Get Optimal RV A/C Performance With This Simple Airflow Upgrade

[00:00:01][music] [music] >> So, think about this with me. An air conditioner has to do a pretty important job, and it's only given a hole in the roof of 14 in by 14 in.

[00:00:24]And in that 14-in space, I have to get all of my room air from my room through half of that 14-in space, so 7 by 14, up, and I have to pass that through my evaporator coil, okay? First, I have to condition the air. I'm going to be a dehumidifier to the first step is the first thing I'm going to do. And then, I'm going to pass it through my coil, and I'm going to cool the air down no more than 20°. The most an air conditioner is going to do is about 16 to 22° change in temperature. So, if it's 100° in your RV, and you got your air conditioner on, it's going to suck in that 100° air, blow out 80° air.

[00:00:58]If [clears throat] it's 80° in your air conditioner, it's going to suck in 80, blow out 60, so you can do the math, 20° difference. When we look up here, um we see this This is a divider. It's a foam core divider, and there This is the way we found it. There's a huge breach. This is the side where the warm air gets returned, and this is the side where the cold air gets supplied back. This divider, it's kind of a big deal, cuz remember that 14 by 14 hole?

[00:01:28]I need to get separation.

[00:01:31]Warm air going in here, cold air coming out this side going through my ducts.

[00:01:34]See this breach right there?

[00:01:37]So, we need to go a little bit farther in this, because this is my duct, okay?

[00:01:42]So, the cold air is on this side, and I'm going into my duct, but guess what?

[00:01:45]I'm also sucking in warm air here. So, we're going to have to take this whole plenum down and reposition this divider.

[00:01:54]Okay, so we've taken the screws down, we're going to pull this down, and here this is good because now you can see everything I was talking about. So, here being the air being drawn in from the room air, it goes way up in the top through an absorber. That's the business end of the air conditioner. This is the divider. This is the cold side. There's your fan, the thing that makes all the noise. And then this divider here, it was it was kind of like that. We need to make it more so that all this cold air is forced through there. What we might also do is get some of that HVAC C tape and kind of make it, you know, more aerodynamic. So, basically I've got a razor blade, and I'm just going to cut some of this stuff off. And And really we're just trying to make this more aerodynamic. It's nothing not a big deal, no big uh physics lesson here.

[00:02:39]Okay.

[00:02:41]And then um There we go.

[00:02:46]And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to get some uh HVAC tape and just kind of make this a little bit more aerodynamic right here. So, what we got here is our HVAC foil tape, and I'm just going to kind of tape it up here and maybe put two pieces just to kind of make it a little bit more uh attractive for the air to flow um into the ducts.

[00:03:04]All right there.

[00:03:08]So, I'll do one more.

[00:03:17]Oh, I got a breach right there.

[00:03:19]I got to fix that.

[00:03:23]If I was air that's been reconditioned and dehumidified, then um I would be very happy to go inside of this duct right here. There.

[00:03:33]So, you see that's pretty.

[00:03:35]We'll do the same thing to the other side.

[00:03:37]There is all taped up, so it's nice and aerodynamic. So, now what we need to do is this is the divider. This would be the um ceiling plenum.

[00:03:51]And so, we're going to put the shiny side towards the cold side and the non-shiny side towards the room side.

[00:03:57]And this is supposed to be wedged right inside of this little profile right there with the foam. So, now we're going to basically put this exactly where we need it to be and then we'll address this issue over here if necessary. And if there is a hole right there, we'll take this this foil tape and tape that up on both sides. This is where the divider needs to be and we'll tape up the inside, tape up both sides so that we have a really good divider to keep this return air separate from the the supply air separate from the return air. Okay, so we've got What we've done now is we've taped up the inside, the outside, the whole thing so that the air um will kind of respect that divider a little bit better. Okay, so now that we've got the ceiling plenum on and let's compare what we did to begin. So, now as you see, this is completely sealed, okay? On both sides. We put the tape right in here, okay? So, now the room air is going to go in. It's going to The only way that it can come back out is not by taking a shortcut, which is what it was doing before, but the only way that the air that's drawn in can get out is to go through the evaporator coil. And then once it's through the evaporator coil, the only way it can return back to the coach is through the ducts or through the air dump. That's the only way it can go.

[00:05:05]Before, it could bypass. So, um what I Your homework assignment is to go to your RV, take your ceiling plenum down, and look for that. I cannot tell you how many times >> [clears throat] >> um we've been called in for people's air conditioners were not working efficiently and they're thinking that there's a terrible air conditioning problem. At the end of the day, all it was was some HVAC foil tape and making sure that divider's intact. A lot of times the dividers are not there. So, now you understand a little bit more about what the divider's purpose in life is, why it's so critically important. You want to force the air through the evaporator core and back through. So, this is Daron from Port Angeles, Washington saying happy campers.

[00:05:45]Well, saying that happy campers say my RV Works, so we hope these videos help you.

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