Cooling the Coach Improving the A/C

Sherry can't tolerate high temperatures like I can. But with the continued high temperatures in the area we are staying in, the inside of our coach has reached dangerous levels. This video shows some of the things we've done to improve the cooling of our air conditioner.

Our Alfa See Ya motorhome is 15 years old and the basement Coleman air conditioner is starting to show it's age. I need to take it out and service it, but not right now because it's just too hot to not have it working at all.

The things we've done fall into 2 categories, active cooling and passive cooling.

Active cooling is using things like the air conditioner, and other things that actively change the air temperature in the coach.

Passive cooling is keeping the heat away from the outside of the coach so less heat affects the inside of the coach. A good example would be parking under a shade tree. Or moving the air around so it feels cooler than it is such as with a fan.

The first successful thing we did to block the heat was to put a windshield cover on the front. We did a review of this cover and you can see it by clicking on the link here, or the link in the description below. This helped tremendously, but lately it hasn't been enough.

Sherry suggested we try some shade cloth we got from Home Depot for our easy up. So we attached some to the front door awning. This helped enough to make a difference inside. So I also made a cover for the driver side of the coach that shades the front of the living room slideout and the drivers side of the coach. I sewed these parts together with zip ties so it would have a neater look. This also helped some.

One other thing we did, was to install vent covers over the roof vents, these provide some shade to the roof vent lids. This helped as well but didn't block all of the heat from the vents.

We found that even when the roof vents are closed they were allowing heat to come through. I've seen commercially made pads that fit into the vents to block the heat. But of course I could make these myself first to see if they worked. They do help and since I made these I could customize them for us at the same time.

Even with all of these additions and changes there were times we would be struggling to keep the inside of the coach below 90 F. there was only one thing left to do, add more air conditioning. Alfa had a modification to their motorhomes called the the dessert option. This replaced the front vent with a roof mounted AC unit. I've seen these but they cost a lot more than we could afford at this time. But we could afford a window AC unit.

Video links:

DIY RV Window Changing from Blinds to Shades
   • DIY RV  Changing from Blinds to Wind...  

RV Products We Use Windshield Cover
   • RV Products We Use  Windshield Cover  


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