Tune Up Your Rooftop A/C
This is a post I wrote in 2008 for the RV.net blog- they have removed all old posts, and while it was written a while ago, it’s still relevant, so I am reprinting it here.
Tune up your Rooftop Air Conditioner
In some parts of the country, the heat is already here- in other parts, it’s well on its way, so I thought it might be good to talk about giving your rooftop air conditioner a basic tuneup.
A couple of things to remember about roof top RV air conditioners- all air conditioners work by removing heat (actually, all refrigeration works that way- as do heat pumps), and RV air conditioner- as they come from the factory- are hermetically sealed, and they only hold about 1 pound of refrigerant (at this time, R-22 is the refrigerant used when I first wrote this, now R-410A is the refrigerant of choice). The point of this is that with less than 1 pound of refrigerant and a sealed system, 99% of the time, “not enough cooling” complaints are due to air flow issues, and not lack of “Freon®”
Luckily, the average fix for this is easy- clean the coils! Let’s take a look at how to do this…. Read more
