How To Make Your RV AC More Efficient | Cheap RV AC Mod

what's up guys thanks for tuning in this week I'm going to show you how to fix that horrendous noise that you hear in the background right now which is our air conditioner we're going to make it a lot more efficient going to do an AC mod [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign so to do this modification to our air conditioner we're just going to need a few very simple things we've got some foam project board I picked this up from Home Depot and then also got some foam insulation tape um these are really the only two things you're going to need you're going to need probably a good sharp knife like a razor knife to cut this stuff it's pretty dense but it's going to do a really good job at dampening the sound and channeling the air into the ductwork which is what our ultimate goal is so the first thing you have to do to get this bottom panel off you're going to pull your pull your grates down I'm going to remove your filters and that's going to give you access to these four screws so we'll take those out so that'll take this piece off so the next thing you have to do is remove this plate that's underneath here to access up inside your AC unit again same deal four screws foreign to the whole inner part of our AC unit we're going to remove this piece this is just a piece of duct boards they have in here to separate the return air side from your supply side over here so the reason this system is so inefficient is the air gets blown from here straight down into this big open space and then basically they're trying to force the air into these little small ductwork openings but they're not actually Direct in the air straight in so it's very loud there's a lot of turbulence it's not very efficient so we're going to use our foam project board we're going to cut some pieces to go here on this side and then from the bottom to kind of direct this air directly into the duct into the ductwork of the trailer all right so we're going to start with our piece to go across the back we're going to cut it first I've got it measured out that piece is going to be five inches by 14 and a half so now we're going to go ahead and cut that out foreign across the back and I cut it in half so we can fit it in behind our bolts that are holding the AC in so as you can see the one inch board is just a little too thick to get behind those bolts so I'm going to trim a little bit of this out so that it'll fit behind there so we're just going to score this just a little bit I'm going to come in from this angle just trim it from here [Applause] so now we've got that piece fit in behind our Bolt foreign pieces fit so I'm not going to secure these in yet because now we're going to mark from the top of our duck to here so we're going to mark from here to there and then from there to there so we can cut that on an angle to give our top piece to give our our top piece something to sit on all right so now I have the angles marked I marked it also which side was the left and which side was the right because it is a little bit different on each side so now we're just going to trim uh our angles off here turn those Corners off and then we'll get a measurement for our piece that's going to lay in there on top of it so you can see I've also switched um I've got a fillet knife it's longer and a little easier to manage when I'm trying to cut the one inch board a razor knife worked okay but this is going to let me kind of get in there and just cut it without mangling it up quite so bad [Music] those back in place so now you can see what we're starting to have here so what I'm wanting to do is close this off and then we're going to cut a piece just like this that's going to go back here so we'll completely close off this top and divert that air directly into the duct into the duct work all right so now that we have our rear pieces in place I've cut a nine inch by five inch piece it's going to be basically like the roof of our little box so I want this to go all the way to the back wall over the top of our back panel so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to actually Notch out I'm going to Mark and Notch out where I need to cut out of our rear piece so that this will slide all the way in so now we're just going to notch it out now we'll just Notch out around where our bolt is and that should slide all the way back and just like that we've got a nice snug fit up there it's pretty snug around the bolt so we can put some insulation tape around there just to seal that up it's going to be really easy to seal so now I'm going to use our piece from the left side and make a basically make a pattern to cut our piece that's going to go on the right side make sure that our Bolt hole is going to match up you have the tighter you can make this stuff fit together the better you're going to be it's going to make taping it up a lot easier all right there we go so now you can see if we put everything in place that we've got so far see that so now we have our the roof of our box made we're going to come in here and trim these off so they're flat so they're not sticking out that way they don't impede any airflow coming down out of our main Supply so now what we're going to do we need to cut a notch in the bottom so we could put our floor in before we build our back piece it's going to cover everything up and seal it up so I'm going to use my Square and I'm just going to figure out kind of what angle we want to divert this air into I don't want to go way up high because I don't want to choke it off too much so I'm going to go from the bottom of my ductwork and I'm going to go just on just a slight angle I'm going to mark it all the way across so when we cut this we'll just put our piece right up to the bottom and that'll help divert all the air into this one and we'll do the same thing on this side divert our air into this side of our back piece off foreign so when they go up in the back it'll be like this and then we'll