Hi, Troy and all who read this!
I saw your video about your solar-powered air conditioning in your RV and I wanted to let you know that the small air gaps you have on the sides of your air conditioning are obviously letting the brand new cold air out and the hot air from the back of the A/C in. All you need to do is put a small piece of cardboard in those cracks from the boxes you get from viewers and it will help at least a little with your cooling issues in the RV.
Using cardboard is a better option if you're planning on moving out of that RV once your tiny house is done. You can obviously use spray foam (I did in my little setup at first) but the issue is that if you ever try to remove it, the foam will try to resist being moved and the sides of the A/C will have pieces of spray foam all over it, which is very difficult to remove. I learned this the hard way and some parts of it still have some dried foam on it because it's very hard to remove. (Using some oil-based things will help a lot in removing it)
Cardboard in the windows won't be too big of a deal until autumn once it starts getting cold. My off-grid playground setup is 100% insulated with recycled cardboard boxes 2~4 layers thick and it still manages to heat and cool well, so being stuck in little parts of a window won't be too big of a deal in my opinion.
Your air conditioner's cooling
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- Posts: 56
- Joined: Sat Nov 02, 2013 9:17 pm
- Location: NW Atlanta
Re: Your air conditioner's cooling
That is a very good idea. Thank you for the tip. I realize I am losing a bit of cold air through there but worse yet is the mosquitoes are somehow finding even the tiniest gaps to come through and get me.
Yes spray foam is very messy if you ever want to move something that was insulated with it.
Yes spray foam is very messy if you ever want to move something that was insulated with it.
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- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat Nov 22, 2014 11:31 pm
Re: Your air conditioner's cooling
Trying to generate enough power from solar or wind to run a A/C unit seems a waste of useful power. being off grid is using the power wisely. now instead of generating 4 to 10 kw of power to run a A/C system, would you be interested in keeping 2 to maybe 4, 6 volt batteries charged in a 24 volt mode that when used in a Peltier Thermoelectric set up, could heat or cool your space using up to 4 amps of power? My friend Alan has built two different sized set up's and is currently using them efficiently. this is my first post in this forum but we are big on off grid projects and we promote open source, we do not charge for this information. if interested let me know. SD.
Re: Your air conditioner's cooling
I dont think a peltier element can cool a home efficiently enough. One peltier uses about 75 watts and you would need a bunch of them (or am I wrong). My AC unit uses 500 watts intermittently.