If you haven’t checked out our two-part air conditioning series, you can find them here:

Part One – installing a hidden air conditioner that vents through the floor
Part Two – the twin bed build, including venting

Today we’re checking in on the window unit we installed a little less than a year ago. We frequently get questions about how well it works being installed under the twin bed and vented through the floor, and if we would recommend it.

Long story short, it’s not working super great, and we probably wouldn’t recommend it. At least, not yet, not as-is.

Nick and I recently got back from our first summer camping trip since the install last August and the 100+ degree-Fahrenheit temperature really put it to the test. We’re not sure if it was the extreme (and I mean extreme) Texas heat, the high humidity, the low install location, poor insulation (with the slatted windows), inadequate air flow or what that was the issue and we are currently troubleshooting fixes.

What’s working, and what isn’t

The good

The unit works.
It doesn’t trip our electrical system/inverter when hooked up to the 30 Amp pedestal and that’s even when it blows cold air on the max setting and the coolest temperature. (We hadn’t really been able to test it much before when we were plugged into the house – we think – because the power pull was too much for the 120V power coming in, unless we were on the lower fan settings.)
It’s pushing out really chilly air and feels amazing in front of the unit.

The bad

It’s pushing out really chilly air and feels amazing … only right in front of the unit. We’re talking a few feet in front of it. So we think it might just be a circulation problem.
It felt kind of damp inside during our first night camping, and with the oscillating fan we were using to try and circulate the cold air, we’d go between moist hot air and getting damp baby blasts each time the fan would blow your way, which was kind of chilly since we were sweaty. (If you’re wondering, yes, we were both trying to keep cool in separate beds on either side of the camper the first night, because sticky people in bed … yuck.)
If you’re asking yourself “Fan? What, fan?” … we brought along a separate oscillating tower floor fan “just in case” and used it and only it with the roof vent and some windows strategically open in the front and back to pull an outside breeze through the camper the second night. That felt a lot better than the A/C + tower fan and closed windows the first night, and we decided to bunk up together in the dinette area bed on night two.

The ugly

In addition to the quasi-cold, quasi-damp air inside the camper the first night, we woke up the next morning to see water dripping out from the bottom of the camper. Awesome.

If you remember from the first air conditioner install post, our particular A/C unit is supposed to fling the excess condensation up into the hot coils to keep the unit cool, evaporating it, and therefore not drip more than what would be contained by a small reservoir included on the bottom/inside the unit.

Lie detector test determined that was a lie.

Because of the way it is supposed to work – catching water in the self-contained reservoir – there’s no place for a drip tube or anything to really easily funnel any excess moisture down to the ground below like some window units have, and though we had talked through a plan for water overage during install last year, we decided not to add in a contingency drip pan underneath the unit like we discussed as a possible option.

We also weren’t parked entirely level from side to side (and haven’t bought leveling blocks yet), so the water rolled sideways (toward the shower wall) and leaked out kind of underneath the exterior wall. Cool.

And yet, so. not. cool.

Okay, so what next?

That’s a great question.

We’ve been thinking a lot about it and are currently researching our options, like maybe we just need to figure out the perfect combination of cracking the roof vent and windows? That scenario is highly unlikely…

So we’re also looking at:

Retrofitting our current 14” roof vent with a standard 12V-powered fan (like the Fantastic Fan) that’s already made to fit the kind of vent we have.
Installing a roof air conditioning unit (like a MaxxAir Fan). Now that we’re storing The Cameo at a facility and not in a home garage, vertical clearance is not really an issue, but it will likely mean we need to go back in and beef up our ceiling supports. It also might mean we’ll have an even shorter ceiling since we think it needs thicker supports than we have and replacing them could cause a ripple effect of suck through the camper.
Getting an evaporative cooler of some kind to get rid of the damp air. Could it really be that simple?
Only traveling to nudist colonies. (For inquiring minds, that was Nick’s contribution to this post and why it is, you might ask, that I do the bloggy, writey things.)

So that’s where we’re at friends. Just a couple of Texans hoping to find a good solution to our cooling issue so we don’t have to go full nudist. Though the idea of less laundry is tempting…

Any suggestions?

We’ve heard it wouldn’t work (after the fact, of course) but we’re glass half full type folks, so we’re pressing on to find a solution that keeps us cool and clothed.

Have you put an A/C unit into your camper/RV/caravan/skoolie? Any tips or tricks? Have you gotten a floor-installed unit to work?

We’d LOVE to hear anything that has or has not worked for you and why below!