cut a piece to go across the bottom all right so now I've got all my pieces cut I measured it's really one of those deals where it's not going to be a universal measurement for everybody's application so you're just going to have to kind of cut it cut a piece fit it see if it needs to be trimmed a little bit I mean it's not going to be pretty cutting this foam board is a mess but I switched over started using a Flay knife which helped a lot to cut it a little more smooth so this is going to go against the back and then these pieces are going to be basically on my roof it's going to go on top of it and then I've got pieces that are going to go in on the bottom and then I have my final piece which basically all I did was take my two front pieces and I made basically a template out of those to make the piece that's going to go across the back to seal it all up the tape I'm going to be using is foam insulation tape it reminds me a lot of uh like uh like packing tape but it's designed for uh foam and to tape up foam styrofoam uh any type of foam insulation so I'm going to start with my pieces that are going to go against the back so now I'm going to put my these are going to basically be my roof or put them on I mean I'm not gonna lie to you this is this job is kind of a pain um but it is time consuming but at the end of the day it's going to be a lot better than what we had so now I've kind of got those pieces fitted I'm going to seal everything up on the inside with some insulation tape this stuff goes on really well I mean it really sticks that foam uh really well all right so we've got our tape oh we've taped all this up really good in here we've sealed up up top um this tape is supposed to withstand extreme cold heat humidity moisture so that's why I decided to go with this over the regular foil tape so we got some holes so I'll seal those up also and then I'm gonna put uh our back piece on and then I'll put our floor in last so I've decided to do is tape the piece that's going to go on the bottom I want to seal it uh from the inside and then I'll also put some tape on the outside so I've got it propped up on about the angle that it's going to go on hold those together ah there's this tape on the inside so it can still move and flex a little bit from there but I wanted to get some tape on the on the inside [Music] foreign piece already sitting up in place so I want to fit this in and get this all fit together and you can kind of see what what's happening now so with all this closed off the air is going to come down and this bottom piece is just going to close off that box and all we've basically done is made a box so the air comes down and straight in to the duct work all right now we just gotta tape everything up you can see we've got our we've got our bottom all in place so we'll just seal all this up with our insulation tape really well seal across the middle here again and you can see that's why I wanted to get some tape on the inside I knew there's going to be a little Gap and I would rather that be sealed really good on the inside so I want to tape as much as I can from the inside and then just put our bottom on and the back on from the outside so I pushed all our wires up out of the way so I can get in here and tape this up those wires are very much in the way when you're trying to tape this all together so uh again I'm gonna put some tape on to kind of hold everything in place and then I'll go back and really seal it really really well all right so you can see we've got it all taped up really really good got our new little box made in here um so now we're gonna put this all back together we're gonna turn the air conditioner on and see if it's any quieter so one thing to keep in mind if you do this modification you'll no longer be able to open your dump vents so your vents that you can open to dump the AC right into the living room those will no longer work because you've closed everything off but you're not going to need those because the amount of air that's going to be pushed through your duct system now is going to be 100 times better than what it was with that uh old system that they have in place now we're just going to line up all of our screws all right so there it is it's definitely a lot quieter I mean it's not silent obviously the AC is running right above me but it's a lot quieter and if I'm standing right here I mean I can feel air I can feel the air blowing out of these vents all through the living room so I know that with summertime coming um it's always a struggle to keep the RV cool in Florida when it's 100 degrees outside so I really think that this modification is going to make it a lot more efficient cool the RV down our son's bunk room in the back has always been really hard to keep cool it's hard to keep warm in the winter and it's hard to keep cool in the summer so there's a tremendous amount of airflow coming out of his vent now in the back so I'm excited that we did it it's not really super difficult but it is time consuming and cutting that foam you know it's uh it's not easy but if you use a really sharp knife fillet knife worked out great for me make sure you get it all taped up and sealed up good and you're not going to have any issues just take your time fit all your pieces in there and you should be good to go all right that's going to do it for now we appreciate you guys watching and we'll catch you guys down the road

Channel: Jouppi Outdoors

Views: 15,935

Keywords: how to make your rv ac more efficient, how to make your rv ac more effecient, how to amke your rv ac more efficient, rv ac mod, rv ac modification, how to make my rv ac better, how to make my rv ac colder, boost my rv ac performance, cheap rv ac mod, diy rv ac trick, improve my rv ac airflow, rv ac modification - improve efficiency & performance with/ this easy diy mod, rv ac mods, rv ac modification coleman, cheap rv ac modification, improving rv ac performance

Id: RJIF5t6LRAw

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2023