AC ON SOLAR!!! Installing a Mini Split Air Conditioner on our Class C RV

good morning everyone today we are taking the opportunity to finally work on some of those rv projects that we've been wanting to take care of and the first one we're going to be doing is installing a mini split onto our rv for those who are wondering what a mini split is well it's just an air conditioner there's two parts to it there's an indoor unit that we have here an outdoor unit that i will show you in a minute and a lot of them have the option of a heat pump so that means it will have an air conditioner and an electric heater as well with the system and essentially it's a lot more efficient than a rooftop traditional rv um air conditioning system which is why we're installing one because our hope is to run it off of solar in fact i know we're going to run off of solar because i've done a lot of research so the one that we went with specifically is the cooper and hunter so cnh this is the sofia model it runs on 115 volts or you can say 110 120 it's all the same thing and again that's the sofia series is the one that we have now this particular unit we're gonna we have to have some traditional um hvac equipment which we already have there are other brands out there like mr cool for example that has a do-it-yourself kit where you won't need these hvac tools i'll be using a little bit later basically the same thing it's just one comes it's just easier to do essentially and this one's gonna be a little bit more difficult to do but it's quite a bit cheaper so i'll go ahead and list this in our we bought it off amazon i'll go ahead and list it right in the description of this video the little adapter and i'll go ahead and list the like the do-it-yourself version by mr cool real quick a little info about the mini split when you're looking at them they're just like a regular air conditioner like when you're looking for your rv they're rated in btus like british thermal units and things what that means so if you get a 12 000 or a 16 000 a 16 000 means it can cool a larger space so when you're looking at mini splits this is something you want to do you want to look for one that matches your square footage and you can look online to see you know how many btus do i need for my square footage and so we are going with a 12 000 btu and the other thing that you're really looking for when you're looking for your mini splits is the efficiency rating or like the energy rating like the energy star rating um on mini splits they're called sear so like s-e-e-r and so the higher the seer number the more efficient that it is i want to say this one is like 21. if you're looking for the ones that are like the real cheap local ones you can typically find like a facebook marketplace they're like 15 seer they're not that efficient so if you're going to put this in your rv and you want to try running on solar make sure you're getting one with a high sear rating but enough about that let me kind of show you the indoor unit itself and just show you kind of where it's going to go basically this is the inside unit and there's a mounting bracket on the back and so this metal portion here is clipped into it now it's because it's shipped this way but we need to have to mount this and then this will sit on this metal base so this is what we have to mount somewhere there's also some pipes in here and some refrigerant lines that are going to run outside to the outdoor unit and then there will also be a 120 volt electrical connection one more thing about mini suppose before i forget typically they're because they're sold all over the world a lot of times they're in like 240 volt so you make sure you're looking for one that's 110 115 120 volt like we use here in the us so um basically we're gonna take this cabinet out that's here and this is gonna go into this cabinet so we're gonna cut this cabinet back it will be back in here along the wall and we'll lose this cabinet space right in the middle it's how we're going to do it on our particular coach now we have a lazy days class c motorhome and so i want to put it here so that our piping and stuff will go out this corner the outdoor unit will be on the back bumper and then this will allow the ac to blow all the way down the coach so here is the outdoor unit as you can see it's not really attractive looking this one is see about 30 about three feet you know long by about 15 inches deep and it's about 22 inches tall now they do come in various sizes but they're all typically around this size i'm going to be removing this cover there's nothing behind this it's just a vanity cover it's supposed to look like a spare tire is back there some of the models do have a spare tire back here but our particular model does not before we go cutting that inside cabinet we definitely want to make sure that this unit is going to fit on the back of the bumper and it looks like it's going to fit pretty well we may have to kind of build a rack system or something to hold it in place yeah i already knew that i was going to have to build a rack system on this for these front sides it looks a little funky i guess but not any worse than a bike rack sitting back here with some bicycles and this is going to give us ac off of solar come on like that's totally worth it you know come on all right so we need to take that off so that we can see what we're working with down here yeah i know so the backup camera is just outside this wall like right here and so this is a bunch of wires which go to that backup camera right there luckily i'm only gonna have to