Beer Fermentation Temp

Hey all- I'm getting ready to do my first brew ever and I'm getting a bit OCD about it. My wife's tired of listening to me talk about it, etc...

What's got me all messed up is this: I'm in central Louisiana. Temperature and humidity are high. The ambient temp in my house is around 78-80. It's freaking expensive to cool it to even that level. We live in a house with lots of wide open rooms and central air.

So- given the high humidity of Louisiana, will a swamp cooler work for me? I'm thinking I can put my fermenter in a cooler and change out the ice on a regular schedule AND position it under a ceiling fan. That's about all I can do with the budget I've got.

Thoughts?

Oh, one final variable- I have two young kids who love to explore (ages 2 and 4). They want to check out everything dad's doing. I have visions of them knocking over the fermentor or opening it up to see what's inside. So my options for placing the fermentor are severely limited.

Lots of people use the swamp cooler method to keep their beer at proper temperature. You just have to be up on changing out the frozen bottles as often as needed to maintain your temps. I am TERRIBLE at this, and so I have a chest freezer with a controller. If you can keep up, though, it will be just fine.

It's not as bad as central LA, but north central Florida can be miserable in the summer as well. Even with pretty high humidity, I had no problems keeping a swamp-cooled (ice bath, wet t-shirts, fans) fermenter around 60-65 degrees during fermentation.

If you want to upgrade in the future, without buying a fridge/freezer and controller, I'd suggest the Son of Fermentation chiller (here). It still uses ice jugs to cool but is a bit more precise about it.

Central air should dehumidify your house somewhat. I would expect a swamp cooler setup to work for you in this situation, with some tinkering.