 85 & below. The regular A/C is only about a year old, very efficient, cost effective and all, but as I said, it doesn't work when the power goes out during a storm. This unit runs great on 80 watts from a battery and solar panels, whether or not the regular power is on.It does naturally bump up the humidity, about double in fact, but that's a small price to pay for such a nice backup system, if the power is out for a few hours or a few days, when I will be much more comfortable than if I were sitting in the dark with a flashlight, in a hot place, and waiting for the power company to do their thing. An easy solution for the high humidity is to open a window or door a little, which will drop the humidity a lot.To save some money I could run this unit all the time at practically no cost by using the solar panels as mentioned, but will probably use it mostly as a backup if the power goes out.As a tip to keep the unit running good, very clean water should always be used, which is the only drawback for me. The desert has a lot of water, but the water is very hard, lots of minerals, which is probably healthy to drink, but not so healthy to put in your swamp cooler, and unless you have a good water softener, you need to use anything but hard tap water. If your tap water is clean, then no problem. I use a water testing meter to check the ppm (Particles Per Million). My hard water here is about 400 ppm. Below 100 ppm should be okay. Clean bottled water will keep this units pump and system in good order, but the bottled water is costly and cumbersome. The hard desert water is too rough on many things. If I were to use this unit a lot I would invest in a good water softener. Or an even more economical solution, if you don't need softer water for your entire house, is an inexpensive faucet-mounted water filter, which you can get for $30.00

I’ve been enjoying this product so much so after the first week of using, I decided to toss the huge box sitting in my room because I’ve been enjoying the cold air produced from this product. I noticed the other day after refilling the tank manually that the water pumping was yellowish, didn’t think much of it as it was a light tinted yellow color, woke up this morning to refill the tank which has become a daily morning routine, and the water at the top was a dark yellow, looks like pee! I decided to drain the remaining water and this is what came out!! After draining I replaced with one bucket of water to see if it would do it again, and it did! The unit is taking my clean water and giving me this!I contacted support they told me they would not replace the unit but will accept a return, I would have to lug around this large product to ups, pay for shipping, labels, and the box, and after the product was received back I would get my refund.What a ridiculous hassle!!! My car isn’t even large enough to fit the product, let alone me carrying this thing down 2 flights of stairs!Not to mention having to go without a ac unit until the refund is fully processed to be able to afford to purchase another!The company should replace this unit completely! & not at my own expense!I have no ac without this thing, it was already an expensive purchase, one I can’t afford to make again during the process of a return.If they would be willing to atleast replace my item prior to a return atleast that would make it easier for me to take the loss.Especially when I see other reviews stating the company replaced their unit free of charge with no return needed.It’s not like I can’t prove what the product is doing.Very disappointed!!!Outside this issue which no one can explain to me, I absolutely love my ac unit, it’s been a life saver for me and my apartment.But I am a single mom, and this entire problem and the process to get a working product is stressing me out!I feel like they should be able to easily just send me a replacement. Especially considering they’ve done exactly that in the past with other customers.Because this is crazy!!! Look at the yellow water! It’s gross and can’t imagine it’s healthy for us!I’m giving a 1 star review based on that!If they would offer a replacement I’d easily go to 10 stars.