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
Air Conditioners and more Air Conditioners
Well, the past couple of weeks have seen a slew of air conditioner service- starting with a simply check out of a new (used) rig.
On this rig (1995, or 11 years old), everything checked out fine- standard cleaning of the LP appliances, testing 120 volt and 12 volt systems, leak testing the LP system, etc. Then I get up to the air conditioner. One glance at the filters, and I figured it would be a candidate for a good cleaning, and I was right.
