Driver’s A/C for the Bus
Way back in January, Dar spotted a portable air conditioner unit at our local Home Depot. And January is great time to find a good deal on an air conditioner. It was up on a shelf, covered in dust, so she calls me and asks if we could use one of these units in the bus. “How much?”, I ask. “Clearance price is $300,” says she. “Sure!,” say I. When Dar gets home, she informs me that she got it for half off of that price, since it was obviously a used floor model unit when they got the box down, and she talked them into a serious price reduction.
This portable air conditioner unit, like most others I’ve seen, is on wheels, has a reservoir for collecting the condensate, and a rather large diameter hose for exhausting hot air out of a window or more permanent fitting. Our unit is rated for 10,000 BTU, has three fan speeds, and even a dedicated dehumidify-only mode (which we surely don’t need here in the “high desert” of Colorado, but could have used it on more than one occasion whilst beach camping).
Even though the weather didn’t warrant it, we tested the unit out in January to make sure the compressor worked, and the thermostat kicked in and out to hold it at the preset temp. on the LED display. Sure enough, it worked great, and everything was in the package except for the remote control. We now call it, “a $150 remote that we surely would have lost anyway”. We stored the unit in the bus, until last week, when I commenced to install some “fittings” in the bus to dump the discharge heat.
Our intention is to use the unit as a driver’s A/C while we’re driving, and a bedroom A/C while parked. For the driver’s position exhaust outlet, I tapped into the old coach heat and A/C fresh air intake on the driver’s side of the bus. In theory, this should just push the heat right through the grate while we’re underway… we’ll still have to test it in practice.
I simply don’t have such a handy grille in the back of the bus, and I’m reticent to go hacking holes in the side of my bus. So I’m debating whether to cut a hole in the floor and dump the heat into a wheelwell… or just make a plywood cover and hole for our existing R/V vent in the bathroom and run the hose up there when we’re using it. The downside to the “no holes cut” vent option is if it happens to rain while we’re using the vent as an exhaust port, we’ll get water into the hose, possibly into the unit, and certainly into the bus. And with our luck, we’d have a “cats and dogs” storm hit when we either weren’t even in the bus or fast asleep and oblivious to the deluge and the damage.
So… I guess it’s time to cut a big hole in the floor!