Question about running the Cabin AC while traveling

Easy way to cool the coach while going down the road is to open one roof vent near the back of the coach. Then turn the truck AC on. The open vent in the rear will pull the cool air thru the coach. Close up the coach and the air has no place to go so will only cool the truck area..

klutchdust wrote:

wbwood wrote:
I think it has been answered numerous times, but we have found that we have not needed to run the house A/C in ours. The dash A/C provides more than enough cool for us. And when I saw us, I'm talking about my wife and daughter sitting at the dinette or on the sofa, the cat hiding somewhere and the dog in the passenger seat. And all of our traveling with the class C has been NC, SC, GA, AL and FL.

I like the dog in the passenger seat part. Funny.

Yeah the wife gets jealous...lol

wbwood wrote:
I think it has been answered numerous times, but we have found that we have not needed to run the house A/C in ours. The dash A/C provides more than enough cool for us. And when I saw us, I'm talking about my wife and daughter sitting at the dinette or on the sofa, the cat hiding somewhere and the dog in the passenger seat. And all of our traveling with the class C has been NC, SC, GA, AL and FL.

I like the dog in the passenger seat part. Funny.

I think it has been answered numerous times, but we have found that we have not needed to run the house A/C in ours. The dash A/C provides more than enough cool for us. And when I saw us, I'm talking about my wife and daughter sitting at the dinette or on the sofa, the cat hiding somewhere and the dog in the passenger seat. And all of our traveling with the class C has been NC, SC, GA, AL and FL.

Jerry_Amerson wrote:
I'm rather new with my RV and this might be a dumb question, but is it alright to run the coach AC while driving or will that run down the batteries?

I know the alternator charges the batteries while you are driving but I'm concerned that the AC will discharge them faster than the alternator can keep up with.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jake

From your post, it seems you might be under the impression that your coach/(house AC ?) will run your off your motor home's engine, through the batteries. As others have pointed out, to power the 120 Volt roof AC, your generator must be running. If you are worried about the cab AC running down your battery, that will not be a problem.

Run it all you want. It will use about 1/2 gallon of fuel an hour, so get fuel before you get to 1/4 tank of gas left, or it will shut down.

Generally, running the dash AC is sufficient for you and your co-pilot. If others in the rear need it, it's OK to run the RV generator to run the roof AC unit while underway. RV generator may consume one gallon of gas per hour and will shut off/run out of gas when your gas tank level falls to about 1/4 full. If you shut off the roof AC, you'll need to wait 10 minutes to restart it. AC Compressor has a delay to prevent damage from restarting too soon.

If you Ac is vented, meaning that it has air ducts to deliver the cold air, try closing off as many vents in areas not being used, like the bedroom and bathroom, and only keep those open nearest the cab area, or areas occupied by passengers. Keep the curtain down too. With the engine and the generator going at the same time, you will never run down your house batteries. I run my generator intermittently when I have the AC going, just to save a little bit of gas and to keep the interior temperature down to a more comfortable level.

It is very much the norm to run the generator and house A/C units when underway...

The coach ac won't run with out a generator, which will keep the batteries charged while running with house AC on. If you mean the chassis ac, it will have no impact other then keeping the chassis battery and house depending on your set up charged. Will not effect battery in a bad way