Mini Air Conditioner

[B_and_D]

I was rummaging around rv.net and discovered this product:

http://www.epinions.com/Fedders_Port...splay_~reviews

Apparently the A/C uses a hose system to vent the heat outside.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of a unit? They're not cheap, but if they work...?

[YWORRYDOG]

We have one, bought it to use in our previous camper. We now have it in the house as it works better there. In the camper, it worked, but would not cool the camper; it would blow cool air if you were in front of it. Remember that if it is blowing the warm air out the hose, it has to take in air to replace it. That means that warm outside air has to come in any way it can.

I looked at your link closer, and see that it is duel hose, that may solve the problem. Just be sure to strap it down good when you move, if it got lose in the TM it is heavy enogh to do a lot of damage.

[countrygirl]

B and D have we one in our home made hunting camper...created from a 17 ft cargo trailer. We vented it outside with a clothes dryer hose kit. We were very pleased with it till it got to be really really hot weather. TM's are well insulated and it might work a lot better in one then it does in our cargo trailer. The only insulation in our cargo trailer is some one inch blue board that we attached to the ceiling.

[countrygirl]

This is in a 17 ft cargo trailer. The pic shows the silver bubble stuff we tried to insulate with at first. It now has the one inch blue board,

[Bill]

Originally Posted by YWORRYDOG

... I looked at your link closer, and see that it is dual hose, that may solve the problem.

Dog, you are exactly right. A dual hose unit should be considered a must. The reason is this.

An air conditioner has two separate parts within it. One part creates the coolness that we want, but in the process of generating this coolness, the other part gets hot. We want the coolness inside, but we want the heat outside, so these two parts must be kept separate.

To do this, the air conditioner has two separate air pathways inside it. In one path, indoor air is taken from the room, blown over the cool surface (the "evaporator"), and returned to the room. In the other path, outdoor air is taken in and blown over the hot surface (the "condensor") and then returned to the outdoors. After passing over the condensor, this air is quite hot, but since we are blowing it outside, we don't care.

In a dual-hose air conditioner, one of the hoses sucks in the outside air, and the other one blows it back out again after has passed over the condensor. But in a single hose unit, there is no source of outdoor air. Instead, air is taken from the room, passed over the condensor, and then blown outside through the single hose. So it is taking air that was just cooled, and heating it up again by blowing it over the condenser and then outside. This doesn't make much sense, and is both ineffective and horribly inefficient. It is also, of course, cheap.

And just to make a bad situation even worse, if you take air from inside the room and blow it outside, that air has to be replaced. And just as you said, it is replaced with warm air from outdoors!

Get a dual hose unit.

Bill

[grill-n-go]

We've got that Fedders 9,000 BTU air conditioner. It works well in a room about 12 x 12 with maybe an 8' ceiling (South Florida Jun-Aug during a power outage). The automatic thermostat actually works.

I used it in our TM on a June weekend with mixed results. To vent it, I cut a piece of plexiglass to the exact shape of a TM window, and made a circular hole where the hose connects and vents directly outside while creating an air tight seal with duct tape on the sides. Top and bottom was snug, wedged between the curtains and the window. I also picked up about 8' of hose at Home Depot so that it could drain without having to think about draining the tank. I ran the hose along floor and out at the seam between the slide out section (2720SL)and the fixed wall.

At night it worked very well. From noon till about 4 PM it was stuggling and I experienced a bit of domestic unrest, DW got a little fed up with the experiment. Humidity was around 90% and temps in the low 90's F, outside. Inside it got around 78 -80, depending on where you were standing.

It's very quiet compared to the roof mounted Coleman. It weight 80 Lbs so it's no fun lugging it into the TM. It takes up precious real estate, which was another reason why DW had it evicted.