Evaporative cooler problem - Too much humidity!

 Cutting to the chase, I live in the Denver, CO area in a house that
does not have ducts and is heated by hot water heat and cooled (as of
last summer) by a nice, professional installed evaporative cooler.  I
noticed the house felt too humid, especially the basement, most time
last summer.  Same thing this summer.  The other problem is the
negative effect on my guitars from the huge swings in the humidity.
So typically the humidity in my area is between 20-30% on average
during the summer.  During that outside humidity, my home is getting
up to between 60-70%.  Holy smokes!  That's high and I cannot for the
life of me figure out why my house is loading up with that much
humidity.  Anyone else see this with their situation?

Before I go buy a basement dehumidifier unit to at least protect my
gear, what other solutions could I look at?  The guy who installed it
doesn't have answers.  He says it should only add 15% of humidity and
clearly it's blowing past that.  He hasn't come up with any other
answers.  Just shooting this out there before I spend $300-400 on a
portable dehumidifier unit for my basement.

  Mtmartin71 wrote:

Humidity is related to temperature.  You should be able to find a table
that tells you what outside air humidity would be if you brought it
inside and cooled to inside temperature. Central air conditions working
as heat pumps automatically dehumidify air.  I'm not familiar with
evaporative systems, but guess they don't.

Frank

 

I'm confused about what system you have, I haven't seen a "professional
installed evaporative cooler" that "does not have ducts "


Because you are pumping it in there with an evaporative cooler, that's how
they work, they lower the temp by increasing the humidity. Have you tried
leaving a few windows open?


If leaving some windows open doesn't help lower the humidity, then I would
buy an A/C(which is what dehumidifier is anyway, just that the A/C dumps the
heat outside not back inside like the dehumidifier does). I doubt a
dehumidifier would do much to lower humidity in a room cooled by an
evaporative cooler anyway.

 

A dehumidifier with an evaporative cooler is just one thing fighting another.
Get an A/C, which is just a dehumidifier that dumps the heat outside instead of
inside.

 
Replying to a couple here....

I have no ductwork in my house so I have nothing to deliver AC to all
parts of the home.  My swamp cooler is on the roof and one large duct
runs to the main return which is positioned at the end of the hallway
on the top of of a 2-floor/basement setup.  From my understanding of
AC, I could cool the upstairs pretty well, but would it cool the
middle floor?  Basement doesn't matter as it stays cool.

Regarding my current setup, I am opening windows when running the
swamp cooler.  I'm going to try opening up more windows around the
house to improve the flow and see if that takes down the humidity.

One last option I'm considering is buying some climate control cases/
display case for my guitars.  It's going to depend on the costs of
changing out my evap cooler.