I'm considering buying a cool my camper air con unit for next year's Spanish trip but just wondered if they were actually any good. Last year we went to Spain in 30C plus heat and despite having four good fans going at full pelt it was still unbearable. If anyone has any first hand experience of a cool my camper it would be great to hear from you.
Cool my camper
- Thread starter Nathan
- Start date
Hello Nathan,
Be warned, the experience most of us have of AC is in cars, There are three four good reasons why the performance of AC in caravans is vastly inferior compared to cars.
The first is the available power to drive the AC unit. In a caravan you are limited to a maximum, of 3.6kw and usually much less as you need to run other equipment such as the fridge, lights and possibly a water heater Most AC manufactures will offer power options of 1, 2 or 3kw so you can match your electrical loading to the available supply. By comparison it will typically be the equivalent to 6 to 10kw depending on the car.
The way AC works is to cool the volume of air in the space being cooled. A large saloon car may have an internal volume of less than 4m3. An MPV/4x4 will probably be less than 6m3 , where as even a small caravan will have a volume of 10m3
Then there is the surface area of the volume collecting solar heat gain, In a car whilst the surface area is less than a caravan, it is less well insulated, so it might collect more heat per m2, but at the same time a car is usually moving so there is a natural cooling by windage. But caravans being stationary are likely to have a greater overall heat gain.
Consequently AC in caravan may be as little as 10% as effective as that found in cars.
Now that's not to say AC doesn't work, yes it can, but you must have a realistic perception of what to expect, especially as the scale of investment you are considering making.
Other factors to consider, is the weight of the unit as it eats into your payload capacity, and the noise it makes. Not only will you hear it inside, others will hear it outside.
Specifically the model you are considering they claim is only 350W. So it much smaller than most. It has separate evaporator and condenser coils connected by flexible pipes. This is fine and it gives may options for many different uses in the caravan or even at home, but only you can work out if the cost vs benefit is worth it or not.
Be warned, the experience most of us have of AC is in cars, There are three four good reasons why the performance of AC in caravans is vastly inferior compared to cars.
The first is the available power to drive the AC unit. In a caravan you are limited to a maximum, of 3.6kw and usually much less as you need to run other equipment such as the fridge, lights and possibly a water heater Most AC manufactures will offer power options of 1, 2 or 3kw so you can match your electrical loading to the available supply. By comparison it will typically be the equivalent to 6 to 10kw depending on the car.
The way AC works is to cool the volume of air in the space being cooled. A large saloon car may have an internal volume of less than 4m3. An MPV/4x4 will probably be less than 6m3 , where as even a small caravan will have a volume of 10m3
Then there is the surface area of the volume collecting solar heat gain, In a car whilst the surface area is less than a caravan, it is less well insulated, so it might collect more heat per m2, but at the same time a car is usually moving so there is a natural cooling by windage. But caravans being stationary are likely to have a greater overall heat gain.
Consequently AC in caravan may be as little as 10% as effective as that found in cars.
Now that's not to say AC doesn't work, yes it can, but you must have a realistic perception of what to expect, especially as the scale of investment you are considering making.
Other factors to consider, is the weight of the unit as it eats into your payload capacity, and the noise it makes. Not only will you hear it inside, others will hear it outside.
Specifically the model you are considering they claim is only 350W. So it much smaller than most. It has separate evaporator and condenser coils connected by flexible pipes. This is fine and it gives may options for many different uses in the caravan or even at home, but only you can work out if the cost vs benefit is worth it or not.
Hi Nathan, As we tend not to go to areas where the temp is not so high normally, when the temp does get up, we have 2, 12 " fans running with wet / damp hand flanels hung over the front of the fans , giving cool air, not as good as a proper AC unit, but on some sites the hookups , maybe 10 amp, and with al the other thiings you have running, are not enough power to run the AC's.But they sell them so should be ok if you have 16 amp power.
EH52ARH said:
The caravan industry sell a lot of add-ons but a lot of them are made just to fleece the unexpecting punter.
Probably cheaper to go somewhere that isn't quite soooooooooo hot.
Young folk love the heat, I stay in the UK for winter because the Goverment gives my wife £200 for heating, almost pays for the gas , if your using Calor,
And surley nobody really rips off caravanners, do they.
Hutch
And surley nobody really rips off caravanners, do they.
Hutch
I am not sure if this is really viable for a caravan but I have a blown air humidifier at home that works by drawing air across a wet sponge, as the water evaporates the latent heat of evaporation is drawn from the surrounding air and hence the air blown out is cool. It keeps my bedroom at home cool over the summer and has the added bonus of not drying out the air like air conditioning coolers do (they dry the air by condensing out any moisture on the evaporator pipes). On the down side if you are in a humid environment in the first place they will make it even more humid which is not what you want really.
saint-spoon said:
Evaporative coolers are bad new in a caravan, as they raise the relative humidity and that can lead to excessive condensation and in warm conditions the ideal breeding ground for bacteria.
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