Dawg goes everywhere with us and that means sometimes he has to wait in the car. In the summer a hot car can kill your dog very quickly, so I've gone to great lengths to keep the car cool while we are away. It is not enough for him to avoid lethal temperatures, I want him to be comfortable. I have made cardboard cutouts for my windows and covered them in aluminum foil so that all sun facing windows are blocked. I always look for shaded parking spots if available, and I have a temperature gauge inside the car so I know how warm it got while I was gone. In addition, I use my car's remote start function to run the air conditioner when we leave and will even restart the car if we are taking too long. Three years ago when we got our little bundle of joy, all of that wasn't enough to satisfy me, so I bought a commercial 12v cooler too. Even with just this semi-ineffective add-on, I have never come back to the car to see Dawg breathing with his mouth open - even when it was well over 90 degrees outside.

Fortunately for us, living in Nevada provides very dry air (as low as 1% humidity), and that makes a swamp cooler very effective. So I set out to build my own more effective unit. See the movie above.

The cooler works well. My only complaint is the air flow could be higher. I was trying to find a fan that wouldn't kill my battery. The computer fan pulls 0.2 amps and produces 110CFM. I looked at 7 inch car radiator fans, but they pull nearly 7 amps. They generate 1700+CFM of air flow. If someone sees a 7 inch 12 volt fan that produces more in the neighborhood of 600CFM at say ~2 amps, let me know. I can always upgrade!