trim back to like where this is marked so what i'm gonna do is put a hole back here to run these wires through so we'll have to reconfigure that a little bit it's definitely a little nerve wracking to make these kinds of serious modifications to your rv because you only kind of get one shot [Applause] last minute words concerns advice i'm gonna do this just like i did the uh the couch in our travel trailer where i cut along the seam for those of you who remember that video probably having a chuckle right now so basically i'm gonna cut here i'm gonna cut here and hope for the best i'm gonna cut back to about here and then i'm gonna put a build a brace along this back for the actually to mount on and the brace will tie into these one by ones and stuff in fact so that's the plan there's no turning back now well i didn't get too much done last night but it's turned out pretty good so originally you know this bar came all the way across and there was one support here in the middle now i have a support here and a support there and this actually has metal in it that's a testament to the lazy days build quality right there and there's a bunch of screws all the way down it that screw into this wood into that wood i know because i took out this section here and reused it for that i had to take all the chilean screws out but literally hang on this and ain't going nowhere so i tied a piece in here it's liquid nails down and there's brackets in the corners and then i have a two by four right across attached to the other side here which is the same this is also liquid nails it's really liquid nails uh you know to add some support and also to hold down this underneath section the actual mini split will mount on this um and then these have an l bracket in the rear some really long screws in them and also an aluminum support piece that goes from the back to the front so that way it doesn't you know come forward any so this should be more than heavy enough i think because i can hang on it and the mini split is only like 40 pounds or something i can't remember how much it is but it's not that heavy so should be good to go now i'm gonna put this backer plate on it so you won't see any of this i'm gonna put the floors back in so all that will be covered and then i'm gonna use the extra pieces that i had um to make the side walls here so i can close off these cabinets then i have to remake the door but it's coming along pretty nicely this is what we have done so far thomas has done a phenomenal job with this he is so good at this type of stuff um basically what he wound up doing is this luanne board that was going all the way across he actually cut that and used it to make the cabinet sides and then this little piece of wood i believe was a brace somewhere in here and so he took these and made them the walls of the new cabinets now it's not super perfect right now hopefully after i caulk and paint it will look a lot better but as you can see there's going to be quite a few areas that i need to get caulked up and then this will be smoothed out and then once i paint it should all basically just kind of look like it was always like that always meant to be like that thomas is outside currently he is trying to cut off trim for the cabinets now we cut the cabinet door and so this is going to be the new cabinet door and it will go up there like that and the problem is as you can see this one side doesn't have any trim all right i was able to get the trim pieces i mean they're not definitely not perfect this one always messed up there this one turned out pretty good we'll just put that towards the side towards the wall anyways that you won't see so we'll just have to putty it you know we'll just use some caulking and once it's all painted it'll look just fine so now i need to get these little corners up that's going to be the real challenge as you can see the trim is basically what holds this thing together so i'm going to try to cut it here and just cut out a little triangle so this can fit in here so i need to cut this little triangle so that's what i'm trying to figure out now i have to say i think i did a pretty good job like a surgeon anybody need some surgery now stacy is going ahead and basically putting some caulking in the gaps here just so it looks more cleaner so that way uh when she paints it but i just liquid nails he's on there some clamps and they've been baking in the florida sun so it'll all be painted and everything and i'm also gonna put this section closer to the corner so you really won't even be able to see much of it so here on the inside you can see where all the stuff comes up it was a pain to get this thing all the way up here because it's not very flexible you know it's metal piping so you have to bend it a little bit at a time and be careful about it because it's copper so i got this up here this is the drain pipe and then here's the actual power cord where the mini split interior portion is going to go so i've got all that ready and then once i get all this hooked up i'm going to pull all the excess back so the wires come through there i'll go back in they'll come down in this corner over here and then go back down to that storage bay now on the inside piece the interior portion of the mini split you can see we have a couple connections we have a small refrigerant line a large refrigerant line the drain pipe and then the actual electrical cords go into here and then here on the front is where the actual wires tie in so i'm gonna put those in still and these wires just go through here back and underneath that was