Home-Built Cab Complete With "Swamp Cooler"

Home-Built Cab Complete With "Swamp Cooler" TRACTORS Cabs 32-3-34 Gary Wear, Roanoke, Texas, recently sent FARM SHOW photos of the cab and evaporative "swamp cooler" he built for his Deere 5105 48 hp, 2-WD tractor. Both the cab and swamp cooler are painted Deere green and yellow. "I use the tractor in my business doing bush hogging and light earth moving work. The tractor came with a rollbar but no cab and no air conditioner, so I decided to build my own," says Wear. "I call it my æSwamp Deere' and it works great." The swamp cooler measures 17 in. sq. and 31 in. high and mounts on back of the tractor cab. It's powered by the tractor's 12-volt battery. A 12-volt water pump mounts on the back side and a 15-in. dia. fan on front. The bottom half of the unit serves as a reservoir, holding 8 gal. of water. The back side of the unit is covered with metal lath and has an old window screen behind it to keep insects out. Behind the screen is an 8-in. thick layer of water-absorbing Celdex, which is a corrugated cardboard material made for industrial swamp coolers. Water from the reservoir is pumped through a garden hose up to a tray (an old Tupperware dish) with a series of holes drilled into it, which allows the water to be evenly dispersed over the Celdex. The fan then pulls the saturated air into the cab. "It works great and didn't cost much to build. The only new parts I used are the fan and the water pump," says Wear. "Once I start the pump it takes three or four minutes for the Celdex to become saturated, and I can feel the temperature cooling down as it becomes saturated. The water pump and fan motors are connected together so just one switch will turn both of them on at the same time. I mounted the switch on the tractor's dash. "To fill the reservoir I pour water into a 3-in. dia. pvc fill tube with a screw-on cap, located on one side of the unit. A hinged top provides access to the fan and tray. I coated both sides of the plywood with fiberglass in order to make it completely water resistant." Wear used old bed frames to build the cab and added plexiglass windows. The cab is welded onto the tractor frame. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Gary Wear, 529 Main St., Roanoke, Texas 76262 (ph 817 690-4342; weargary@gmail.com).

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