Swamp Coolers Are a Cheap AC Alternative for Dry Climates. Here’s What to Know Before You Buy.

Traditional air conditioners—window units, central air, even those clunky portable units with the big unsightly hoses—are great tools for removing the heat from a room. Although using AC does effectively leave you feeling cooler than before, it’s also an energy-intensive process. Air conditioning costs money, and it also leads to a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: All that energy use contributes to global warming, which means we need to use more air conditioning, which uses more energy, which costs more money, and so on forever. And that’s before we even get into the complicated contributions of chemical refrigerants.