Air Conditioner Test
There has been a lot of posts on this site about AC performance. You see a lot of people saying that you can only expect a 20 degree drop in temperature from your AC. I'm not sure how this story got s...
Forum Discussion
Building on what Old Biscuit said: To cool your rig at all it must be able to provide BTU cooling capacity IN EXCESS of your rig's BTU heat gain from hot outside temperatures. The larger your A/C's cooling capacity is over your rig's heat gain rate, the faster it can cool and the lower it can cool relative to outside temperatures.
Given that this differential is large enough, your A/C can eventually cool your interior to any temperature you might want below the outside temperatures. For example, in our small Class C RV if we idle the main engine to run the Ford cab A/C at full power PLUS start up the generator and run the coach's roof A/C ... we can get the interior to 72 degrees regardless of what's going on outside. (We had to do this once out in the middle of nowhere in scorching Texas Panhandle summer temperatures.)
So the bottom line is that for the most comfortable inside RV temperatures at all outside temperatures, - make sure that your RV's A/C is as large as you can get and afford and make sure that you use all the tricks and tips in these forums to reduce your RV's heat gain from high outside air temperatures.
IMHO most RV's in the U.S. were/are designed, built, and sold with too-small air conditioning capacity. I believe that average summer U.S. temperatures are going to increase over time and I don't want to have to stop summer RV trips or be restricted to only high altitude RV camping just because of easy-to-fix inadequate built-in A/C capacity in the coach.
Given that this differential is large enough, your A/C can eventually cool your interior to any temperature you might want below the outside temperatures. For example, in our small Class C RV if we idle the main engine to run the Ford cab A/C at full power PLUS start up the generator and run the coach's roof A/C ... we can get the interior to 72 degrees regardless of what's going on outside. (We had to do this once out in the middle of nowhere in scorching Texas Panhandle summer temperatures.)
So the bottom line is that for the most comfortable inside RV temperatures at all outside temperatures, - make sure that your RV's A/C is as large as you can get and afford and make sure that you use all the tricks and tips in these forums to reduce your RV's heat gain from high outside air temperatures.
IMHO most RV's in the U.S. were/are designed, built, and sold with too-small air conditioning capacity. I believe that average summer U.S. temperatures are going to increase over time and I don't want to have to stop summer RV trips or be restricted to only high altitude RV camping just because of easy-to-fix inadequate built-in A/C capacity in the coach.
