Air conditioner freezing up question

When we had our fifth wheel the a/c would ice up when we left the fan on auto. This was not all the time only when outside conditions were right for it. Freon was perfect. We just put the fan on high, left the thermostat set where we wanted it and never had a problem again. At night we put it on auto as the a/c never froze up during the night time. I would try that before going to a whole lot of trouble checking things.

Just got back from our second trip. Went back down to Galveston Island. Used the air conditioner almost constantly. Ran it on low fan cold setting at night. never froze up. So I guess what our make ready guy told us was wrong. He also told us that we had to run the refrigerator 48 hours before it got up to full cold. It really only took about 12 hours on both trips to make ice and keep stuff cold. He also never told us that we need to check the water level in the battery so we had an issue with it until I added some distilled water to it.

Sure if it works, it works-and yours may be set up absolutely correctly not to ice up. But be aware the conditions for ice up can be unusual. To be specific, a temperature which is relatively cool but keeps the compressor on for extended times.

Mine will rarely ice up at least partially. When looking into it the anti ice probe was installed in the wrong location on evaporator. These air conditioners, due to compact size and flow patterns do seem to run on the ragged edge of evaporator icing.

Even though yours worked, keep the tips in mind. You may need them someday under an unusual circumstance. If you do experience icing, keep fan speed on high, the filters spotless, and try to set the thermostat set to 72 or more (maybe as high as 75) to cycle the compressor before the ice forms.

tex wardfan wrote:
My trailer has an airxcel 48000 series roof top unit. My question is have any of you, who have this unit, had any problems with the evaporator icing up? I did not need to use the unit on our first trip but I'm sure I will have to on the next. The guy who made our trailer ready and gave us the walk through said we should always run the unit at max cool to keep it from icing up. I read the owners manual for the unit and this doesn't seem correct. It seems like that would make it ice up. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

If you have a wall thermostat you will have a freeze sensor. Very common for the sensor to be poorly installed. Sensor needs to be right up against the evaporator. When ice is detected it will cycle the compressor off. Very simple.

If you want to check the installation just remove the interior trim.

tpi wrote:
Sure if it works, it works-and yours may be set up absolutely correctly not to ice up. But be aware the conditions for ice up can be unusual. To be specific, a temperature which is relatively cool but keeps the compressor on for extended times.

Mine will rarely ice up at least partially. When looking into it the anti ice probe was installed in the wrong location on evaporator. These air conditioners, due to compact size and flow patterns do seem to run on the ragged edge of evaporator icing.

Even though yours worked, keep the tips in mind. You may need them someday under an unusual circumstance. If you do experience icing, keep fan speed on high, the filters spotless, and try to set the thermostat set to 72 or more (maybe as high as 75) to cycle the compressor before the ice forms.

It doesn't have a temperature selector just a knob that goes from blue to red. I set it right in the middle maybe a little to the red and the temperature in the trailer was very comfortable. You cannot hear the compressor cycle because the blower sounds like a jet engine especially on the high cool setting which is the max fan setting. It only has two speeds. Fast and semi fast its not really a low speed fan.

Best you can do with the selector knob is to adjust the setting to cycle the compressor if it seems to have frozen up.

smkettner wrote:
Best you can do with the selector knob is to adjust the setting to cycle the compressor if it seems to have frozen up.

It never froze up. I guess some people like to make ice cubes in their trailers and have theirs set to full cold. we were comfortable with it less than half full cold.