Evaporative Cooler Transformer Relay Control Panel, Part Of 21D28-6 Evaporative Cooler Package

Last winter I bought an Ecobee3 with the intention of eventually hooking up my evaporative cooler in addition to the traditional furnace. Research into the matter indicated that it would be fairly simple to make my own controller with some relays and a transformer - not simple enough. A little more research led me to the White Rogers/Emerson control panel 8A18Z-2 which looked like it could do the job, but I couldn't find anybody who had done the job. I emailed Ecobee support about it, and they wouldn't quite commit to an affirmative, but they came close enough that I was willing to give it a try. Today, I gave it a try. I put the control panel (in supplied box) in my heater closet which was directly in line with my traditional cooler in wall switch. I connected the R to Rc, G to G, W to Y1, and Y to Y2. The instructions for the control panel don't explain why I went this route, but the instructions for the included thermostat do (of course I have no use for the included thermostat, but appreciate its inclusion just in case I needed to test). This hookup gives me a two stage cooling device in the Ecobee3. The Ecobee3 looks like it will always start the blower in low, and the control panel takes a couple minutes to pre-wet the pads before turning on the the blower at all. Once the temperature gets too high the Ecobee3 switches to high speed on the blower. If you want to run the blower without the pump you can turn the fan "On" in the Ecobee3, and this will turn the blower on to low. There is no way to run the blower on high without the pump running, and there is no way to run the pump without the blower. A little more play and research may yield a slightly improved feature set, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got.

The thermostat that is matched to this product does not have an actual temperature indication, just a 1,2,3,4,5, indication hard to get used to. I had the exact same control panel existing so it was easy to change out with the new., just changed the guts and didn't have to rerun the electrical. On the old one the transformer failed after 3 years and you cannot change parts on the board you have to buy a new control panel, hopefully the new one lasts longer.