Yankee Ingenuity vs. Southern Heat and Humidity

I don’t deal well with heat, and I've never dealt well with heat. I would get sick on car trips as a kid, and I found that it helped to be cool. But, the back seat was too far from the A/C, so I used tape and some plastic trash bags to create a hose that would blow cold air right into my face. My parents actually took a picture of an early version (below).

One Happy (and cool) Kid

When it comes to car camping, I can endure the occasional blazing inferno if absolutely necessary, but there must be a better way. For a while, I used some magnetic window screens custom made for my vehicle, made by a family in the St. Louis area…

The Skeeter Beater

The screens are an innovative and effective solution, and I have used them successfully and often. However, several years ago, on a car camping adventure near the Smoky Mountains in mid-August, I tried to sleep one evening, but the temp was 90, and this was at nine o’clock at night. At that point, all I had was a fan, but fans don’t touch the misery of a guy from Wisconsin trying to sleep at 90 degrees with intense humidity. Screens don’t fix 90.

So, on that miserably hot and humid trip, I started looking into options for cooling a car. Sure, I could just leave the car running all night, but I didn’t want to use the fuel, and I certainly didn’t want the wear and tear issues of leaving a car idling for 8-10 hours. Plus, I wasn’t wild about the possibility of being overcome with carbon monoxide and waking up dead.

So I started researching portable air conditioners. For a brief moment, I considered the idea of freezing water in a 5-gallon bucket with a fan on top, but how do I re-freeze a bucket of water while camping? This might help a little bit for one night, but I’m gone for more than a week at a time. Plus, this wouldn’t touch the humidity issues; in fact, it would probably make it worse (a fan blowing warm air over a block of ice all night).

Bucket A/C

I considered a commercially available portable A/C unit, the kind they make for doghouses and for cooling small places like computer closets. I thought about mounting the main unit on a roof rack or roof basket and running the vent hoses down through a specially designed window fitting in a partially closed window. Most of these units, though, are more than $500, and I’m trying to save money, not spend more money.

Climate Right

Climate Right

A slightly cheaper option is a portable room air conditioner, often available at places like Home Depot. I could put one of these in the passenger seat and vent the warm exhaust out a window. But these things are huge. Plus, as I started reading, I realized that many of them either need a drain or have a bucket that needs to be constantly emptied (like a dehumidifier). There must be a better way.

Portable A/C

At some point, I took our car in for service, and our mechanic had posted a clipping of a beat-up old car with a generator strapped on the trunk and a window A/C unit sticking out one of the windows. That’s it! But since my car is already wired for “shore power” (see my previous post on this), I definitely don’t need the generator. So, I went home and did some more research. I’ll admit that some of my motivation came from some sites like this one:

Crazy A/C 

I took some measurements, did some more research online, went on Amazon and ordered the smallest window unit I could find, the Frigidaire FFRA0511R1 5,000 BTU 115V Window-Mounted Mini-Compact Air Conditioner with Mechanical Controls, 15 x 16 x 12 inches:

Amazon: Frigidaire Window Unit A/C

Once the unit arrived, I set out to find a way to mount it in the window in a way that would be safe and fairly weather-tight, and in a way that would be cheap (using materials from our local Habitat Restore). The unit would also need to tip ever so slightly outward, to keep the condensation from running back into the car. After some trial and error, I cut a piece of plywood the exact size of the bottom of the unit, carefully measured, and then screwed two pieces of old wooden handrail on the bottom of the plywood (nearly, but not quite parallel to each other, due to the fact that my “window ledge” is slightly wider at the back than at the front). After finishing the ledge in weatherproof exterior paint, I then carefully screwed the plywood contraption to the bottom of the A/C unit, being very careful to not puncture anything critical. Since the outer handrail would be resting on the exterior finish of the car, I covered it with a piece of pipe insulation. Once everything was together, the unit fit perfectly on the ledge and was perfectly balanced.

