Portable Air Conditioner in RV

Portable Air Conditioner in RV / Camper / Fifth Wheel / Travel Trailer
00:00 Intro
00:20 Why
02:58 Travel Issues
05:50 Vent Problem
07:10 Vent Fix
11:54 Insulate Hose
13:56 Setup
15:40 Tear Down

So I had a crazy idea for a project in the camper. The Dometic air conditioner does fairly well most of the the time to keep up with the Tennessee heat and humidity, but from time to time it could use a little help. I had thought about adding a second air conditioner for a while now, but the truth is that it wouldn't be that useful. Why you ask? Because I hardly ever go anywhere to stay that offers 50 amp service. Actually, I'm so used to it that when I am at a 50 amp / 30 amp hookup I still connect to the 30 amp hookup most of the time. We really don't need 50 amp service for our power needs, unless we went with the second air conditioner. I am a fan of power management, but I still didn't want to have to look at every single thing we were running. They actually say you can run two air conditioners on 30 amp if you but a micro start system on them, but I figured there had to be a better way. I came up with another way, I'm not sure it's better and only time will tell at this point. I decided to put in a portable air conditioner instead of a second roof mount system. By the way, I'm no professional, and I'm just showing you how I did this myself. If you choose to do something similar after your own research that one is on you. I am showing you some mistakes I made so that that can add to your education about the process though.
Why would I put a portable air conditioner in a camper? Well, I have found a few benefits for this. The first is that it yes it can augment the air conditioning, but I actually got one that also has an electric heater and a dehumidifier built in. In the winter we had always used a ceramic electric heater with a fan behind it to blow the heat around. This mostly takes care of our needs. When we got the new camper, I was very happy that it had an electric fireplace. The fire place is nice, but it really doesn't do as well of a job at heating the entire space as the ceramic heater and the small fan we always used before. So I figure in the winter we can augment the heat as well. I was really stoked about the dehumidifier option as well, but the actual machine that we got, I'm really not sure about because I learned after it was delivered that in order to empty the tank, you have to pull out a plug and attach a hose to drain, you can't just empty a built in bucket. I didn't even think that would be a thing. Initially, I was also thinking that this would be a good option if we had an issue with our air conditioner in the house as well, but the truth of the matter is that I had to permanently install the vent in the camper, but we'll get into that in a minute. I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard to get an extra vent hose though. Also, I had the idea that if I put a 15 amp power inlet in the camper just for this machine, then we could just attach it to the 15 amp plug on the power pole and thus never have to worry about our power intake any different than usual.
What are the cons to installing a portable air conditioner. Well, there were some challenges with this install. The first was covered in another blog post that we had about putting a second power inlet into the camper. Another con, was that the air conditioner was a little larger than I expected. My plan was to remove one of the chairs at the kitchen table and place this air conditioner in its place, leaving the other three chairs. This is still a viable plan, but it was a little bigger than I thought so a chair doesn't fit beside it exceptionally well. You also have to come up with a plan for transport because you don't want a 70 lb air conditioner turning into a canon ball when you are going through the mountains. The hardest part about this is that you can't just put a hook in the luan wall and call it done. Another con with any portable air conditioner is that the hot air that they blow out of the vent can cause radiant heat just from the vent hose because the hose is not vented.
Related Videos:
Adding power inlet to RV-    • Add RV Power Inlet to RV  

Product links-
Duct insulation: https://amzn.to/2RiHJT0
Air Conditioner / heater/ dehumidifier : https://amzn.to/3wHjHkA
Power Inlet: https://amzn.to/3t8jqFu
12 Gauge Extension Cord: https://amzn.to/3t4bmFp

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The music played in this video came from the YouTube audio library:
Steve Adams - "Highway One"
Sound Effects used from Freesound.org

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