I'm not pretending that this is the way everyone should do things. It's just an explanation for why I do it.
A/C: Proof of concept
Note: This section is long on talk and short on proven solutions. You may want to skip to the pix and see if they are of any interest to you.
I promised when I resurrected this web site that I would see if it was possible to have air-conditioning in Elli when she was shore-powered. This section explores that possibility.
(I did once use a window unit in Elli, many years ago. It sat on the tailgate, with the door above closed, and a piece of plastic tarp blocking the space around the unit. It worked, but it didn't work well.)
About air-conditioning in hot and humid areas
I've written about this many times, and yet I still get comments from people who (I assume, anyway) live north of the Mason-Dixon line, stating there is no such thing as having too large an air-conditioner. If you know that this statement is nonsense, you get an A+ and may skip the next section.
A delicate balance
Air-conditioners do two distinct things. They cool the air, and they dehumidify it.
If an air-conditioner is too small, it can't cool the air sufficiently, so it will run constantly. Good for reducing the humidity; not so good for attaining a comfortable temperature, not to mention the problem of wear and tear on the unit.
If an air-conditioner is too large, it can reach your desired temperature too quickly, while the humidity is still high. Having reached the temperature you chose, it switches off. The only way to reduce the humidity further is to turn the thermostat down as low as possible. As the temperature plummets, you are left perspiring while hunkered down in your sleeping-bag shivering - a strangely unpleasant feeling.
So an air-conditioner must, like Baby Bear's bed in the Goldilocks story, be neither too big nor too small but just right: the perfect balance of cooling and dehumidifying for a given area.
Got it? Good. Now let's rejoin the southerners and continue ....
Floor area of the Element
I'd estimate the floor area of the Element at about 50 square feet. Whether you opt for a window unit or (like me) a portable air-conditioner, the smallest size you can get is about 5,000 BTU, and that is probably too large for 50 square feet.
But the only way to know for sure is to rig up a proof-of-concept system and find out. So my new experiment uses a portable unit (left over from the Ford Transit van days).
Lower-end portable a/c units come with a single hose and a piece of plastic - a spacer - that the hose clips onto. That spacer is placed at the bottom of your home's sash window - as shown here, in a pic of our older unit.
Here is what I have done and discovered so far.
Problems to solve
We need to take into account that ...
- A small portable a/c unit needs to vent outside, as seen in the pic above;
- There has to be a pathway for the flexible vent hose, which is about 5" in diameter;
- The unit will take up floor space (but only about a square foot);
- It condenses water, which needs to be drained somehow;
- It weighs quite a lot, so it needs to be secured or restrained in some way when on the move.
Where to vent
Unless you want to create a large hole in the wall or the floor of your Element, the obvious place to vent the unit is through a window.
I considered the rear side windows, but there is a problem with them. If you unscrew the latching mechanism, there is nothing (as far as I can tell) to stop the glass falling out. If you don't remove the latch, you can't mount a "mask" for the vent unless you also make a hole to accommodate that latch. So we are left with the front windows.
OK, so we can wind down the front window (on the driver's side, in my case) and hang the end of the vent hose out of it. But how do we make this arrangement waterproof and reasonably air-tight?
You might be thinking that you could fashion a thin piece of wood - a wooden spacer - that pushes into the window channel at the top of the window and the sides. Cut a hole in it, take the plastic spacer I mentioned earlier, chop the ends off it, and mount it with caulk and screws over the hole in the wooden spacer. Attach some sort of weather strip along the bottom of the spacer which will overlap the partially raised window. I was easily able to make a spacer for my Ford Transit, as shown in the pic, but that was because the top and side window channels were more or less square.
On the Element, as long as you are a gifted woodworker, this will present no problem at all. For me, it presented an insuperable problem ... because the wooden spacer must be carefully and precisely shaped, more or less like a boomerang. Why? On the Element the top of the front window is not straight - it is cut away at the front. So your wooden spacer must curve down at the front to match the curve in the glass and the curve in the window opening. There is no hope whatever of the feckless Bleendreeble pulling that off.
Using corrugated plastic sheet
My current solution (remember that none of this has been field-tested at the moment) is corrugated plastic sheet. On the upside, it is easily available (from Lowes, in this case); it is relatively cheap; it is fairly easy to cut with scissors (though I found a jigsaw to be cleaner and more accurate); and it compresses a little (we'll see in a moment why this matters). On the downside, it involves blocking out the entire window, not just part of it, and the sheet can bend too easily or even fold - in other words, it's not very sturdy.
Blocking off the whole window is some sort of compensation for that lack of sturdiness, as is placing the vent port close to the edge of the window. Our solution must fit in the top and side channels and in the bottom seal, and so we must use two pieces, not one (think about it for a moment). The two pieces overlap slightly, and you can squeeze the edges of the two pieces so that the overlap section will fit the top and bottom. Here, a few pictures will be worth a thousand words ....
Some sort of caulk should be used between the vent port and the plastic sheet. Installing both plastic sheets involves sizing them so that you slot each sheet all the way into the top window channel and then bend the sheet ever so slightly so that the bottom just pops into the bottom seal. Now you can drop the sheet so that it rests entirely on the bottom seal, at which point the top will still be inside the top window channel.
There needs to be some way of stopping wind-driven rain from entering sideways between the two plastic sheets. I'll probably use some sort of weather-stripping screwed to the trailing edge of the sheet at the front.
Locating the a/c unit in the Element
After you have gazed at this pic for a while you'll be able to tell what it is. It's the actual portable a/c unit (R2D2) riding between the backs of the two front seats. Since I have the driver's seat armrest, R2D2 is jammed up against that and can't move forward. Because of the (completely accidental) width I chose for the lower part of the bed, R2D2 is also prevented from rolling backwards. Sadly, the driver's armrest blocks the hose outlet on the back of R2D2, so at night when the system is set up he has to be wiggled backwards a little to make room for the hose.
However, you may be wondering why R2D2 is wearing what looks like the kind of mask favored by people who rob banks. The reason is quite simple. The "mask" is an old t-shirt stretched over the unit because - without it - R2D2's plastic sides squeak again the fabric of the front seats. Needless to say, when R2D2 is at work he removes his t-shirt first.
There remains only one concern. These portable units collect condensed moisture which has to be removed (daily, in places like Texas). R2D2 (a Hisense model) proudly carries a label saying that he blows all excess moisture out of the hose. Do not be fooled: This has never worked for me on either of the units we've had. There is a drain at the bottom of the unit. A short piece of hose running to a small plastic drink bottle will handle his incontinence. Simply empty the bottle each morning.
Conclusion (based on real life)
Well, I tried it out for real. The good news is that the concept appears to work. The bad news is that the whole business is just too fiddly. When we want air-conditioning, we want it with the push of a button. We don't want to be carrying around a heavy "portable" unit that occupies a whole lot of room even when it's not doing anything useful, and that has to be all connected up when we do want to use it.
So for right now, having a/c when stopped at a campground is off the agenda. The only remaining option might be the Zero Breeze 2, but - good heavens! - have you seen the price?
There is no doubt in my mind that - for me - the a/c solution I tried out is not practical, even if it does work. In fact, within a few minutes of returning home after its shakedown trial, I replaced the unit with the item you see in the pic. It might not be much use for cooling my Element, but it has vastly increased my storage space ....
Keep checking back here for news and additional details ....