Air conditioners ... open windows to cool things down?

MrWizard wrote:
he said the 15amp shore power and his solar are supplying charge to his 'Lithium battery bank

he is running the a/c from inverter power

I assume,, he has a deficit during the day using more power from batteries than is generated, and gets the batteries fully charged overnight ?

That was the concept. I’m actually finding that I charge the batteries slowly during 5-6 hours of the day due to all the solar I have. However, from about 5pm until 8pm I’m loosing my solar and starting to drain batteries at around 40+ah. Then as we retire to the bedroom, I shut down one AC but the bedroom ac runs until about 11pm until temp drop into the low 90s ... seriously it can still be in the 90s at 1am.

Around 3am the power consumption starts to equalize with power I’m receiving from shore power and I start to charge the batteries. I really dream about 50amp RV service or better yet cooler temps but need to finish up a few projects before I can move the beast.

If you guys want to see my setup, search YouTube for rvexodus. I have a series on lithium and solar. Catch episodes 8 or 9. I have since added a second victron. Just haven’t published the video.

Anyhow, the crack a window / turn on a fan makes sense as long as it’s not to the point you are pumping out more cold air and pulling in hotter air. There seems to be a balance. I’ll have to see how much I can improve things. I was excited about 5 deg. It is counter intuitive to open a window when running an AC though :)

Someone asked about humidity. We are around 25% with outside being around 10%. Seems about right.

yillb wrote:

For two, if that is happening, you're likely causing damage, they had to replace the unit because it burnt out the compressor, trying to run 2 ac units on so little power seems to be an expensive problem, at least with the venom they own. I'm not sure how you're turning 15A into enough starting amps, let alone running amps to power nearly 30 amps worth of AC units. If' im not mistaken, two of the three you have are 15k units, they take quite a bit to start, and just a little less to run, that's not including all the others you're using. Though, they don't have solar, so I can't speak to that.
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I have two victron 3000w inverter chargers stacked to provide 6000w continuous and well over that in peak. The victron will take a set amperage from shore power and supplement whatever the load needs using battery power. I have 400ah @24v lithium banks. When the shore power isn’t enough I can kick over 2x Honda eu2000 in parallel for 26a. In addition I have over 2000w of solar. I have enough starting power to kick over 3 ac units but that will run down my batteries after a few hours and really isn’t sustainable. Because the victron matches the input voltage, I see 114v+ on my dads and the Honda’s kick out a beautiful 119.4-119.8v consistently. The victron logs all this detail so it’s real easy to see what’s happening when AC units kick on.

You made me laugh saying that many don’t experience 110+ deg. Yah I guess not. It was 111+ today. That’s just crazy. When I was younger it didn’t seem to bother me. But indeed extreme.

I think you are incorrect in saying more AC units won’t cool it any more. I believe each AC can lower the temps 10-15 deg. Collectively I should be able to drop the temps 30 deg minimum. I could be wrong. I’ve only owned single AC homes and RVs.

Thanks for the response boss. Good to know others experiences.

MrWizard wrote:
he said the 15amp shore power and his solar are supplying charge to his 'Lithium battery bank

he is running the a/c from inverter power

I assume,, he has a deficit during the day using more power from batteries than is generated, and gets the batteries fully charged overnight ?

He's running TWO ac's from the inverter. I don't think it matters how many batteries you have, that's a lot of power. I'm pretty sure he's not even running the compressor, and it's just the fan as someone else pointed out. It happens on our venom toyhauler all the time.

The real solution is to pull 50 amp power to the RV.

Otherwise the air just recirculates so the vent fan may concentrate cool air in one area but in the end is pulling heat in somewhere else. RVs are generally not well sealed. If you have a hot box from driving all day it may help to push some of the hottest air out. Soon you need to just close up and let it work.

he said the 15amp shore power and his solar are supplying charge to his 'Lithium battery bank

he is running the a/c from inverter power

I assume,, he has a deficit during the day using more power from batteries than is generated, and gets the batteries fully charged overnight ?

rvexodus wrote:
Curious, has anyone else experienced this effect?

I offered similar advice just within the past 24hrs to a fellow who posted he was having trouble getting his camper to cool down.

Not only do you allow more air into the camper, you are REMOVING the hottest air from the ceiling with the fan.

Ever notice in your car how the fan in the dash blows more air when you open a rear vent? Or how much faster it cools down on a hot day when you lower the rear windows a bit and have the dash blowing A/C on high?

Get the hottest air out first, provide cooler air to the A/C to further cool, and reduce any inside pressure by allowing a good exhaust while you replace that air with ever cooler air.

Sounds to me like you need a little more info, hopefully I can help.

My father has a venom with three ac's, and this is actually pretty easy to explain why it's happening. Though, it would help if you had a couple more bits of information.

for one, if you're trailer is at 90 degrees with two ac's running, something's wrong, it's 98 today in south texas, and we got theres down to 78. That said, one is on a thermostat, two are knobs on the cooler. The particular one with knobs in the bedroom says it's on, but if you read the manual, it's actually not. Your FAN will run on just 12volts, the compressor will not. Have you actually verified that you're getting cold air out of the actual AC, and the fan isn't just running.

For two, if that is happening, you're likely causing damage, they had to replace the unit because it burnt out the compressor, trying to run 2 ac units on so little power seems to be an expensive problem, at least with the venom they own. I'm not sure how you're turning 15A into enough starting amps, let alone running amps to power nearly 30 amps worth of AC units. If' im not mistaken, two of the three you have are 15k units, they take quite a bit to start, and just a little less to run, that's not including all the others you're using. Though, they don't have solar, so I can't speak to that.

Back to my initial statement though, 90 degrees would be semi expected, if it's actually 110 degrees outside, very few places in the states are actually seeing those temps right now, if you're unlucky enough to get in one, then that's 20 degrees lower than the outside temps. That's about what you can expect, adding another AC won't really change that, these units can only lower the temp by about 20 degrees, it wouldn't matter if you had 100 ac units, if the temperature coming out of them is only 20 degrees lower than the ambient temp, then that's as low as it's going to get, period.

As for why the fans cause it to feel colder, you already nailed that one. At 110 degrees, the static pressure in your cabin is likely extremely high, nauseating almost. It's hard to say for sure, because so few people actually get to expereince such extreme temperatures while in an RV, so what you're seeing is extremely uncommon. Nonetheless though, i think you're right with that one, super hot air is extremely dense, though, depending on the unit, and where the intake is, could stop that. I'm assuming they are all internally inducted, thus using that super hot, likely humid air. I know it's dry outside, but with a 20 degree difference between inside and outside, i'm going to assume your humidity levels are off the charts.

With all of that said, what you're describing isn't all that bad, 20 degrees is decent. I said initially something might be wrong, because it's hard to fathom actual 110 degrees beating down on a big metal box.

Don't forget to take into account the super hot dense air will rise up, so if you're in a small-ish room with a single duct ( like a bathroom ), then you start to push hot air out, you'll feel a noticeable increase in ambient temperature, increase as in, a change, not a literal increase of temperature literally. When you do this on a large scale, the intake can breath more heavily, thus resulting in a higher blower. Unfortunately, with the windows open, you might blow faster, but you likely won't achieve an actual lower temperature, the temperature is static in the sense it's always going to be the same, relative to the ambient temperature outside. so while you can achieve the affects of a cooler trailer, based on logic alone, you can't actually get those, at least nothing that would be worthwhile.