Air conditioning question

[sgtsilverman]

I have a 93 Vectra Diesel with basement air. The air works well. My question is this, the air ducts send most of the air to the front half of the motorhome, leaving 3 ducts for the bedroom. Our bedroom seems to get stuffy at night, which results in our lowering the thermostat making the front cold so the bedroom is comfortable. Can I safely block 1 or 2 of the forward ducts to force more air to the rear?

Thanks to all for your help.

Bob

[Harry B]

You can close a couple but not to many. If you reduce airflow to much it may freeze shutting the compressors down until the ice forming is gone. During that period you won't have cooling at all if it freezes.

[Mr_D]

If like normal the sizes are set for all to remain fully open, that's the way I was told they designed the systems.

[peggwn]

We too have an air conditioning problem. Ours is a basement unit. Our rig is described below. Up until last week it has worked great. When we got home last week and parked, we turned the A/C off, waited about 5 minutes and turned the generator off. We turned off everything else and locked her up. 8 days later, went out to move her and the entire house was dead. Our batteries are less than 5 months old. The engine started just fine, but the generator would not. We moved her to the drive and plugged in. We currently only have a 20 amp hook-up for our 30 amp rig. We tried to crank the generator but no go; it would turn over but would not start. After about 30 minutes on the shore line we were able to crank it up. The only thing we could figure happened was we had her parked under trees to keep cool and so the solar charger did not work. But then we thought, why would the batteries go down anyway with nothing on. Well, after a while we shut down the generator and the batteries showed full charge.

A little while later we heard what sounded like the A/C running, and sure enough it was! It was not blowing air however, and we did not even have it on. We checked the amps usage and it was up to 17 amps, yet 5 minutes earlier it showed 2 amps. The thermostat was set to A/C AUTO in the OFF position, just like we left it 8 days earlier. The inside temp was 87 so we tried setting the thermostat to 98, but it still would cycle on and off after a few minutes (and no blowing air). We now reckon that's what drained the batteries. But it's never done this before. We finally used the breakers to turn it off for now. Can anyone offer any guidance? Thanks.

[NeilV]

One of the relays may be stuck inside the control panel of the basement air unit or the circuit board in the thermostat may have cracked the last time you turned it off.

You can download the manual for you basement air unit from the AirXcel web site and it will tell you how the read the diagnostic lights on the control board inside the unit so you can get an idea of whats going on.

Airxcel | RV Products | Tech Info

[Jbmsr]

Originally Posted by sgtsilverman

I have a 93 Vectra Diesel with basement air. The air works well. My question is this, the air ducts send most of the air to the front half of the motorhome, leaving 3 ducts for the bedroom. Our bedroom seems to get stuffy at night, which results in our lowering the thermostat making the front cold so the bedroom is comfortable. Can I safely block 1 or 2 of the forward ducts to force more air to the rear?



Thanks to all for your help.



Bob

Hi Bob
My 06 Suncrieser did that as well. The a/c duct is restricted at the bedroom to move most of the air to the front by design. I also like the bedroom colder. Closing vents wasn't an option for me as I wanted the system to work most efficient. I removed the vents in the bedroom and used my phone to take flash pictures and also felt the restriction area. I used a knife to trim the styrofoam restricted area. My problem was solved until I went to sleep then my DW would close the bedroom vents complaining it was too cold. I can't win man!
Jesse

[dc8cappie]

I purchased two more vents and added them in the bedroom. Cheap and easy fit, I'm.

[Tom N]

I would replace the front registers with register that can open and close. You'd then be able to partially close the registers in the area where little air flow is wanted.

-Tom, W3TLN

BYW, I had a 1994 Vectra. It was a great coach. Would still have it but the wife wanted slides.

[peggwn]

Thanks, Neil. We'll print those out and do some exploratory diagnostics. We'll let everyone know the results.