definitely a pain to get in but i finally got the interior part of the mini split in now basically this just leaned out and i was able to get to all the stuff behind it so the wires i put those and got this connected the small refrigerant line went to the small one the big one went to the big one and then also the drain pipe comes out which i still need to fish down and i need to tidy up all the the wires and all that stuff but i wanted to connect it in here and then pull my excess outside so we're working on removing the back vanity cover and getting the outside unit onto the braces that we had installed i want to show you the braces we simply went to a welding shop i think it was about seventy dollars an hour plus materials and it cost a hundred bucks for them to do this so here are the braces yeah so basically our bumper is actually metal so they welded directly to it and gave us these extensions so the mini spit feet are beyond this basically and the bumper um but run into a little dilemma with removing this i was hoping i could just take these screws out and it would come right out but it's causing some paint damage right here come to this side you can really see it's gonna it's gonna be nasty damage probably gonna cut these here and just leave the hinge on for now until we go to get it repainted and then we'll take the screws out remove this and have it repainted with them gone [Music] oh we got the mini split installed here on the back bumper got that taken care of turned out really nice i do wish there was some more space behind it so i can get better air flow but instead should you know be able to vent on this side really really well and there is some space back there so hopefully that is enough for it to still work efficiently we just don't have the space to extend it out further i wish we did but we just don't we also had or got our conduit ran so we got that done yesterday and this black one is going to the inside if i could redo this over we already had this three quarter inch flexible conduit laying around i wish we had a half inch and i say that because i could just went straight into a like land which when i went right into this because of the size but unfortunately i had to do a step down so from three quarter i had to basically do some uh figuring out at the parts store um to figure this out and i wanted to point out that our instructions for ours was completely wrong it says that these colors should be um brown gray and black which obviously they're red white and black and green um even the ones up here are not the same color so it took me a little bit to figure that out now luckily you know i know how to do and deal with electricity because we do solar installs for a living on our particular one l is hot and i know there's a red jumper that comes back up and it comes into number one so i know that number one is our hot wire i know that this one is neutral and it's a blue wire that comes over so i know that this is hot this is neutral and so number three will be our communication wire so that's how i wire mine up and then on the inside unit when i go to hook this side up i'm gonna have to just remember essentially how i wired this up um now yours may vary completely that's just how ours worked you know they're all different all these units depending on which brand you get might be completely different so that's just how ours is um and this is not a how to wire up it up or anything like that i just wanted to point out that we had that issue and i had to figure it out um so if you don't know how to deal with electricity make sure you hire a professional because we do not accept any liability this is for entertainment purposes only i'm just showing you a little hurdle that i had to overcome i've already got this wired up so this is the one coming in to actually power it this is the one that goes out to the interior so i've got that all done the conduit which is the one that has our power wire actually runs from here all the way up front into our breaker box and then the refrigerant lines which are right here which are currently just hanging down and then the other cord that goes in is going to go underneath the same spot under the coach comes up right here and then it goes up into here all right so i've got my pipes connected and my pump and everything i'm going to talk about that in a second but i wanted to mention that technically for the warranty you need to have this done by a licensed hvac technician i am not an hvac technician at all i'm not teaching you how to do this it's just me doing it um i just know how to do it from doing it on the jeep what i did was i attached the small line to the small side the big line to the big side pretty easy because it literally it's only way it can go on there i took off these little caps that were here on the end because there are some allen keys in there we'll need to release the freon in a little bit and then i took off the service port right here which has a schrader valve on it it looks kind of like a tire valve so you need this adapter right here i'll put a link in the description on amazon to pick up one of these adapters it wasn't too expensive and then you'll need a gauge set an hvac gauge set and an hvac pump so you can rent these by rent i mean you pay a deposit to your local auto parts store and you get them for free when you return them you know without any damage you get your deposit back so don't cost you anything to get them or you can simply buy them luckily stacy's mom just owns them now the way it's hooked up is on the service port of