Best Air Conditioners? Driving myself crazy.

Duo therm ?? Must be a dometic.
Its been all Colman for 40 yrs, till my current Dometic.
I know they must all cool about the same, (btu wise) but for some reason
this Dometic seems to cool better than all the Colemans.
Doesn't really matter, when its hot, I stay home, but now and then we'll get caught in hot weather, and have to run A/C/gen,....sucks !

reed cundiff wrote:
Depending on size of rig and temperature extremes, a lot of small rigs have gone to split-level air conditioners.

How much more efficient are the "efficient" Dometics. Our 13,500 BTU takes almost 2 kW from our solar/battery suite and we really cannot run more than 4 hours a day.

We pretty much go by MexicoWanderer's advice : north or up in elevation in summer/reverse in winter. It was 105 at son's place in Fort Collins 3 or 4 years ago. We went up to 10,400' near Long Draw Reservoir and it was 38 F at night and 75 F during the day "Just Right!"

Reed and Elaine

Explain what you mean by "Split Level" machines. Doug

Depending on size of rig and temperature extremes, a lot of small rigs have gone to split-level air conditioners.

How much more efficient are the "efficient" Dometics. Our 13,500 BTU takes almost 2 kW from our solar/battery suite and we really cannot run more than 4 hours a day.

We pretty much go by MexicoWanderer's advice : north or up in elevation in summer/reverse in winter. It was 105 at son's place in Fort Collins 3 or 4 years ago. We went up to 10,400' near Long Draw Reservoir and it was 38 F at night and 75 F during the day "Just Right!"

Reed and Elaine

A point- both Dometic and Coleman (RVP) make commercial grade units- the performance is no better, but the construction will typically be heavier all around.

My only reservation with the Atwood is whether it will stick around- the unit itself seems great, with a reasonably long history in Australia. Now that Dometic owns Atwood, I'm not sure what will happen. Otherwise I would recommend the Atwood.

I replaced my Dometic (died in 2 years) with an Atwood. I even had to buy a new control board since I hooked it up wrong and was able to get parts no problem. The unit is much more quiet, the 15k comes with a heat pump too. The fan doesn't turn off (that turns some people off), but goes to such a low speed that it doesn't bother us. Power usage is way better, I can even run it off of a Xantrex Prosine 2000 on my 4 Golf carts for an hour after installing a Hard start cap I had put in the Dometic.

I am not sure how the insides of a Dometic or RVP/Coleman that aren't "builder grade" look, but the Atwood had insulated linesets, the duct insulation appeared much higher quality and better engineered, and it came with two seperate fan motors for the Condensor and blower unlike the Dometic and colemans I've owned/seen.

I did upgrade from a 13.5k btu to a 15k when I bought the Atwood, but I feel it cools better than if I would have just bought a Dometic 15k. No data to back it up though.

Joel

As a snowbird, I like MexicoWanderer's solution.

If it gets too hot move to a cooler location.
If it gets too cold move to a warmer location.

But I'm not sure whether the energy spent moving from location to location is more/less/equal to that spent heating/cooling and staying put.

Probably moving up from the desert to some close-by mountains and return is more energy efficient than moving from Canada to Florida and return.

I replaced mine with the Dometic high efficiency model and it is great. I can easily run it with my Honda 2000 or off a regular 15 amp house plug.

I never thought I'd care about "efficiency" in an RV A/C unit. After all, power's free at nearly all campsites, so why care? It may not matter on a 50A coach with two 15000 units, but it does matter on a 30A with one. I won't replace our Coleman Mach 15000 till it fails, but I got to looking on the RVP (Coleman Brand) site. There ARE high efficiency 13500 units but they don't offer that in 15000.

If you get to places where available AMPS, and of course the related Volts, is an issue, then the current it takes to start an A/C and of course to keep it running can become a point to consider. A "Start Kit" will help it get going, and we have one, but we often trip our 30A service during the day, even practicing "load shedding."

I would be tempted to have all three capable of "hard starting" a true AC killer regardless of brand or type.