swamp cooler is leaking water drops into the air and tunnel

Question

I have a roof mounted swamp/evaporative cooler. It sometimes "leaks" or drips water down from the tunnel, when it is blowing. Sometimes it has little water drops in the air. Sometimes the little water drops spray down onto a nearby wall and get that wet. I don't see any leaks in the supply lines, the water level in the cooler seems normal. Sometimes it is sporadic?

Answer 1

Turns out in this case it was because of "clogged" little holes in the trough of the cooler side, that let the water in. Since they were all clogged in one panel, the water was filling up the trough at the top, then spilling off one side and running down en masse just on the one side. So some of the pad wasn't getting wet at all. Occasionally, the overlarge stream would actually find an errant twig in the pad, sticking out toward the inside, and drip down off that twig. From that point the drips would be sucked into the air and pushed down with the air into the duct. This caused frequent drips ("leaks") dripping down from the tunnel, and occasionally tiny water droplets coming down with the air and hitting the wall, people, etc.

Fix was to watch it while running (be careful with belts), to see where/how the droplets are getting sucked in, and remedy it.

In my case it was to clear out the little slots on the trough so the water flowed down evenly (https://youtu.be/1LHRt8AZg0c?t=76) Working much better now.

Video of occurrence: https://youtu.be/KGXbtVQCxik

Another trick for diagnosing: at night open a side, shine a flashlight, makes it slightly easier to see the droplets flying through the air to ID the issue.

In a second instance, it came from the top, the pads weren't installed all the way to the top so water was kind of "dripping" down a few inches to get to the pad, and in those few inches, some of it was getting sucked into the air. Fix was to move pads up.