Port-A-Cool® Evaporative Coolers

We lease a 2,000 square foot room that we use for fencing year-round. The building dates to the 1860s, and the room has 23-foot ceilings, with very little insulation and only two doors (one personnel door and one 10x10 barn door. In the summer, afternoon and evening temperatures inside our salle often exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures are bad news for fencers due to the amount of protective clothing we wear combined with intense physical activity -- a ready recipe for heat illness.

As you can imagine, bids to air condition this space started at $8,000, with estimated operating costs of $150-300 per month during the summer -- way out of our nonprofit organization's budget. And, our capital investment would end up staying with the building if we ever moved.

An engineer with the Oregon Department of Energy suggested that we research evaporative cooling ("swamp coolers"). Oregon has a reputation for being a humid place, but we learned that modern evaporative coolers are effective at relative humidity levels up to 75%, and that in western Oregon the humidity during hot weather is almost always well below 50%. We also quickly discovered that consumer-grade evaporative cooling was insufficient for the volume of space we had to cool.

Further research led us to Port-A-Cool. We purchased a Port-A-Cool 36" variable speed evaporative cooler (#PAC2K36HPVS).

Not only is the Port-A-Cool unit very effective, it is also very quiet. We can easily teach a class of twelve students with the Port-A-Cool running at nearly full speed and still be heard by our students without having to shout. And to top it all off, the Port-A-Cool unit is extremely inexpensive to operate, as well as portable.

Port-A-Cool units are used, indoors and out, by many professional and collegiate sports teams, as well as in industry. We certainly see why, now that we have one of our own.

If you would like to come in and see our unit in operation, we would be happy to give you a demonstration. Just send us e-mail or call us to set up a time to come in. If you decide to purchase a Port-A-Cool unit from our dealer (Port-A-Cool Sales and Rentals in Escondido, California -- ships nationwide), please mention us as the referring organization and we will receive $50 (which our nonprofit can always use).

We are very pleased with our unit, and we have also been pleased with the service from our dealer.

Port-A-Cool is a registered trademark of General Shelters of Texas, S.B., Ltd.