Aircon for camping

In what, swag, tent, camper trailer, caravan, fifth wheeler, motor home??
Do you want to run it off mains or generator power?

Have you though about staying home?

A few years ago at a c/p between Rocky and Yeppoon there was a family camping in a tent with a household air con on a stand outside the tent pumping cold air through a special cutout in the tent wall. Camping in comfort. Would work running on a generator as well. Bob

G'day Andrew,
I will be watching this as well, as in Darwin it gets a tad uncomfortable in the Camper Trailer as well at times.

As for the advice of "have you tried staying home" . . . well treat that with the contempt it deserves mate.

JACAR did have 12 volt air con units but had sold out last time I went in there up here, I will take a look again soon and get back to you.

David

depends on space and budget and type i guess.

Saw a guy with an old house 240v air con on his camper trailer. Sat it on the draw bar some how blowing in. i had a good chuckle, then thought it was a top idea to get your monies worth from the rates!

If you have room to throw it on somewhere find a second hand one and it sit losely on board and place it where you need it when you arrive.

Hahahahaha

If you are going to try this, you need to understand that Airconditioning a tent is a silly game.

BUT.....in the corporate market it is commonly done.

Remember there are a couple of thigs that make it especially silly.

First......its a $#@!% tent..that makes it silly for starters.
Secondly.... tents leak..there will be cold air bleep out of every gap leak & seam and flowing thru the fabric....then someone leaves the door open.....oh sorry.....you live in a tent.
Thirdly..tents are exceedingly poorly insulated....even worse they are naturally hot.

SO if you want to do this and make it work anything like effectivly....plan on a BIG ass airconditioner.

One of the venues I work at has an airconditioned corporate Marquay (Bigg ass tent).....to start with it is white which is a big advantage and the rear walls are insulated.......but still they have two huge airconditioning plants for it and if you leave the door open it does not keep up.

Serioulsy think about this.

Have you thaught about fans or evaporative coolers.

OR heading south for the summer.

Cheers

We used to have a big airconditioned tent (11' x 20") that doubled as a portable workshop. A lot of the work we did in there had to be done in a 'controlled environment' as varying humidity doesn't work well with structural epoxy adhesive.

Anyway, during the day the 2.5hp (15Amp plug) aircon would run almost continuously and there would be a steady stream of condensation running out of the drain tube. Over 4L/hour in Malaysia one trip, and I'm glad I wasn't paying for the power. Inside it really just took the edge off but the heat coming through the canvas was more than the poor aircon could keep up with.

Once the sun went down the air con could then keep the temps down to around 22 and started to cycle around 50:50, but would have still been sucking down the power.

I did some running repairs to an air con trailer that the Marines were using on one trip. This thing was about the size of a small caravan, but could pump out some seriously cool/hot air! Their tents were all double skinned, had airlocks to keep the heat/cool in and were designed for the desert or snow.

It can be done if money is no object and I think I would have paid after a few sticky nights in the tropics. A good sleep is worth a lot to me ;-) .

Not air con, but will help keep you cool, Kmart sold a evaporation camping fan last year just fill it with a bag of ice & put the batteries in, it worked great if you can get ice, a couple I travelled with last year had one
Regards

At caravan show melbourne this there was a 12v air con unit approx 300mm cube used very little power but pumped out good cool air company name i think was 12vair

Me thinks shorty has been phishing this easter, this is up there with diff locks on a 6x4 box trailer, good one shorty.

Phil

Hi guys, sorry about the late reply. My internet stuffed up in shark bay and I've just got home. Appologise for the stupid short thread. I was meant to edit it with the flowing stuff.
I have a GIC camper. I realize it isn't greatly insulated and won't work brilliantly. But coral bay had a almost a week of 40deg c days and the nights were really sticky and a bit uncomfortable. I just seen a fellow up there with one, but he left before I could ask him about it. As for the stay home comment. I've just got my wife interested in camping with the trailer and if I can keep her a bit happier it makes my life a bit easier, so who ever posted that can go and piss off. I've camped for years in my swag on my old 75 series cruiser, but I have upgraded slightly to involve the family.
Cheers