Air Conditioning...

[stevewolverton]

Originally Posted by dylanear

Thanks, I'll check around.

Are you looking for boat inspection hatches?

marine inspection plate | eBay

[Raz]

Lots of clever installations but where does the water go? Raz

[PaulOWindsor]

Hi P : In the case of our portable air conditioner...it has a resevoir (tub) for water inside it & I've actually run it for two full days prior to the float tripping the unit so that it stops.

Anyway, to answer your question...when I decide it's time to expell the water (usually once per day) I turn it off, disconnect the hot air exhaust hose from the back of the unit & wheel it over to the doorway.

I then connect the 3ft plastic hose that came with the unit to the lower of the two water ports & then let the water drain out through the hose that I position under the trailer, away from where we step down.

Once it's drained, off goes the hose, it's wheeled back into place, hot air exhaust pipe is re-connected & air conditioning is rolling again until the next day.

The whole process takes about two minutes form start to finish.

Of course, this solution might not be the best answer for everyone (our trailer is a front dinette model, so everything fits..) but it works so perfectly for us, IMHO solving the air conditioning problem couldn't be easier.

For those that may want to see this in person...the Admiral, the schnauzer & I will have our Trillium at the Bolerama in Long Beach this coming weekend.

Cheers, P.

[RussL]

Originally Posted by dylanear

Great reference photos!

How do you feel getting the cool air intake so close to the hot air out is working? I've considered that sort of install.

For the most part I think it works all right but I was worried about that too so I built a little sheet metal deflector that I can hang between the two rows of vents on the outside. With that in place there is good separation of the intake and exhaust and it does seem to work a bit better.

Originally Posted by P. Raz

Lots of clever installations but where does the water go? Raz

I built a shelf in the closet that is pitched heavily to the outside wall. I then fiberglassed over the shelf and up the walls to make it water tight. I drilled holes at the two outside corners and glued in fittings allowing me to attach tubing that goes down and drains out the wheel well.

Russ

[itlives]

I put mine where the fridge used to be. I replaced the fridge with a more "solar friendly" chest type fridge fridge, (2.8 amp hr. vs. 5.0 amp hr.).

Here's the fridge- an 85 quart Whynter - that 2.8 AH is on 12 volts.

[dylanear]

Originally Posted by stevewolverton

Are you looking for boat inspection hatches?

marine inspection plate | eBay

Well, I want a small, easy to open, easy to seal well when shut, vent for cool air intake. I'm thinking putting it on the rear dinette seat area and then a hole that let's the air from that vent get into the lower closet, and thus into the AC unit. A small 6" ish round vent that could just be simply turned to open it seems nice.

Then there is the matter of a vent/hatch, about 10.5x13" inside diameter to let out the hot air from on the side of the trailer. Ideally something louvered, but something that can be opened so a layer of insulation can be installed for the wet/cold weather.

[dylanear]

Originally Posted by RussL

For the most part I think it works all right but I was worried about that too so I built a little sheet metal deflector that I can hang between the two rows of vents on the outside. With that in place there is good separation of the intake and exhaust and it does seem to work a bit better.



I built a shelf in the closet that is pitched heavily to the outside wall. I then fiberglassed over the shelf and up the walls to make it water tight. I drilled holes at the two outside corners and glued in fittings allowing me to attach tubing that goes down and drains out the wheel well.

Russ

Attachment 48870Attachment 48871

Nice. I may end up with a fiberglassed shelf. But I have a very similar AC unit and from opening it up and looking, I think you could attach a drain hose directly to the the overflow hole. It's complected by the AC design, which is made to pool up some of the condensation and sling it onto the condenser for added cooling. Only when it gets too deep in that area does it overflow out the "drain" hole.

I started a thread on "hacking" the small 5000BTU Frigidaire.
http://www.fiberglassrv.com/forums/f...n-52903-2.html

[sfoss]

Originally Posted by PaulOWindsor

Here are the pictures of my "after market" solution to the problem of getting air conditioning into our Trillium...

Although we can't leave the portable air conditioner in the Trillium when we travel, this works perfectly & it can be almost totally hidden when not in use by simply replacing the screw in caps into the inside & outside ports.

P.

Very nice job on installing that.

[PaulOWindsor]

Group : Could we pls see some more pictures of the air conditioning systems that people are using ??

Considering our heat-wave, this really needs to be discussed !!

Cheers, P.

[Panoz77]

I have a thread describing my window install step by step. Here are some pics. I will also describe my experience. I originally made this to be easily removable, which it was in less than 5 minutes, however I decided to make it more permanent and sealed it up to leave it in. The benefits are it is mounted high, was inexpensive to do, required no extra holes or permanent modification, is a rock solid mount and does the cooling job well. Cost in total for me was around $130 (but since I used gift cards from travel rewards it was all actually free). In my opinion 5K is the minimum size when in an optimum position, I also have small fans to aid in air circulation mounted just above the AC inside. We go in and out of our trailer a lot when camping and this AC still does the job. I can still use my 4 bike rack and I don't mind at all that 1/2 of the rear window is used up, plenty of other windows.

[Bryan L.]

Here is what I did.

Picasa Web Albums - brystheguy - Scamp Air Pic...

[Thomas G.]

Originally Posted by Panoz77

I have a thread describing my window install step by step..............

Nice job keeping it all original, yet getting the AC up where it can work best.