I Modified My RV Air Conditioner to Run COLDER & QUIETER - The $15 RV AC Mod Explained

today i'm going to show you how to modify your rv ac unit to make it more efficient increase output and reduce noise and i'm going to show you guys how to do this modification on the open design acs as well as the acs with the framed out metal wall we need to remove the plastic panels and framing off the ac unit so pop out the removable panels first you should be able to find screws that hold the rest of the framing in remove these screws and the rest of the plastic framing now this is what the inside of many rv ac units look like on one side is the blower fan from the ac unit that's on the roof that blows cold air down into your ducts we're going to call that the cold side on the other side is the warm air return and we're gonna call that the warm side here is why it's inefficient for one cold air coming from the blower fan is not forced directly into the ducts also a lot of this cold air will mix with the warm air that's naturally rising up into the warm air return so it's a very inefficient design now not long ago people realized that these two sections should be separated so they started putting a piece of insulation board in between these two areas and that's part of the modification that we're going to do today we're also going to build a baffle that will direct air from the blower fan more directly right into the ducts we're also going to do a better job than the factory did of sealing this entire area up which means your ac will distribute cold air quicker through your ducts and with less resistance and noise making your ac unit much quieter if you have the open design that you see on the screen now you can go ahead and skip to this time in the video where we start to modify your design if you're interested to see what i do with this design you're more than welcome to stick around unfortunately for me and for some of you guys we have a hoop to jump through first before we can start building our baffle this is designed with a metal separator wall or metal divider wall and the thermostat control is mounted right here in our face instead of up in the ac unit a little bit higher like it is in the other designs and even though our design has a metal divider wall it still sucks it's full of air leaks and it's not insulated well enough so for all of you unlucky folks with this design we need to modify this metal wall nonsense first so let's begin first i'm going to disconnect my shore power and my 12 volt battery power just to be safe because we're going to be working around wires i'm going to unscrew and drop this thermostat control box from the framing there's more than enough thick wiring in this control box so you should be fine just letting it hang or if you want you can tape it up to the ceiling for now now let's remove the metal framing and separator wall [Music] because the baffles we're going to build will all be above this framing the only thing we need to do is remove this separator wall [Music] now we have our metal divider wall cut out and everything's ready to go but we're going to put this to the side for a second i'll welcome everyone back who has skipped ahead at the beginning of the video and as you see minus the control box everyone's ac design should look pretty similar at this point the manufacturers don't do a great job of sealing this area up so let's do a little bit of housekeeping in here remove any loose metal tape reapply new to simply seal everything up in this area where you see places that air could leak through seal around the ducts the port by the blower fan the edges by your ceiling and the warm air return once everything is sealed up we can move to the next step which is building the baffles so now we're going to start building our baffle so what we're going to do is we're going to put a wall right in between the cold side and the hot side and it's going to go right up against this duct right here so we need to measure from here to the other side which is about 14 and a half from the top down and we're gonna make it short one inch because what we're going to do is put a piece down here underneath everything and because we're using one inch board we want to make this one inch short so this is about six inches so we're gonna make it five inches [Music] now we just want to test fit it before we move on make sure it's right up against the edge of your duct and don't worry about having perfect fitment guys because we're going to tape all this stuff closed but this is right up against the top here comes down to the other duct over here and it's right up against this duct here and we have an inch left at the bottom for the bottom piece that we're going to put in okay before we go any further if you had the style of ac that you didn't have the divider wall right here you still have your metal framing around all of this and you never had to remove these bolts and you'll have to notch out the baffles as you fit them before you install them a friend of mine chris over at why wait also did this modification on his youtube channel and he has that style of air conditioner and he shows you a real nice easy way to notch these baffles out i'll put a link to that video down in the video description below but if you did have the style with the metal wall we needed to pull these bolts to get that whole assembly down so what you're going to do next if you had that style with the metal wall just thread your bolts back up here and then you're going to mark with some painters tape and a marker where that bolt lands you're going to have to not your baffles to leave room to get the bolts back in because unfortunately for the metal wall design the bolts have to be removed first to install the metal frame back in when we're all done so for now you only need to install the bolts on the cold side we are not putting any baffles on the warm side so you can leave those out until it's time to put everything back together okay so now the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna build a baffle that goes from the very top of this duct over to the edge of where the blower fan comes out so we're going to want to take a measurement from here to the edge over here and that's eight inches we want to measure from the top of the duct right to the edge or close to the edge of the port where the blower fan is we're gonna call that six and this might not make a lot of sense right now but you'll understand as we move through so we're gonna put one here on this side and one here on this side because there's a duct over here that you can't see this side's gonna be four by eight this one's actually four eight and a quarter so let's go cut those pieces so we've cut out our side pieces here and hopefully you can get an idea of what we're doing so air is going to come out of the blower port here and straight down right into the vent we're going to eventually build the bottom baffle with a tp design so that air comes right out of the port down the tp into this uh excuse me into this duct