Under Dinette Air Conditioning in a Truck Camper?

[adamis]

I have teased some pictures and progress updates of this and now I finally have a video to share. This video is actually a cut down portion of a much longer video where I go through all of the mods on my camper (please excuse the odd dialogue because some of the context is missing in this cut down video).

For those just seeing this for the first time, I have been working on removing the roof top Air Conditioning unit from my 2000 Bigfoot camper and replacing it with an under dinette unit I purchased from Aliexpress. I did this upgrade because the old roof top AC unit was HUGE, standing nearly 15" tall and weighed 103lbs. In it's place I was able to add a 100w solar panel bringing my total solar power up to 400w. Initially I was running this AC on my 100AH Battle Born battery and my preliminary testing I was able to run it for close to an hour with plenty of charge left in it. I have since upgraded to 760AH of batteries which should give me 12 to 14 hours of use. The battery upgrade is not mentioned in this portion of the cut down video.

For our use scenario, we live in California and most of our camping temperatures are moderate so we don't need to run the AC all day long. We really wanted to be able to run the AC unit for an hour or two in the evening to cool down the camper before bed time or to run it while at a rest stop to grab some food. Otherwise, we are outside and doing things so we don't need to run the AC all day long. If we ever traveled to the South we would purchase a 1000w generator to run should we find ourselves not close to shore power and needing more run time.

I will release additional snippets of the full list of modifications to my camper in the near future that will show the solar, batteries and other mods in detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBB-md4A9Ds

[StirCrazy]

weird, I have 300AH of battery in the camper and that weighs 48lbs.. how much does a genny weigh? I always thought they would be close to 200lbs for the built in ones..  

[MNtundraRet]

It looks like a good deal. You lowered both the Hight and center of gravity. Better riding for the truck.

Thank you for the useful information.

😊

[adamis]

Thank you. Yes, the lowered height and center of gravity are large factors for wanting to take this project on.

[greenno1]

Rob good job on the AC.

What are you going to do with the existing hole through the roof where the original unit was?

I see you upgraded to 760ahrs of battery capacity.
Did you build your own like I did with the LifePo4 cells?

Im sure you added an inverter in there somewhere for that coffee maker in the AM, what size did you go with?

Max ahr storage capacity is paramount when running off grid.

Good job kid

mike

[adamis]

Dang, had typed up a reply but looks like it didn't get posted. This new platform sucks.

So anyway... an update, I miscalculated on my battery capacity (twice in fact). It is actually 560AH of battery, not the 760AH. I tried to edit my original post but can't find the dang edit button to fix it.

I took about a 9 day trip and everything worked fantastically well. Batteries supported everything I needed. The weather was cool so no need to run the AC on this trip. In short, the upgrades all worked exactly as I had hoped. Will report back for future trips.

As far as the opening, I covered it with a solar panel. I use the non rigid panels and eternabond tape them to the roof. I used double sided tape around the AC opening and then single sided around the perimeter of the skylight itself. This works because my roof is fiberglass (not sure I would do this with a rubber roof).

[StirCrazy]

ya you only have a window that editing is allowed , after a certin period of time the option to edit disapears.