Having read all the posts about the air conditioning "lake" on the roof and the efforts to prevent that (e.g. parking with the rig slanted to the side to promote runoff), I considered this issue when deciding upon our new air conditioner.
Details of our decision process and investigation is below, but for those that want the short answer we installed a Dometic Air Conditioner Drain kit (https://www.amazon.com/Dometic-3107688-016-Penguin-Conditioner-Drain/dp/B003BIR9VQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530662353&sr=8-1&keywords=dometic+air+conditioner+drain+kit)
This it includes two cups (they are much larger than they look in the picture, about the size of someone's hand), an extra gasket (the normal gasket is squished - technical term here - to ½" height and 1" is needed for the cups) and tubing including a "T" connector. All parts look fairly well made with thick hard plastic (thick flexible plastic for the tubing).
The cups do have a grove at the top in case anything gets clogged up that allows the water to flow out onto the roof.
This item was made for a Dometic Penguin air conditioner for use with an AirStream or other RVs that have tubing running inside the RV walls and down to the walls. We have no tubing inside the RV walls and don't plan to put any there and didn't want to be emptying something daily inside the RV.
So we modified the use by flipping the cups 180 degrees so that the outlet for the water points to the outer side walls of the RV. The part the tubing connects to is easily accessible which is nice. We will be connecting the tubing from both sides together into the "T" connector on the roof, ensuring there is a downward slope and fastening this all down to the RV so it can be left there semi permanently (replacing as needed). We will use a longer tube down one of the sides (that longer tube to be removed when traveling or when the air conditioner is not being used for an extended time). I will be adding some UV protection to the plastic tubing (which is larger than expected, about the size of ½" ID copper pipe), likely using this Pipe Insulation (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-2-in-x-6-ft-Foam-Pipe-Insulation-ORP05812/204760811) if I don't find something better at Home Depot/Lowes. And likely adding something similar to the cups (larger pipe insulation is available at plumbing supply stores like Ferguson or Pacific Plumbing.
I think this will work well, I am certainly more pleased with the entire kit than I expected to be. We are adding the tubing sometime this week and I will take some pictures. I might even do some experiements to measure our drainage - just for fun :D
How we came up with this solution:
Water is damaging to all structures including our RVs - we all know this from the many posts about keeping your RV exterior seams/holes into the roof/sides sealed. The same as with a house. Knowing the damage water can cause, I was not keen to have a lake or a steady dripping of water and being in Phoenix AZ the next year or two where the Air Conditioner is run most of the time over the summer months (May thru Sept) this was a concern.
So I did research and calls to Dometic and Coleman (the two big manufacturers).
I did a lot of internet searching and found documentation for the Dometic air conditioning drainage kit documentation but it was very unclear it if was still available let alone any information about how it worked and how useful it was/wasn't so I didn't have high hopes for it.
The newer, more expensive air conditioners can include an extra pump to disburse the condensation water into the air to evaporate so it does not make a lake or drip down your RV sides. This sounded great to me, however, the Coleman tech I spoke to strongly discouraged buying their latest model which included this option, the Mach 8 (http://www.airxcel.com/coleman-mach/products/heat-pumps/mach-8-hp-15000), saying the Mach8 was not as robust as the older models (e.g. reading between the lines I took that to mean the kinks were not yet worked out of it yet) and that it was harder to work on since everything was condensed into a smaller space.
Dometic tech support is unreachable unless you are registered as an active dealer, you can only talk to customer support which does not have any technical knowledge and they are unable to talk to tech support either. Local service centers had little to no technical knowledge.
The Dometic and Coleman units that didn't have a separate motor to disburse condensation dealt with condensation the same. The condensation ran into a pan and came out weep holes to drip out onto the roof. When I asked about if the water could evaporate out of the pan (e.g. designed/constructed in such a way evaporation would be encouraged), I got a dead quiet response followed by no it will leak out via the week holes onto the roof.
For anyone who cares, while not being able to get to tech support would normally be a deal breaker for us, but we decided to go with the Dometic HE (high efficiency) 15000 BTU model as the power usage was significantly lower than the Coleman Mach 15 and the usage savings would be very tangible for our usage.
We have the Air Conditioner installed. It is louder than our older unit (low fan noise is equal to high fan noise of the old unit) but the fan is much more powerful and the unit is much colder). It actually gets too cold during the middle of the day so we never use it on full fan and highest cold temp. It blows air in all 4 directions as well as downward with all air outlets are adjustable for how much flow and some directionality, which is nicer than the 30 year old unit that only blew towards the front and the back of the rig. We are still playing with it and will get it fine-tuned as we go.
We bought the air conditioner from Panther RV Products - we had not used them before, but they had a very good price and were rated pretty well by users. We did have 2 small parts arrive damaged (air filter was bent, a pin was sheared off one of the small doors that directed air flow). We called them the next business day and they got those parts out to us in the mail that night.
Jane
Pics or it didn’t happen.....
