A $10 DIY solution to Improve Our RV's Air Flow System For More Cold Air!

welcome to dude rv i really appreciate you guys stopping by and you got here just in time i've got something fun and exciting for us to check out today if you hear that in the background older cicadas and and when when we hear cicadas here in texas that means it's hot really hot and humid today it's 100 degrees they always tell me the best you can expect from your rv airflow system is about a 20 degree reduction in temperature why is it that my rv doesn't do that 10 maybe maybe 10 degrees lower and if i show up in the middle of the day and then plug in and turn on the air conditioner it never gets it never gets cool in the rv i figured out why it's the rv airflow system it's the way the air moves in the rv and i have i have improved my rv airflow system so let me show you how i did it let's get to it [Music] hey welcome to dude rv i really appreciate you stopping by you got here just in time we're about to do some diy repair work on the rv air system uh man it's hot here in texas and we got to do everything we can to cool things down and i guess youtube uh algorithm knew that because it suggested that i watched this video the other day uh it was a gentleman wait a minute gotta wipe the sweat off my face it was a gentleman that was working on the plenum inside his air conditioner now rv air conditioners are notorious for not being very efficient and part of that's the way they're designed so i'm going to delve a little bit into that and i'm gonna i'm gonna do the dude rv version of that diy thing i'm gonna pop the cover off this air conditioner and we're gonna explore why it's not putting out a whole lot of area now if we were if we open this event we got a lot of air dumped right here that's the dump vent we have a duct system and it doesn't put out that much air surprisingly we actually get more air from that than we do from that and part of the reason is the way this connects and i'll show you that one here in a moment so i'll show you why we don't get much air out of it but for for this test we're i'm going to turn on the fan and i've i got this little anometer a little wind speed meter and i'm gonna i'm gonna show you the the difference i don't know if we're gonna be able to see that on camera or not but i'm gonna i'm gonna do my best if if you can't see it then i'll tell you we're going to turn on just the fan that is high all right so we've got the fan blowing and coming out of the dump right here we get a 13 about 13 mile an hour wind now if we open the other side that's going to drop it drops well not too much it drops down to 12 12 miles per hour wind we close both of those or with both of those open we go over here and you see that we we have like a six mile an hour wind so let's close our dump valve that jumps up to eight eight miles an hour so eight is the number to beat so between seven and eight mile an hour wind coming out of the vents before modification so let's pop this cover off and take a look at what's inside and see what we can do to improve it well now that i have the ac cover off let's take a look and see what it is that we've what i've discovered first thing i noticed is up here this is the duck opening and as you can see in there way in the back it's kind of dark hold on let's light it up fortunately thor installed a splitter if you will that plastic device that kind of divides the airflow but if you look here i've got this big hole going back somewhere and then there's space behind that side as well uh there's no insulation right there which is kind of creating a ripple effect it's not real smooth so and then on this side we got the same thing notice that on this side the black thing is there on this side the black thing is there so it's not really stopping air from going back into that corner so what i'm going to do is fill in these voids and get get it all taped up so it's a smooth airflow and then i'm gonna figure out how to how to split this airstream smoothly because uh some of what i saw on the youtube videos i i don't think will work quite well and i've got the same issues back here you'll notice the black black thing's kind of out of place [Music] there's a big void where there shouldn't be so i'm gonna clean all that up and see what i can do to improve this airflow i almost forgot all right so here's here's what the now i have power tools but since i really want this to be been a beneficial video for anyone if you don't have tools but you've got you got a little bit of craft skills uh this video is for you and if you do have tools this video is for you so the first thing that what the material we're going to be working with to for our ducting it's a craft panel and by this at lowe's it's in the lumber section i found this over actually by sheetrock it's in a box in the aisle and then we're going to use metal tape this is in the hvac department way back by plumbing and since this foam board is it's pretty solid stuff you know it's cuttable with a knife we want to get a nice straight cut and i'm i've found a tool to add this is a this is cobalt this is the lowe's brand this is a three in one folding saw hey that that's rv friendly right there you can put this in your in your tool kit with whatever and if you need to cut some something you've got a metal cutting blade you've got a wood cutting blade i actually think there's three or two wood cutting blades anyway a three in one folding saw that way you'll always have us all with you i'll be cutting that outside because that's going to leave some sawdust all right it's getting hot i better get to work bedroom is done because i didn't show you the bedroom because this was my learning experience so that when i go to the the second air conditioner i look like a professional like i know what i'm doing all right so here here's something else i wanted to address it's the air filter not sure how well it comes through but you see that there's a little bit of of dirt on one end you notice this just on the one side there you go you can see it now very rarely do does dust get on there until that's absolutely completely full and that that's due in part to the way the air conditioner cover is set up what you have is is this is the inner piece and this is the outer piece so the outer piece has downward ducts so you can get that straight down blast on this side we have a channel so this channel is five inches by one inch looking up here the opening for the blower is five and a half by four and a half five and a half by four and a half and that that's five inches by one inch so basically you're you're moving a whole lot of air through your through a big opening and pushing it into a smaller opening so you're choking