RV Air Conditioners & Dehumidifiers In Mexico
By David Eidell (10/07)
Much of Mexico remains warm year-round. Northeastern Baja California (Mexicali, San Felipe) often see temps to 120 degrees in summer. Cabo reaches 100 degrees for several months (cooling to 85 at night). Mulege and Santa Rosalia regularly reach a hundred ten degrees.
Nothern mainland Mexico also gets very hot during the summer and this includes both the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico coasts. Interior Yucatan can also sizzle with temps upwards of a hundred sixteen degrees.
The summertime temperature in these areas virtually overwhelm an RV, even one with more than one air conditioner. RV'ers generally shun these areas in the summer. And an important thing to bear in mind is that few RV facilities in Mexico can handle the electrical load of a single roof type air conditioner never mind the fond thought of operating "multiple" units for cooling.
So what this boils down to are areas in Mexico that barely see ninety degrees but because the park power cannot handle a roof top air conditioner, RV'ers tend to flee rather than face the alternative.
A quality built "window" air conditioner of 5,000 btu rating can easily cool an RV bedroom that has thermal window curtains and a tight closing bedrrom door. The advantage of this type of cooler is that it ends up using but a third of the wattage. In warmer months (fewer RV's to load a park electrical's) a load of five amps is well within the limits of a fifteen amp park breaker. An RV roof top system gulps 15 amps running and up to thirty nine amps to start up.
But what about the rest of Mexico? How about the interior where summer temps hovel around seventy to eighty degrees? Take a good, hard look at your "comfort zone" with regards to a thermometer and hygrometer and you will discover that excessive humidity is every bit as uncomfortable at too much heat.
I have experimented with dehumidifiers and found that a good quality forty-pint capacity dehumidifier has the ability to make a steamy eighty degree coach comfortably dry---at an expense of a little more than three hundred watts. It can also suck excessive moisture out of clammy seventy or even sixty degree air without cooling the air.
Here's the rub-- An air conditioner can "dehumidify" air down to about sixty percent at maximum cooling. But sixty percent humidity is too much. A good balance of interior climate would be seventy eight degrees with thirty-five to forty percent humidity. You would be amazed at what you can do with less humidity and your own personal comfort zone.
I would love to be an experienced sheet-metal handyman that has the ability to cut a couple of holes in an RV (one facing forward and the second facing aft). Then I could use a couple of inexpensive window air conditioners. I would then hoist that two hundred pound useless air system off of the roof and sell it for twice what two window air conditioners plus a forty-pint dehumifier costs! The little window air units sometimes have remote controls. How many times have I had to launch myself out of bed at three AM to manually correct a temperature setting on a roof unit?
Where does one store a forty pint dehumidifier? Why in the shower of course. While showering it can be shuffled to the side of the bathroom or out the door. After showering, using dry hands and feet, start the dehumidifier and keep the bathroom door open. I move a dehumifier to near my closet and let it dry stored bedding, towels and clothing.
A refrigerator-freezer that is operated in thirty-five percent humidity needs to be defrosted just about one-third as often as it would be in seventy to eighty percent relative humidity.
In Mexico with two window units plus a dehumidifier can RV'er can use the bedroom unit with it's timer set to go off at say two AM. The dehumidifier can start up and by morning have the humidity somewhere around thirty percent. Upon arising shut every thing else off and start the living room AC. You are doing all of it for less than five amps current. Many times you will find park power adequate enough to operate one AC unit plus the dehumidifier (still roughly half the current of an average roof AC).
Oh yeah, window air conditioners have a 120 VAC appliance cord that plugs into the nearest wall receptacle.
Hmm, now how do I go about getting enough room to stuff both a window AC unit and a dehumidifier into my slide-in camper?
Saludos!
David