Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 4 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Desert air conditioning ~road to Joshua Tree National Park

How do you air condition your house in the summer?  Well, there are a couple of ways.  First, you could have a swamp cooler.  That's not an air conditioner.  It's an evaporative cooler.  Our neighbors behind us have a whole house one and my neighbor to the west has one, too.  They do NOT work when it is humid, however...OR you could have a whole house air conditioner system.  That's what we have.  Fortunately, they work well, but cost A TON!  I always try to shut ours off when it gets below 90 degrees outside.  Or, you could do this:  Just open up your house and let the breeze in!  HA~Hubby and I drove up to Joshua Tree National Park yesterday afternoon after he got off work at noon.  He wanted to get out and try his camera, so off we went.  Unfortunately, I looked over that way and it was raining....hmmm....not a good idea to be out in the desert during a monsoon rainstorm.  But, by the time we got to the park, the storm had moved west and was up in Whitewater Canyon.  There were signs all over the town of Joshua Tree that the storm hit hard.  Billboards were blown over.  One building was ripped apart by winds.  I stopped at the visitor center office to check in and use the bathroom and the ranger there said they got 1/2 inch of rain in 15 minutes.  That's a LOT for an area that only gets about 4 inches a year!!!  Water was running through the streets and tree leaves were scattered all around, but the desert smelled fresh and clean.  Hey, Lisa...remember the two little houses outside the park?  Here's the air conditioning from one of them!!!!  *These little homesteads have been vacant for years.  I posted pics of them last spring, when we went to the park*

2 comments:

lisa said...

That is some air conditioning!!!

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Yes, I do remember those little houses. Such an oddity out there, but kind of cute. Looks like they took a beating from the storm.

We have a whole house swamp cooler here, but thankfully we've not needed to turn it on for the past two years now. We're above 7,000 ft, and without humidity or high temps, we can just leave our windows open, ceilings fans running and let the breezes blow through the cross ventilation.


~Lisa