the mini split on the outside part i have the adapter going to the blue line the blue is going over into the low side on my gauges right here technically it could be on either side it doesn't make any difference but just choose a sign and close the valve and the other one so since i'm not using the high side i have this completely closed so there's no air leaks but the blue goes into the blue then in the middle is the yellow again make sure this is all tightened up the yellow is going down to the pump and the inlet on the pump now what i did was is i connected everything closed this valve opened the valve that's connected to the ac i then ran the pump for 15 minutes you'll hear it change as it goes on it like pumps everything out and you'll see some smoke might even be coming out from all the moisture that's in the line so i ran the pump for 15 minutes once that is done which just got done a minute ago come out here i turned this valve closed so that way we can see it there's still a vacuum on there see it's negative 30 it's not zero zero would be normal pressure it's at negative 30. so i closed this valve while it was on the negative 30 then i turned off my pump and then now i'm going to wait another 15 minutes to make sure this gauge hasn't moved again you can see it's on negative 30. if you look over at this one this one's at like zero because that one's not being used so i want to make sure that whatever this was on in 15 minutes from now it's in the same spot if it gets down closer to zero that means we have a leak somewhere so you want to do this to make sure that you don't have a leak that's the whole point of this is to vacuum out these lines so you don't have any moisture condensation or anything like that in these lines and you want to make sure you don't have any leaks so this is kind of like a leak test all in one when i made my connections i used my nylon blue sealant and overall it was pretty simple unfortunately i bit one of these lines be very careful when you're bending these you can't bend them at a sharp angle i bent it too much tore the copper pipe and so i had to actually cut it down and re-flange it um you can pick up a flange tool sitting right there actually you can pick one of these up on amazon for like 15 bucks so if you run into that problem it's not too big of a deal to fix it it's more of a pain in the butt than anything i've never flanged a pipe before but it took me a few attempts to get it right but we have the vacuum sitting it's been sitting now for probably five minutes and it hasn't moved which is a really good sign i can tell you that when i first started to test this i could hear that there was a leak on the side that i was working on and so i just turned off the pump you know redid my flange and then tried it again so you can tell pretty quickly if you have a really large leak if it's a small leak that's why you want to leave it for the 15 minutes because the um the refrigerant that's going to be released is really high psi so you want to make sure that you don't have a leak and this is a little pump is only like 30 psi that's why you're waiting so while this is waiting i'm going to show you the inside real quick so we got our hole cut right there in the cabinet under the sink which is near our electrical box so we can run our 120 wire from the box to the mini split ac unit outside now on our coach we actually had a converter underneath our breaker box and when i removed it we have a free 15 amp breaker so the converter was wired into this but since we don't have a converter anymore because we have an inverter charger with our solar system we have this free breaker so i'm going to wire the me split into this 15 amp breaker here according to the one that we bought the 15 amps should be just fine but you want to make sure depending on what mini split you go with on what you know breaker size you will need same thing with the wires if you don't know what i'm talking about make sure you hire a professional once i get this wired in i'm actually going to run the mini split and see how much power it pulls and i'm going to run the roof ac to show you how much power it pulls and then i'm also going to show you how loud they are compared to each other so it should be pretty cool stick around all right so it's been 15 minutes and the pressure is still good nothing has changed so this is good i'm super excited about that now we're going to do is take our hex key we're going to open the valve a quarter turn for about five seconds and then we're going to close it and then we're going to just check our pressures again and just look for any leaks anywhere because you'll actually be able to hear it and see the leaks so i'll go ahead and do that now this is a quarter turn let's see two three four five all right now over here i can see that our psi has jumped up so it's good okay i don't hear any leaks there all right and i don't hear or see any leaks in here from these piping either do you hear anything while you're in here no all right so now i'm gonna go ahead and open both lines all the way up using the hex key and then we should go to run the mini split it is now time to test the mini split and the air conditioner so you can kind of see the difference between the two as you can see right now we have zero loads on the ac side so this is what's going to register whenever we actually run some stuff it's bounce between zero and one but there's not anything actually running so let's go ahead and turn on the regular air conditioner just for reference i'm standing directly underneath it and