>The thing I've seen is attached either to the driver's side or the
>passenger's side window, and is a metal cylinder.  One fills it
>with either water or water and ice, and it cools by evaporation
>in non-humid climates, and can, I'm told, reduce interior temperatures
>by about 20 degrees F.  They were made by companies like Firestone
>here in the us in the 40s or so, and are now speciality items
>seen at swap meets, etc, and VERY expensive.  I've been quoted
>prices as high as $350, which I of course refused to pay.  I
>AM curious about these water bags, or soaked canvas things.  Does
>someone care to make an ascii?
>
>/martha

There are two things being mentioned in this exchange:

1) the swamp cooler (i.e. evaporative cooler) accurately described by
Martha above, and

2) the desert water bag, made of burlap, shaped like a 5 kg bag of rice,
with a handy rope to attach it to the front bumper. Soak it in water, fill
it, and drive fast on a hot day in low humidity: evaporation takes place
and cools the water inside the bag. Not unlike the canvas covers for GI
canteens.

The first mentioned worked okay at best, but only in low low humidity (like
Tucson, where much of the housing is cooled by similar devices). Car air
conditioning is infinitely superior. I doubt that one of those suckers
would do much to cool a vanagon; certainly a white paint job would do as
much good.

Neil Wigley

Neil Wigley
U of Windsor
<wigley@server.uwindsor.ca>