and down into this duct because this is an inch thick what we're going to do is just trim these sides down at a 45 degree angle here and a 45 degree angle here so it sits a little more flush up against here now it doesn't again have to be perfect guys we're going to end up using the metal tape to seal all this stuff up so let's go ahead and cut our 45 degree angle off the back of these [Music] [Music] so now with our angles cut off the back this should fit pretty close to flush right up against here and right here next you're going to want to take these top baffle pieces put them in and just tape it in real quick temporarily for now and we're going to mark on here where we need to notch for the bolt so you might be asking why don't i just put the framing back up leave the bolts in and notch everything as i build it problem with my design is this metal frame has braces right here and it's not going to allow you to build a baffle and get it behind here it's just too big so you can either do it this way or you can cut out the whole center of that metal frame but i don't recommend doing that because we need to remount this when we're all done so i just cut a notch out here again doesn't need to be air tight we can tape all this stuff up that's what it will look like once that side of the baffle is completely taped up and if you see that little black dot right there there is foil tape over that but i'll be able to punch that bolt right through that hole when i go to mount the framing back up once we're all done don't forget to do the other side and then we can move to the next step okay so we have our top baffles in i put my divider wall back in for reference so now you guys can see this starting to take shape we're going to build a floor that goes across this whole area here and two baffles that form a teepee on top so when the air comes down through here it's channeled directly into the ducts so the first thing i'm going to do is measure my width again on both sides now we're going to measure from this side of the wall because we want it to sit underneath the whole thing so we're going to go from here and we're at nine and a half the other side also nine and a half so we're just going to test fit our floor and i could feel that that fits right up against the divider wall back here so everything looks good now we're just going to build two pieces on top of this floor one that goes this way one that goes this way so i'm gonna put this in here for reference and right where the blower fan port is i'm gonna pick the the center and just mark it on the floor so i'm going to put half my tp on this side half my tp on this side okay guys let me show you how i built this tp so here is the floor that we made and the center point of the blower fan port so i cut one piece four by eight and a half one piece three by eight and a half and this is nine and a half but remember we got to make this eight and a half we need an inch here because that divider wall is going to sit here so you're going to take the one that's four inches put it over top of the one that's three inches and center it right over that line leaving one inch on this side and this side will be right up flush against the bottom then you'll just cut the two pieces off at a 45 degree angle on the bottom so it sits nice nice and flat so we have our baffle built and taped up i made a notch here and a notch here for the mounting bolts so we're just going to test fit this and we'll just seal these holes up once we get everything put back in so let me try to show you what it looks like inside with the divider wall off but as you can see air comes from the port blows directly into the duct on that side and into the duct on that side okay guys we're getting close to being finished next you're going to put your divider wall back in and you're not going to have access to any of this once you put your floor in so you're going to want to tape all these seams with metal tape and this will be permanently installed so now we have the divider wall permanently taped in and we can start putting our baffle in [Music] once we have the bottom baffle in tape where it meets the divider wall also tape the seam up the side of the wall the top and of course the bottom of the baffle around the ceiling and this is what it'll look like once the entire baffle is taped in now we're not done yet though because this warm air return side is much smaller than it was before so this thermostat control box is not going to fit exactly the same way and mount on the metal tabs so i'll show you what we're going to do to fix that so let's go ahead and put the framing back in now so because this box sticks out much further than the tab that the control box mounted to i bent this tab using pliers slid the control box down behind the tab making it a pretty tight fit i'm going to secure it by using metal tape around this box because i really don't want to put a screw in it so i went overkill with the metal tape on the box over the tab against the back wall and as you can see it's not going anywhere now one thing worth mentioning because the cold air side is closed off you will lose the dump vent feature but honestly you're not going to need it after you do this modification so if i had to do this modification again i might have considered cutting all of the interior framing out on the cold side leaving just that tab that we bent up it would have made notching the baffles a little bit easier but it probably wouldn't have saved a whole lot of time so before we wrap up i want to mention a few friends as mentioned earlier chris and megan from why wait they have a great youtube channel that will show you a lot of rv maintenance tips along with their travel vlogs joshua gander flight his channel features a lot of rv tips and tricks also but he also does a lot of general life hacks as well jason and abby over at rv miles they create a lot of phenomenal content about the rv industry gear reviews and much more and josh at hail at rv this channel features a lot of rv walkthroughs big and small as well as updates and information of what he sees as an rv dealer links to those channels are below check them out and support those channels if you found this video helpful please click that like button and we hope that you consider subscribing it helps our channel grow so we can continue making rv videos for you guys that is all for this episode stay safe and until next time happy camping everyone

Channel: RV Tips & Travels

Views: 385,218

Keywords: rv a/c mod, rv ac modification, dometic ac mod, rv ac mod, rv air conditioning, rV a/c, boost your rv ac, rv air conditioner, rv airflow, modifications, Turbocharge your ac, rv ac, rv tips and travels, grand design ac, rvairflow, dometic rv ac, rv mods, rv modifications, rv upgrades, Rv tips, upgrades, rv tips and tricks, travel trailer, camper, travel trailer upgrades, rv travel, rv life, grand design, imagine, mods, rv living, Rv lifestyle, rv air flow, best rv mod

Id: TusVLTNm7_s

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021