I then made a cardboard template of the hole that was left around the outside of the A/C unit. This is the gap that would need to be filled to seal out hot air and rain. I considered some kind of wooden trim, but the side of the car curves inward toward the top, so it needed to be flexible. I toyed with the idea of foam sheeting (from a craft store) or some kind of sheet of rubber (like in an inner tube), but these would be a little too flimsy. While roaming our local Menard’s store, I walked by the floor runners that are available by the foot. This might work! I ultimately decided on a rubber floor runner, since it is rather substantial and thicker than a sheet of rubber. I got about three feet, took it home, and cut it according to the template. I then used some industrial-strength rubber adhesive to glue a series of crazy-strong magnets on what would be the outside of the rubber trim, but I only installed the magnets (obviously) where they would make contact (through the rubber mat) with the steel of the car.

The contraption was coming together, but I still needed a way to make the gap a little more secure. So, I went back to our local Habitat Restore and got some kind of steel channel about ¾” deep. I cut two of these to the appropriate length and mounted them with screws (at the appropriate angle, matching the angle of the car exterior) to both sides of the A/C unit. This would be somewhat weatherproof and would give a good barrier between the hot side and the cold side of the A/C unit.

Finally, success! On the day I worked on this project, the temp was around 90, so it was the perfect opportunity to run a test. With the A/C unit perched on the window ledge, I deployed the rubber trim, plugged in the unit, and turned it on. Within minutes, the temp in the car started plummeting, and within half an hour, the temp in the car was down in the mid 60’s. Yes!!!

When I called my wife outside to show her the contraption, she rolled her eyes and said she would be getting me some of those stick-on jewels to go on the outside of it. “Why?” I asked. “Glamping,” she said. I had finally crossed the line from camping to glamping (a combination of "glamorous" and "camping," I'm afraid).

Before wrapping it up, I got a little concerned about the unit falling out of the car. My concern was rolling over in the middle of the night, giving it a good elbow-jab, and having it scratch the whole side of the car on it’s way down to disastrous contact with the earth. So, I got a length of strap and a buckle, installed an old drawer pull under the outer lip of the base, and whenever I deploy this thing, I simply run the strap around the roof rail. This lets some of the weight rest on the outward side, pretty much preventing it from falling inward, while assuring it won’t fall outward. I also became slightly concerned about how watertight this would be in a driving rain. So, I basically built an awning that hooks over the roof rail and deploys right to the edge of the unit.

I have now used this contraption on two ten-day trips to Tennessee in August, and it has been awesome. I store it just inside the back driver’s side of the Outback, right next to the end of the bed platform. The rubber mat stores quite nicely on the upside down awning, and this travels on the end of the bed platform. When I set up camp for the night, I plug in, deploy the A/C, and within 20 minutes or so, the interior is rather chilly. Before dozing off, I usually turn it on low, and it has been great.

On my way down to Tennessee last week, I camped at Turkey Run State Park in west-central Indiana, and some fellow campers stopped by a took some pictures of the setup. I’m not sure whether they were impressed with the idea or perplexed by the crazy old guy from Wisconsin. Either way, I had a cool night of peaceful sleep.

Electricity: One Giant Leap in Car-Camping Comfort

When I first started camping in a vehicle, I really wanted a way to be able to get electricity into the car overnight, knowing that this would open up a world of possibilities, making the difference between comfort and mere survival. Creating a level place to sleep was a requirement for me, but having electricity would lead to unimaginable luxury. In my mind, this luxury would involve having a way to charge a laptop and cell phone, having a light that didn’t run on batteries, and ultimately having a way to heat and cool the space. Yes, cool the space (that will come in a future post). But before heading down this road, I ruled out the expense of battery packs and all sorts of inverters. I wanted cheap, simple, proven, and reliable, and the system had to be quick and easy to deploy at a moment’s notice (in the dark, in the rain, in the snow, and so on).

Since many state parks and private campgrounds provide electricity at their RV sites, I simply needed an easy way to get the electric into the vehicle. For a time or two, I simply strung an extension cord through an open window. This worked. However, I quickly discovered some drawbacks – rain and mosquitoes. I needed a way to get power through the “hull” of the vehicle without leaving a window open.

