Another AC Topic

[Fishingtomatoseed]

I am going to by my A/C this weekend and I was online looking at ones from the box stores. I am always reading about wanting a smaller A/C so that it will not short cycle and get the humidity out. I ran across this one and was wondering if someone wanted to do a hack job they might be able to get it to work in a tear. At 250 watts it is a low energy user. Food for thought for someone.


1,000 BTU

[Shadow Catcher]

Looking at the manual it is basically a dehumidifier, there is no provision for pumping the hot air elsewhere so there would be a net gain of heat in a space, just dryer. You could hack one to get the hot outside but one advantage of conventional AC units is that they are designed to get wet (other than the controls) as in hanging out of a window. Once the controls are moved out of the housing they are basically able to take weather.
Using a dehumidifier as a beginning would be a possibility but there are ways to effectively derate a 5,000 BTU AC unit i.e. long hose and you might be able to slow down the compressor.
The problem as you pointed out is short cycling and we never experienced that with ours, but it is a larger interior volume than most tears. My bet is that the Frigidaire hack could be adapted easily to small volume spaces.

[eamarquardt]

Of course this is the wrong time of year to by an a/c unit but at the end of the summer you can get nice approximately 5K BTU ones for sixty bucks or so. The price for this unit is steep for what you get.

Cheers,

Gus

[Shadow Catcher]

Gus
This might be an interesting avenue, I was looking for small AC compressors and in essence that is what dehumidifiers are and I am finding them at $30 to $90 on Craig's list. When you drop off the container for water they are very compact.
I still think it would be interesting to explore a very small Auto AC powered by a small engine.

[terryjones1]

A 1000 btu A/C is too small even for a Teardrop.

[eamarquardt]

Gus
This might be an interesting avenue, I was looking for small AC compressors and in essence that is what dehumidifiers are and I am finding them at $30 to $90 on Craig's list. When you drop off the container for water they are very compact.
I still think it would be interesting to explore a very small Auto AC powered by a small engine.

An approach to refrigeration on cruising sailboats is the holdover plate. A container is filled with antifreeze or saltwater and tubes for refrigerant are run through it. This allows you to make a big block of ice that thaws at a temperature lower than 32f or 0c. An automotive air conditioning compressor is used to run the apparatus. Auto air conditioner pumps are usually around (don't quote me on this) 5 tons. IE huge because you want to cool a car fast and a car isn't insulated to speak of. 5 tons = 60,000 BTU! This allows you to make a block of ice that will last maybe 24 hours or so in half an hour by running the engine. The same concept, using an engine to run a compressor, could used along with automotive components to make an engine run air conditioning system for a teardrop.

So, it's certainly possible to do so but the system would be way overbuilt (I guess you could just turn the compressor slower) but you'd have to listen to the gas engine running whenever you needed cooling just like running a windowshaker and a generator. I think a generator and windowshaker would be a heck of a lot easier to get off the ground, less complicated, and more flexible if you have shore power.

That said, it would be a fun project if you were so inclined.

Cheers,

Gus