in my part of the country, swamp coolers are used the most. they won't raise the humidity in your house, depending on what the normal humidity is. here, its less than ten percent. if you live in an area that the humidity is above fifty percent, all they will do is move air. swamp coolers are run on a positive pressure system. this means that if you put it in your window, its going to blow a shitload of air, and that air needs to go somewhere. ie, in a typical house, you would leave some of the windows cracked slightly. you can figure for every thousand watts of light, there is a heat affect of about 3500btu's. therefore you need the equal amount or slightly more to maintain the temp in the room. if it was me, i would go purchase a window ac unit that is somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve thousand btu's. you can simply plug it in and let it go. swamps work very well in a very dry climate, but not anywhere where theres humidity. oh, if your running a co2 burner, you will need to upsize the ac unit. oh, the stand alone ac units that you place in a room, do not work very well. stick with the window units.