Katie Cleveland is a die-hard DIYer who created her blog, Addicted2DIY, to share her family’s journey towards making their house a home in Arizona. Four years later, the blog has become very popular with a regular following of folks inspired by her chronicles of woodworking and overall handiwork.
The summer of 2017 started off with particularly brutal heat in Arizona. Multiple heat waves caused excessive heat warnings, danger precautions by municipalities and even shut down airports when the mercury hit 120°F+. Katie’s 2,400 square foot workshop reached 113°F inside and was unbearable. After seeing Portacool’s portable 
evaporative cooling solutions on social media, it was time to see how it would work for her and her shop needs. She chose the Portacool Jetstream™ 250 and had it in the shop by July 3.
“It’s a monster of a machine and transformed my sweltering shop into a much more comfortable place to work,” Katie said. “This is a welcome change after the heat I endured in the workshop during our streak of 120+ degree temps in June. I thought I was going to die out there.”
She deemed the Portacool to be her ‘angel on wheels’ and shared with her readers that the Jetstream 250 is quite a beast, but not so big that it can’t be moved around easily. Even when the 55-gallon reservoir is full of water, Katie and her husband are still able to quickly and easily move it around the shop to wherever they are working and the locking casters keep it positioned exactly where needed. The variable speed fan means that when Katie is working on her side of the shop, she can turn it down to a lower speed and still feel cool, but not have a storm of sawdust blowing all over the place. The evaporative cooling technology means that a constant stream of cool air is blowing. Katie compared it to the feeling you get when you get out of the pool and the breeze is blowing and cooling you off.
Her husband also gets to enjoy the powerful cooling as he uses half of the shop to work on the family’s recreational UTVs (Utility Task Vehicles). Katie says that one of the surprising, but welcome, effects of having the cooling in the shop is that their boys now want to spend more time hanging out with them while they’re doing their work.
“Our new Portacool has made a drastic difference in the temperature of our shop this summer,” says Katie. “Rather than a regular fan feeling like a hair dryer blowing on us, we have constant, cool air keeping us from overheating and making our days out there so much better.”
You can follow Katie’s DIY adventures at http://addicted2diy.com/
