Adding a portable AC to a 1 AC MH?

[bclinton]

Has anyone tried adding a smaller portable AC to their RV? If so how and what type did you buy? We are hitting 90 and no shade in ours and it is hard to keep comfortable. I see small 8000 BTU floor model AC's at walmart that appear to need to be ducted to the outside. Was wondering if that is doable or am I just fighting a loosing battle.

[GL1800Rider]

I thought about doing that but there is no good place for us to add the outside vent to a window. We use reflectix, insulated cushions on the ceiling vents, covers on the door window and shower skylight and have Heat Shields on the front windows. Next step is going to be window tint.

Currently in direct sunlight at 95 degrees it will hit 82 inside until the sun goes down.

[bclinton]

Originally Posted by GL1800Rider

I thought about doing that but there is no good place for us to add the outside vent to a window. We use reflectix, insulated cushions on the ceiling vents, covers on the door window and shower skylight and have Heat Shields on the front windows. Next step is going to be window tint.

Currently in direct sunlight at 95 degrees it will hit 82 inside until the sun goes down.

Ya, standing under my vents felt like standing under a heater. I too put 3/4 inch foam board in the cavities. It seems to help.

I went to walmart and picked up a high velocity fan today. It helps but once that sun comes around about 1 pm and hits the camper it struggles.

[rockfordroo]

Originally Posted by bclinton

Has anyone tried adding a smaller portable AC to their RV? If so how and what type did you buy? We are hitting 90 and no shade in ours and it is hard to keep comfortable. I see small 8000 BTU floor model AC's at walmart that appear to need to be ducted to the outside. Was wondering if that is doable or am I just fighting a loosing battle.

You might want to wrap your cold air plenum in Refletix. See Post #2 here:

http://www.forestriverforums.com/for...-ac-42280.html

[mwdilday]

I had considered those but we upgraded the RV before we did it. If you are a 30 amp you might have an issue. You could connect an extension cord to the 20 amp on the power post. If you can find a place to put the vent hose to the outside and 120 volt then then you should be fine.

[rockfordroo]

Originally Posted by mwdilday

I had considered those but we upgraded the RV before we did it. If you are a 30 amp you might have an issue. You could connect an extension cord to the 20 amp on the power post. If you can find a place to put the vent hose to the outside and 120 volt then then you should be fine.

You may also need to route a condensate drain line somewhere.

[mwdilday]

I think some of the newer units don't need a condensate line.

[rockfordroo]

Originally Posted by mwdilday

I think some of the newer units don't need a condensate line.

Could be. Seems you could route it into the hot air vent and discharge it with the hot air.

[mwdilday]

Originally Posted by rockfordroo

Could be. Seems you could route it into the hot air vent and discharge it with the hot air.

They are called self-evaporating.

[rmoore0852]

We use a portable AC to help cool our toy hauler. It does vent out a window, but it's not hard to rig that up. I run a short, heavy gauge extension cord from the power pedestal inside the window to the AC. We only use the portable when we are traveling in the summers, so whatever you do does not need to be a permanent type install.


The new ones do not have a condensate line, they just have a tray at the bottom. Only time I have ever had to empty that tray manually was when we were camping on the beach with very high humidity. Usually the self evaporating feature works very well.



Only negative we have found is that since the AC pulls inside air to cool, the hot exhaust is blown outside. This creates a very slight vacuum in the camper. When people start going in and out a lot (like when i'm cooking outside) that slight vacuum tends to suck in a large "gulp" of hot air every time the door is opened. I normally just make sure that when we are going in and out a lot that the door from the garage to the main living area stays closed. If we are all inside or gone, I open the sliding door to the garage and use a fan to blow the cool air out into the rest of the camper.

[Kaadk]

Never tried one in a MH, trailer or other similar enclosure, but I did have one in my apartment back in my bachelor days. Yes, you get cold air in front of it, but the trade off is you get hotter air on the sides/back. Even venting it outside, it only dumps so much of the heat it generates. I swear it made the overall room hotter than having that window closed and not using it at all, but at least it was cool in front of it when sitting/sleeping on the coach.

[cmalberto]

We have a 2 A/C MH but the same issue. There is no good way for the front AC to keep the front of the MH cool - in fact this is where all the heat comes from in my opinion. So we bought a 10K portable(from Home Depot). It works pretty good - we do find ourselves running all three during the day but we are comfortable 76 degrees right now...It is 93 in the shade - for which we are not in by the way. Since we are a 50 amp, I have the capacity to run off one of the 15 AMP(or whatever it is) 110v plugs, but I was prepared to run an extension cord through my exterior access if I had to.

As far as mounting the exhaust. I put in the drivers side window. I fabricated 2 piles of 3/8 the plywood with the exhaust hole cut in the middle. I added 2 holes on both pieces for the 4 inch bolts to run through. I put wing nuts on the inside to manually tighten/squeeze the 2 pieces of plywood together. I had to add trim on the inside to fill gaps and then put some insulating foam around the edges appropriately to seal off the outside air and dive bombing critters(aka mosquitos).

Other than the time to figure out the window piece, the take down and install is less than 5 minutes.

I do clean the filter ever 2-3 weeks and also drain the water that collects. This seems often enough for which the water has never caused the unit to shut off. So far so good.

I am comfortable now.

[blue daze]

We have a portable unit that we use in our Class C moho.
We place it in between the seats in the cockpit. Had to remove passenger armrest to fit. Used a plastic crate with a wooden lid we made to fit crate. Put sticky shelf liner on top of lid. Placed ac on crate, ran exhaust vent out drivers side window using noodle and pipe insulation to fill gaps. Heavy duty extension cord run thru same window to pedestal. Ours does have to drain, so we run a clear plastic tube from the drain plug to large plastic coffee can on the pass. side floor. Punch a hole for tube on top and tape to hold tube in place. Empty as needed.
When traveling, ac rides in dinette tied to seatbelts and ratchets between child seat anchors.

[GL1800Rider]

Originally Posted by blue daze

We have a portable unit that we use in our Class C moho.
We place it in between the seats in the cockpit. Had to remove passenger armrest to fit. Used a plastic crate with a wooden lid we made to fit crate. Put sticky shelf liner on top of lid. Placed ac on crate, ran exhaust vent out drivers side window using noodle and pipe insulation to fill gaps. Heavy duty extension cord run thru same window to pedestal. Ours does have to drain, so we run a clear plastic tube from the drain plug to large plastic coffee can on the pass. side floor. Punch a hole for tube on top and tape to hold tube in place. Empty as needed.
When traveling, ac rides in dinette tied to seatbelts and ratchets between child seat anchors.

Would love to see a picture or 2 of your set up with the plastic crate. This would be a cheap fix to a hot problem we experience camping in the summer with no shade.

[cmalberto]

Here are a couple of my pics...the second one is the Reflectix that I use to cover the window since the shade cannot be pulled down.

[blue daze]

Here are the pix.

[blue daze]

I lightened the first pic of the AC. The crate is blue, so it’s hard to see and there is a little step down into the cockpit.

[FrankMor]

Consumer Reports just tested portable ACs. They said they do a very poor job, not able to get the room below 80 and they are heavy and not very portable.

Frank