adamis
Nomad II
Joined 9 years ago
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Re: Bigfoot Camper - Mega Upgrades!
Thanks, the vents are actually directional so I have them pointed upwards out of the dinette seat to do about the same thing. I'll be adding some additional airflow up in the ceiling as well once I finish the "ceiling fan" concept. Hopefully this will be enough air circulation to mix the air.Bigfoot Camper - Mega Upgrades!
This has been a long time in the works but I finally have a compilation of many of the upgrades I've done on my Bigfoot Camper. Everything from Solar, Batteries, Stairs, Air Conditioning, Counter Tops, Heater and more. Full disclaimer, this is a LONG video. Check the YouTube description just below the video for chapters in case you want to skip to certain sections. Also, the projects are not entirely complete. The final goal is to do a complete repaint of the interior. That is still on the to-do list but I ran out of gas to keep working on it this year. I'll probably pull it out next year and finish the interior. For now, enjoy what has been done so far!
Re: Under Dinette Air Conditioning in a Truck Camper?
So, to answer the question about what I did with the hole. On the roof with the opening I cleaned everything up then put a layer of double sided tape down then a solar panel on top. On the inside, i added a piece of plywood to give support just in case anyone stepped on to the panel on the roof and not realized there was a hole there. For the future, I will be adding a "ceiling fan" based off of 120mm computer case fans and a fan controller. I had thought about lighting here as well but focused just on the fans. These fans can be very quite yet move a decent amount of air. My goal was to have some air circulation inside the camper. Here are some images to clarify things.Re: Under Dinette Air Conditioning in a Truck Camper?
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).Re: Under Dinette Air Conditioning in a Truck Camper?
The AC unit is 44 lbs. In the full length version of this video I do a break down on the weight savings I managed for all of my projects. I was able to shave off 283lbs off of the camper. I could have saved even more by eliminating the generator but chose to replace the genset with two 380AH batteries in it's place (meaning the weight savings was a wash). If I had just stuck with my single 100AH battle born which could power the AC for over an hour and still eliminated the generator I would have saved over 400lbs of weight.Under Dinette Air Conditioning in a Truck Camper?
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-md4A9DsRe: 12v DC Air Conditioning Conversion Progress
Got an update for you all! The 12v DC under dinnete Air Conditioning conversion is about 90% complete. I'm waiting on a few additional parts but everything is in place, wired up and running. I've done a couple of preliminary tests so far with pretty good results. For my battery I currently have a single 100AH Battle Born battery (that is almost 5 years old at this point). I also have 200w of solar on the roof (that will be expanded to at least 400w and possibly 500w or 600w soon). With a 100AH battery, 200w of solar in late afternoon, with the AC in eco mode, I was able to run the AC for almost an hour and pulled 45AH out of the battery. This would give me close to 2 hours of runtime on a single 100AH battery. I can't complain with that result, it's actually better than I suspected. The AC was in eco-mode so in the video the cool air was only 60+ degrees. It gets colder on non-eco mode but I haven't done complete testing yet. Eco-mode seems to run the compressor less but doesn't necessarily lower the amperage draw when it is running. Amps drawn tend to be around 50 to 60 amps when the compressor is running. I will follow up with more in depth testing once I have everything 100% finished. I have a complete video series I've been recording and will release when the project is complete. Lastly, for those that haven't seen my previous posts, I'm moving the AC off the roof to eliminate the height, weight and gain additional solar capacity. https://photos.app.goo.gl/6vZkmz61FFrKx9Rm7Re: 12v DC Air Conditioning Conversion Progress
Well, there are a couple of factors at play here. Right now I have 200w of power but I'll be adding another 200w and maybe 500w to 600w depending on what the roof looks like when I remove the AC unit. Expanding the battery bank to 200AH or even 400AH isn't out of the question either. Another factor to consider is the duty cycle of the AC unit. It isn't always running the compressor when the AC is running. Once the camper is cooled down it may only run 50% or less of the time. That differential is what will extend the useful run time with a small battery and solar capacity. When at the RV park or campground with hookups, we are going to install a120v AC to 12v DC 100amp converter that will power everything. I am also considering a Honda 1000 for those times when we need more power and can't get hookups or the AC / Battery aren't enough. We live on the West Coast and most of the camping we do is in mostly moderate temperatures. Most of the times we need the AC is if we are stopping for lunch while we drive and that is usually about 30 minutes or so. We haven't traveled parts of the country where full time AC is required and most likely if we do travel to those parts, we will be traveling in something else.
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