i'm going to listen to it here and then i'm going to walk back to where the mini split is and listen to the air conditioner and then i'll do the same thing with the mini split i'll be near it and in this exact same spot so we can kind of listen for it pulling about 300 watts this is the rooftop air conditioner we have a furion 13 000 btu and this is cool and on fan speed of high so this is the highest it can be so essentially this is as loud as it could be again we're playing about 13 little over 1300 watts so i'm gonna stand here for a second and i'll walk back here just so you can see how loud it is now we're going to swap between this one let's turn this one off okay that is now off you can see this is going back down to zero it might say like zero five or something like that but basically there's there's not really anything on it's as low as i can get it so um now that is off see we're back into zero ac is off this is what it sounds like with nothing on just for reference now i'm going to grab the controller for the mini split i'm staying in the same spot i'm going to turn it on i have it down to as cold as it will go and i have the fan on high so i have it manually set on high fan i can feel the cold air from right here just like i can feel the cold air back there from the fury on because it shoots it straight down so much quieter let's get closer to it so you can talk about so just for reference if i'm sitting down right here let's see how much power it's pulling so as of right now it's pulling 486 watts i'm gonna let it run for a while it's currently 12 40. so i'm gonna let it run for 20 minutes or so and just kind of see how it turns out see if it changes or anything like that all right 10 minute update we're pulling 530 watts our solar is actually powering it with no problem and we're still charging our battery a little bit um it is currently on the highest fan setting i can put it on and i put it on turbo mode so it's running as hard as it can on air conditioning mode have a set of 62 high fan and turbo mode and we're still only pulling 520 watts which is pretty crazy all right it's been almost an hour it's pulling 880 watts approximately um so it's doing quite well um we have 800 watts of solar so we'll need to upgrade our solar which we already knew that and we once we get rid of this we'll be able to do soaks we'll have more room on the roof um but that is at max so i still have it set at 62 degrees if you can see that i still have the fan all the way up and i put it in a turbo mode so it is freezing cold in here now the room is down to temperature it's only pulling 340 watts pretty cool um it's kind of fluctuating between three you know 330 and 400. it's been running for a while and the room is now down to temperature so i've actually put it on auto so the fan will just select itself and i put it at 76 degrees so it is still pumping out cold air if you can hear it or not it's so quiet all right you can see it's only pulling 178 watts now it's been on for a few hours as you've seen earlier it pulled over 800 watts in turbo mode it pulled around 550 when it was just on 3 speed of 3 um the fan and the cold all the way down so 550 is what's really going to be on the majority of the time the turbo mode just kicks into the highest mode it can be to cool down the room as fast as it can so it's not something that we're going to use a lot but our battery bank just for reference is 5120 watt hours for those of you who are wondering what that means basically we have four 100 amp hour 12 volt batteries now technically we have a 24 volt battery bank it's 200 amp hours but either way it's exact same amount of power being stored it's 5 120 watt hours so if we divide that by how much power this thing's pulling so right now it's pulling 175 we can run it for 29 hours give or take of course there's gonna be some efficiency that's not being um taken into effect and this is with no solar this is just purely off of the battery bank so the 175 it could run it for like 29 hours at the 350 or actually we'll just say 375 like it was running earlier for the most part we can run it for 13 hours like 13.6 hours and then on the higher settings when it was pulling the 550 like earlier we can run that for about nine hours on that setting and then in turbo mode which was like what we'll just say 820 we could run it for six hours now keep in mind the way that it works is it runs higher at first for you know 30 minutes an hour and then once it gets cool it goes down and pulls less power so it's kind of hard to say how long we can run it exactly we should be able to run it for a good amount of time especially when you offset the fact that we're going to have solar coming in during the day we should be able to run this and the way that we plan to use it it should work out just perfectly what i'm going to do is remove our rooftop air conditioner we have 800 watts of solar now my plan is to have 1600 watts hopefully on the roof and so we'll be able to run this during the day and still charge our battery bank basically and what that will allow us to do is since we follow the weather we follow the 55 to 65 degree weather when we get caught in those couple of hot days usually it's like the middle of the day there's a few hours where it's a little too warm and uh you know we just aren't ready to leave that area yet or whatever the case may be this is when this is going to really come in handy because we'll be able to run this for several hours especially during the daytime when solar is coming in we'll be able to run this during the hottest