A common home improvement around Tucson is to upgrade the cooling system from an evaporative cooler to an air conditioner, especially on some of the older Tucson homes. I’ve got a couple good references for A/C guys, if you’re shopping around.
Many times, my preferred A/C people will bring it up and recommend it, but not every person thinks about it - it’s usually a good idea to change out the air registers when you change the cooling system in the house, especially if the registers look like this:
Okay, that’s just gross. Don’t ask me where I took that photo, but know that I washed my hands after leaving that one.
Back to the air registers.
It’s not just an aesthetic issue. See those louvers that are horizontal behind the main vertical louvers in that picture? Most swamp cooler air registers don’t have those. Those are the louvers that let you control the amount of air that comes out so you can balance the air flow. With a swamp cooler, you don’t need those. With an A/C, you do.
If you do want to change out your air registers and you’ve got one of those classic 1950’s Central Tucson homes, I can save you a little trouble right now: the register sizes in those houses are no longer typical, and you will not find them at Home Depot or Lowes. Don’t even bother trying. Take your measurements and head straight to where the professionals shop: Airco Products, 748 E 16th St.
As a side note, I found that place to buy oddly shaped air registers by calling several stores and asking if they sold Registers of Unusual Sizes - R.O.U.Ses. If you’re a Princess Bride fan, you’ll get that joke. It still cracks me up.