Early on, we simply strung an extension cord through the window (Ridgway State Park, Colorado)

A quick search online led me to discover the concept of “shore power.” When boats dock, many have the ability to “plug in,” so that they use power from the “shore” instead needing to constantly generate power on board; thus, “shore power.” I went to a local marine supply shop to see what might be available, but the solution I decided on for our Honda Odyssey was a shore power inlet ordered through Amazon.com. For about $15 (and another $15 for the 1-7/8” bit), and another $10 for about two feet of 12-2 wire and a female plug end, I had the necessary materials.

Shore Power Inlet (for getting power through the hull of a boat)

If I had it to do over, I might use one more like this (no wiring required, the cord is built in)

What hurt the most was drilling the hole in the rear drivers-side quarter panel of our van! It just seemed wrong to drill a hole in a perfectly good van, but I knew that with 150k miles on it, every mile from here on out was a pure blessing from God, so I might as well drill away and make this home away from home quite a bit more functional.

I found a place where I could access the port on the inside (where the interior trim curved outward and stayed pretty much right next to the exterior steel), and I drilled away. From there, it was simply a matter of installing the port and doing some basic wiring. When the project was completed, all I had to do was pull up to a campsite, run an extension cord from the power box at the campsite and plug it into the port, and then I had power on the inside of the vehicle, with no rain and no mosquitoes.

Although the backside of the shore power inlet is not pictured directly, this is the short cord on the interior of the van

This setup worked for years until I moved into the Subaru. With fewer miles, I knew I’d have a much harder time talking my wife into drilling a hole in the side of our Subaru. So there must be another way.

While looking around under the rear of the car, I noticed rubber plugs in two drain holes (?) in the spare tire well. I also noticed that Subaru provided threaded holes for tow bolts (covered by a little plastic pop-out piece when the hooks are not deployed) – one hook port in the front bumper, and one hook port in the rear bumper. After removing the spare and removing one of the drain plugs, I threaded a heavy gauge all-weather 15-foot extension cord through the bottom of the spare tire well, under the rear bumper cover, and out the tow-bolt port. I then installed the tow hook and zip-tied the male end of the extension cord to the tow-bolt. I then cut a slot in the spare tire drain plug before reinstalling it around the cord (to keep water from coming up through the drain hole). I then reinstalled the spare tire and ran the female end of the extension cord into the trunk area of the Subaru. Mission accomplished – power in the cabin without drilling any holes!

Drain hole in the bottom of the spare tire well

Extension cord running from the drain hole under the rear bumper cover

The current set-up: Extension cord coming out of the rear tow-hook port and zip-tied to the tow hook

NOTE: For a while, I put only a few feet of the cord in the car and coiled about 10 feet on the tow hook, thinking that I could pull up to a campsite, un-Velcro the coil, and plug in. What happened, though, is that the coiled cord had a tendency to flop rather noisily in the breeze while driving. So, what I do now is carry a 25-foot, 12-gauge, all-weather extension cord with me, and I use it to bridge the gap between the car and the power at each campsite. I’ve found that this is much easier and faster to deploy each night and to quickly re-coil when leaving the campsite each morning.

The original "coil" that I left attached to the tow hook.

On the inside, I’ve discovered that the best outlet multiplier is a 5-outlet multiplier made by Yellow Jacket. The model I’m using allows everything to be plugged in at the same time. Some of the others I considered had plugs that were too close together for some electronics and their oversized plugs.

Yellow Jacket Heavy Duty Outlet Multiplier

For light, I leave a small switched-nightlight plugged in so that I can use it if necessary. The small light is perfect for reading and for setting up the interior for camping at night. The remaining plugs are used for charging my phone and laptop, heat, a fan, a bucket heater for shower water (more on that in a future post), and A/C (again, more on that in a future post).

LED Nightlight with On/Off Switch

This setup has worked nearly everywhere, with the one exception being a park in Washington State that only had 30-amp service. Later that day (on my way to another park), I went out to Wal-Mart and picked up a 30-amp to 15-amp adapter that I now keep with my car-camping gear. Nearly all RV sites provide 15-amp service in addition to higher amperage, but this one provided only 30-amp, so I am now prepared for next time.

30-amp Service at Lake Easton State Park (Washington)

30-amp to 15-amp Converter

Adding electric to the car-camping experience has been a huge blessing. Some state parks charge a few dollars more for a site with electric service, but it is well worth it!