3rd A/C Unit

[BusaGuy]

Wondering how hard it would be to get a third unit installed on the bunk end of my camper. Went to the beach this summer and it got HOT in the trailer.

[BusaGuy]

Outside temps around 90 give or take, and the humidity probably 60-70, and it can be sunny or cloudy.

[Lantley]

OP I feel your pain. What is the ambient temps. When your units gets too hot. How hot does it have to be before your current units fail to adequately cool your rig?

[BusaGuy]

I would hope that the money I spent on my forest river product would provide me with plenty of insulation in the floors, walls, and under my white roof. I tried all the tricks.........except for tinting the windows, but nothing seemed to help. I would like a third unit for the extra cooling, but will it void my roof warranty or any other warranty for that matter.

[Halmfamily]

I'll freeze you out of our 40' fiver when running both our 15000 and 13500 BTU
A/C's, and yes this is in 94° heat with zero shade. Set up fiver in driveway over the weekend prepping unit for trip and had to turn bedroom unit off when it was down to 74°. Main A/C is ducted but I had the dealer block off vents to the bedroom so it now only cools the front living room, kitchen and bathroom. Keep bedroom closed when not running bedroom A/C.

[laknox]

I see a lot of MH's with 3, and even 4, A/C units on top, and most of them don't have the same cubic space as the biggest FW's and TH's.

Lyle

[jaycocreek]

If you have the windows for it you would be surprised at how much a cheap window unit helps the roof air. Last year in the high 90's the combination kept our 30ft ball to bumper trailer very comfy in the low 70's..

Doing a test on it today solo without the roof air in direct sunlight. 87 out and 76 in without any foiled windows or doors, just the shades pulled with the indoor/outdoor thermometer in the rear.

Rated 4.8 amp draw and 515 watts on this particular 5k unit that cost less than $100 on special and runs great on my little Honda.

[Cummins12V98]

I would pull the covers and make sure the gasketing is doing it's job keeping hot outside air from getting inside!

I bought gasket kits for the two Dometic Penguins and the difference was amazing. They are very sloppy with their gasket installation at the factory.

[Pop-Pop_C]

We have three 13,500's and it is marginal in a 41' MH. Winnie. (see sig.) in 100* temps.
Have to keep the MCD SHADES down on the wind shield and sunny side.
Have a appoint ment at the factory to get the Ac's cked. Out.

[ependydad]

ddschuman wrote:
Just curious...would a fantastic fan or Maxxfan set to exhaust in the bunk room help pull the air into there to make it more comfortable? I am not sure how that would work but figure someone on this sight would know.

For me- I find that my air conditioners make more condensation inside if I have vents open in exhaust mode. I don't know why.

[bigdon68]

Old-Biscuit wrote:
40' 5vr......I'd change out bedroom one to a 15K

I have to agree with OldBiscuit. We have a 40ft. 5'ver with 2, 15K units and it more than does the job. I would swap out the bedroom unit, like we did, for a 15K heat pump. We did the swap for overall height. We were 13'8" with the original unit.

Enjoy the road. We do.

bigdon68

[travelnutz]

To the OP. Your problem is NOT needing a 3rd A/C unit, it's the very poor ineffective insulation in the RV itself and that's NOT going away. Always wondered, why do people only care about heating or cooling abilities or personal comfort in an RV AFTER they'd already bought the RV? True R-values really do mean something! R-20 is a min for an RV white clean roof and R-16 for the floor with having an enclosed and insulated under belly.

50% of the heat loss or transference is thru the roof so it's the best bang for the buck. 25% thru the floor and 25% thru the side walls. One roof and one floor but there's 4 side walls that only account for 25% of thermal loss. The roof is most important followed by the floor with the side walls being the least gain. Most of the sidewall inefficiencies are due to single pane glass and a big help is dual pane windows with white or bright silver reflective surfaces/blinds/shades next to the window to reflect Sun and other radiant heat and rays back out. Also very important is sealing/caulking ALL air leaks as it so cheap and so simmple to do. Who wants an "air heat duct" crack allowing hot air to flow in and making the A/C use much of it's function just to to combat these leaks?

Kindly said: Buy cheap, get cheap, then complain and throw expensive bandaids at it which do not cure the real ills or problems and only marginally mask the real problems.

For instance: We have/nor had any problems keeping our 3 Carriage RV 5th wheels at 70 F with ONE 13,500 A/C cycling (compressor running) less than 50% of the hour in 90+ F temps with high humidity. The RV's were/are 29', 35', and 36' with 2 slides lengths with inside storms on (gives dual glass) and blinds closed on Sun side and all cracks and leaks sealed. Nor do we have any problems keeping our Lance TC's cool and one only had a 7200 btu Polar Cub A/C unit. They ranged in size from 9-1/2' to 11'4".

[ddschuman]

Just curious...would a fantastic fan or Maxxfan set to exhaust in the bunk room help pull the air into there to make it more comfortable? I am not sure how that would work but figure someone on this sight would know.

Also, have you seen the tent in a vent mod? I saw it on this sight and we tried it. It takes longer to cool the trailer down initially because you force all the air through the vents instead of dumping it straight into the living area but the air in the vents comes out much stronger than it did before. Thus it forces more air into other areas of the trailer. It's an easy mod and has really helped us. Since you have a 2nd AC for the BR, you could close vents in the bedroom from the main AC and it will help to force even more air into the bunk room and living area.

One other thing, we were advised from a friend to tint our windows darker. We did and that has helped tremendously when weekend camping (TEXAS...It gets HOT!). The only downfall with the darker tint is it stays a little too gloomy inside the trailer for my liking. We are outside most of the day anyway. I really like natural light. We can still see out all the windows just fine, it's just quite a bit darker inside. It's a toss up...cool vs light...in Texas, cool wins (for us anyway).

[Lantley]

A 3rd A/C is not as crazy as it sounds. I have heard of others that camp in extreme heat adding a 3rd unit. I believe you can order an Open Range 5'er with 3 units from the factory.
I have a 39' fiver and 2 units have been fine. Maybe I just haven't been to a hot enough place yet?!

[RoyB]

You might want to look into one of these portable air conditioners to supplement what you have. 40' trailer sure is big...

WAY too big for me hehe...



Kids went to the VA beach last year with the inlaws who was setups at an electric site on the beach. They had two or three tents setup close by and one of them had something like this google photo using a portable house window unit and some duck tape..



We have done something similar on an extended stay in the woods with our POPUP. Have setup a 8K BTU window unit in our unused tent bed side sticking out the window flap all tapped up with ducj tape. We could run this size with the 2KW Generator when allowed to run the generators there.

Roy Ken