off your flow and also because you have to have the separation here so this is where the air comes into the plenum like this so the air is being forced into that or it goes out through the ducts over here but basically your air well if you notice this is the the intake the intake is partially blocked here and then partially blocked here so the air doesn't really ever get sucked up through here until this is completely clogged i understand the purpose of the design but it's not a very efficient design for airflow so what i've done is i've i've boxed this up in such a way that it increases the space for here so i'm not going to be using the downward draft i don't need to because man i have got some serious air coming out of those vents now and i'll show you the difference with the meter but when we until when we get to that point we're not to that point yet primarily because amazon has not delivered the air flow meter that's why we're holding off and just doing the one for practice but now the aries stream is split into two and it flows into the ductwork no longer do i actually need those down draft vents because i'm i'm getting enough air coming out of the duct work system now that it actually is it's working the way it's intended to work and i've eliminated that's that plate so the inner plate is gone and i won't be using the down bound graph vents i'll have use of the whole intake side and i'm going to put in better filters so that the air is actually cleaner and all of this will make the ac units last longer all right that's it for the moment stay tuned more to come so the first thing we're going to do now i've already practiced and i've actually already got a cut out here so i kind of know what i'm doing i had to learn first thing i need to do on this one is fix that because that's interrupting the flow of air they just put them in the wrong place it's going to reduce the amount of airflow that i get in to this side but i think it'll work out okay so i'm gonna put a one inch piece of styrofoam here and we'll put an angled piece here rather than telling you i'll just get it all cut out put in place and then i'll show you what we're doing [Music] three of the main pieces cut out let's go inside [Music] okay so i've got our angle pieces in and what i'm going for here is to increase the intake area so that there's more air available for the intake side and then redirect the pressure side into these ducts and so i'm going to i'm manufacturing an angled splitter here and then i've filled in the voids that are causing turbulence on both sides and now i'm going to tape it and seal it that's a strange place for a hole right i'm going to take that up i don't want to make sure all my incoming air goes through the filters so let me do let me do some tape work i got all the tape and most of the tape i got some taping done well this is not the most beautiful tape job but we're not going for a beauty we're we're looking for function over form the reduced a lot of the jacket i'm gonna put one more piece of foam in here on either side because i've got that and i'm gonna kind of fill that void in and then we'll cap it off [Music] we're getting close to the end so i filled in a little bit of void that was here i still have a a little bit of a lip there and a little bit of a lift there but [Music] way better than it was i'm not going for perfection i'm just going for better air cooler air all right i'm gonna close it in there it is all boxed in there we're splitting the air stream i guess all that's left is to pull out the little wind speed monitor see what it does all right we're turned on 12.3 11.9 see what happens when we turn them both on 11.7 i would not say it's fifty percent better but it's forty percent they were at eleven twelve right at 12 on that one yeah we're 15. that's the cool spot instead right there that's it roughly 40 percent more air well right there you always feel so good all right and as you can see we have a whole lot more intake opened up too which means the filters will be easier to keep clean and though they'll be more efficient that way i'll cut back in in a couple days i'll be rv camping taking taking trudy in for some warranty work stay tuned we're talking about the rv air flow system the modifications made we're talking about these modifications that i made to the rv air flow system on both of my air conditioning units so this is the third third campsite since i've made that modification i wanted to give it a real good test so that i could say without without any hesitation whether it was good or bad i'm uh it's great it's not just good it's great it's almost like i have a third air conditioner but check this out according to the dash it's 101 degrees outside 101 and it's very humid here in texas right now it's first of august and check this out so the front air conditioner is showing 82 degrees back air conditioner is showing 76 degrees and i've only had them running for about 30 minutes i just got here just got set up at fairfield lake state park on my way back north no question about it it was worth the time and the 30 dollars i spent to make that that modification so if you actually have a roof mount air conditioning system roof mount with ducts it wouldn't do you any good if you didn't have the duct work it is so worth taking the time and effort to restructure that plenum and open up the airflow the intake and the exhaust it's like i said it's like having a third air conditioner it's getting cold in here hard to believe i'm saying that in my in my rv i've never said that in my rv in in august and july in texas i'm getting cold i think i got to go outside and warm up all right well it works do it all right if this is your first visit to dude rv i really appreciate you stopping by hope you learned something hope there was some value for you if there was please hit the thumbs up and blast me out across your social media i'd be so deeply honored if you'd consider clicking on the subscribe button and for those of you who have been following along thank you it is my honor and for my patrons you rock all right welcome back now you're here stay cool [Music] here [Music] foreign

Channel: Dude RV

Views: 206,533

Keywords: RV Air Flow system, rv air conditioning, rv airflow systems, rv airflow kit, rv ac, rv ac maintenance, rv ac not cooling, rv ac not cooling enough, rv ac not blowing air, rv ac not blowing much air, changing lanes, full time rv, rv living, nomad life, rv life, DIY, how to, rv airflow, air conditioner not blowing cold air, rv a/c upgrade, rv ac upgrade, rv airflow systems dometic, rv airflow hack, rv air conditioner not cooling, rv a/c, rv air conditioner

Id: fbeNiHP8sMc

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2021