part of the day and then since we follow the weather at night tends to be cooler at night anyways so we don't really plan to run this overnight too much once we have the really big solar system we'll be able to camp in like arizona in the summer and run our air conditioner as long as we want especially the bigger battery bank so that would be really really clutch that would be really cool so um also wanted to give you some more information about the mini split itself there are several modes that this thing has now they all vary depending on what manufacturer you go with but they're all very very very similar you typically have an auto mode auto means you just set the temperature and it will change between cooling and heating which is awesome that's exactly what we plan to do is just leave it in auto mode because that way if it's you know starting to get cold at night we're out when we're gone it will kick on and keep the coach warm on the inside for the cats it will basically just keep it whatever temperature you set it and it will change between cooling and heating by itself so that's auto mode and then it has cooling mode just like a normal air conditioner it has heating mode which it uses you know electricity to heat which is going to be nice that's nice dry heat so it won't won't have to worry so much about the condensation build up which is going to be awesome because the furnace is so inefficient and puts out so much condensation in the air so that will be nice and speaking of that it also has a dry mode and so dry mode essentially helps remove the moisture from the air which is pretty cool and then it has a fan mode so if you just want to run it in fan you can do that as well now some of the other cool things that this thing has built in which i think most of them do in here there's a freeze sensor so if on the inside if we had it you know turned on the ac for too long and it started to freeze up which is very common with rooftop air conditioners for rvs this will essentially just turn itself off it will de-ice itself and it will kick back on automatically does it you don't have to mess with it and the same thing with the outdoor unit on the outdoor unit if you're using the heating portion and it's really cold outside or it's really humid outside the outdoor unit can freeze up it also has a sensor and so if it gets frozen it's supposed to detect that turn off warm itself up basically um to defrost and then come right back on one of the other cool things about it is it has an auto mode so if power goes out and it turns off whenever power comes back on it just instantly comes back on it puts the louvers like the little opening in the same position it was prior it keeps the same temperature which is really really cool because if you lose power or something like that it will just stay where it's at i believe there's a wi-fi adapter that's available for this one i can't remember exactly there are lots of units that you can use a wi-fi um like it comes with an app and you can control it from anywhere but we really weren't worried too much about that we didn't really need it and i also want to mention that the controller itself has this cool little feature called follow me you can see that and so what the follow me button does is when you turn that on the controller itself has a temperature sensor in it and so basically it will detect the temperature of the remote instead of using the temperature of where the mini split is located so for example at night we can take this up to bed with us turn it down to whatever temperature we want nice and cold to sleep in we turn this on follow me mode and since the bed is all the way at the front of the rv the opposite side of where we are it will actually make it that temperature in that location so it follows the remote which is pretty cool basically what it does is about every according to the manual every three minutes the controller will send the temperature to the mini split and it will adjust just want to do a little noise comparison so i'm sitting in our couch i'm basically sitting halfway in between the rooftop air conditioner and the mini split in fact i'm probably a little bit closer to the mini split but i have it set on 62 degrees and the fan is all the way up and this is how loud it is now it does have a silent mode that is silent mode truly is almost silent it's still producing cold you know air it's just because it's like a whisper like the faint is barely running type scenario now let's turn this off and turn on the rooftop air conditioner it's pretty loud yeah it is now time to wrap up this video and get out of here we've had this installed for a couple days we are absolutely loving it and honestly we have no complaints whatsoever it's working like a dream as always we will keep you guys updated on the usage as we continue to use it and give you the pros and cons throughout i hope you enjoyed watching this video and we will see you next week [Music] you

Channel: I'm Not Lost I'm RVing

Views: 148,904

Rating: 4.9350348 out of 5

Keywords: ac on solar, solar, ac, air conditioning, air conditioner, ac on solar pwoer, mini split rv install, mini split, mini, air, rv solar, off grid, off grid solar, a/c, diy, solar power, solar panels, conditioner, how to, off grid solar power system, rv solar panels, off the grid, off grid living, solar power rv, Rv air conditioning, rv, rv living, split, van, Full time rv living, dry camping, boondocking, ac on solar power

Id: arj2ioF8z9o

Length: 34min 39sec (2079 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021