Having read all the posts about the air conditioning "lake" on the roof and the efforts to prevent that (e.g. parking with the rig slanted to the side to promote runoff), I considered this issue when deciding upon our new air conditioner.
Details of our decision process and investigation is below, but for those that want the short answer we installed a Dometic Air Conditioner Drain kit (https://www.amazon.com/Dometic-3107688-016-Penguin-Conditioner-Drain/dp/B003BIR9VQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530662353&sr=8-1&keywords=dometic+air+conditioner+drain+kit)
This it includes two cups (they are much larger than they look in the picture, about the size of someone's hand), an extra gasket (the normal gasket is squished - technical term here - to ½" height and 1" is needed for the cups) and tubing including a "T" connector. All parts look fairly well made with thick hard plastic (thick flexible plastic for the tubing).
The cups do have a grove at the top in case anything gets clogged up that allows the water to flow out onto the roof.
This item was made for a Dometic Penguin air conditioner for use with an AirStream or other RVs that have tubing running inside the RV walls and down to the walls. We have no tubing inside the RV walls and don't plan to put any there and didn't want to be emptying something daily inside the RV.
So we modified the use by flipping the cups 180 degrees so that the outlet for the water points to the outer side walls of the RV. The part the tubing connects to is easily accessible which is nice. We will be connecting the tubing from both sides together into the "T" connector on the roof, ensuring there is a downward slope and fastening this all down to the RV so it can be left there semi permanently (replacing as needed). We will use a longer tube down one of the sides (that longer tube to be removed when traveling or when the air conditioner is not being used for an extended time). I will be adding some UV protection to the plastic tubing (which is larger than expected, about the size of ½" ID copper pipe), likely using this Pipe Insulation (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-2-in-x-6-ft-Foam-Pipe-Insulation-ORP05812/204760811) if I don't find something better at Home Depot/Lowes. And likely adding something similar to the cups (larger pipe insulation is available at plumbing supply stores like Ferguson or Pacific Plumbing.
I think this will work well, I am certainly more pleased with the entire kit than I expected to be. We are adding the tubing sometime this week and I will take some pictures. I might even do some experiements to measure our drainage - just for fun :D
How we came up with this solution:
Water is damaging to all structures including our RVs - we all know this from the many posts about keeping your RV exterior seams/holes into the roof/sides sealed. The same as with a house. Knowing the damage water can cause, I was not keen to have a lake or a steady dripping of water and being in Phoenix AZ the next year or two where the Air Conditioner is run most of the time over the summer months (May thru Sept) this was a concern.
So I did research and calls to Dometic and Coleman (the two big manufacturers).
I did a lot of internet searching and found documentation for the Dometic air conditioning drainage kit documentation but it was very unclear it if was still available let alone any information about how it worked and how useful it was/wasn't so I didn't have high hopes for it.
The newer, more expensive air conditioners can include an extra pump to disburse the condensation water into the air to evaporate so it does not make a lake or drip down your RV sides. This sounded great to me, however, the Coleman tech I spoke to strongly discouraged buying their latest model which included this option, the Mach 8 (http://www.airxcel.com/coleman-mach/products/heat-pumps/mach-8-hp-15000), saying the Mach8 was not as robust as the older models (e.g. reading between the lines I took that to mean the kinks were not yet worked out of it yet) and that it was harder to work on since everything was condensed into a smaller space.
Dometic tech support is unreachable unless you are registered as an active dealer, you can only talk to customer support which does not have any technical knowledge and they are unable to talk to tech support either. Local service centers had little to no technical knowledge.
The Dometic and Coleman units that didn't have a separate motor to disburse condensation dealt with condensation the same. The condensation ran into a pan and came out weep holes to drip out onto the roof. When I asked about if the water could evaporate out of the pan (e.g. designed/constructed in such a way evaporation would be encouraged), I got a dead quiet response followed by no it will leak out via the week holes onto the roof.
For anyone who cares, while not being able to get to tech support would normally be a deal breaker for us, but we decided to go with the Dometic HE (high efficiency) 15000 BTU model as the power usage was significantly lower than the Coleman Mach 15 and the usage savings would be very tangible for our usage.
We have the Air Conditioner installed. It is louder than our older unit (low fan noise is equal to high fan noise of the old unit) but the fan is much more powerful and the unit is much colder). It actually gets too cold during the middle of the day so we never use it on full fan and highest cold temp. It blows air in all 4 directions as well as downward with all air outlets are adjustable for how much flow and some directionality, which is nicer than the 30 year old unit that only blew towards the front and the back of the rig. We are still playing with it and will get it fine-tuned as we go.
We bought the air conditioner from Panther RV Products - we had not used them before, but they had a very good price and were rated pretty well by users. We did have 2 small parts arrive damaged (air filter was bent, a pin was sheared off one of the small doors that directed air flow). We called them the next business day and they got those parts out to us in the mail that night.
Jane
Please let us know how these devices work eliminating Lake Newton.
Chris