It’s summer, it’s hot, you are living in your campervan down by the river, having to balance parking in the shade with getting enough sun to charge up your van’s batteries, and you are wondering how you get started with van life air conditioning? Either that or you are building out your campervan, getting ready to begin your vanlife journey, and figuring out how to stay cool in your campervan.
Either way, we have you covered. With over three years of combined buslife and vanlife experience, we have learned our way around van life air conditioning and staying cool in the summer.
Staying Cool In Your Campervan
Summers can get when traveling in a campervan. If you cannot travel with the weather or cannot go to higher elevations staying cool can quickly become a challenge. High temperatures make it uncomfortable for you while traveling and can be dangerous if you travel with pets.
Unfortunately, there is a bit more to staying cool in the summer than just parking in the shade under a tree. There are three main parts to keeping the inside of your campervan cool during the summer.
- Insulation: An uninsulated campervan acts like an oven. The inside of your van will heat up fast. when parked in direct sunlight. In temperatures around 90°F, the interior of an uninsulated vehicle can reach over 140°F. Having insulation in your campervan will help prevent the inside of your van from heating up too much.
- Window Covers: Insulation can only do so much if you have a bunch of windows in your campervan. Glass is highly thermally conductive. Having insulated window covers or window inserts made out of Reflectix helps significantly. By having Reflectix in our campervan’s windows, we can drop the inside temperature by 10°-20°F.
- Air Circulation: Even a perfectly insulation campervan will get warm inside if you do not have adequate air circulation. Preferably, you will want to be able to cycle fresh air into your van continuously. A constant supply of fresh air will help prevent your campervan from slowly heating up as the day goes by.
What About Normal Air Conditioning?
You are probably looking at that list wondering, “what about air conditioning?”. The truth is, you do not really need air conditioning in a campervan unless you cannot travel with the weather. When it gets hot, we, and most full-time vanlifers, either head north, head to the mountains or find a body of water like Lake Michigan to spend the summer at.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an air conditioner, though. Having an AC is necessary if you cannot travel with the weather. Even if you can travel with the weather having an AC can make vanlife way more comfortable.
We have a DIY window unit air conditioner that we carry with us for hot or even just warm days that we want to have the inside of our campervan stay nice and cool.
Van life Air Conditioning Options
MaxxAir Fan
MaxxAir fans are the go-to means of keeping your campervan cool. A MaxxAir fan is a 12v powered roof fan capable of blowing fresh air into your campervan along with pulling air out of the inside of your van. MaxxAir fans are capable of moving 900 cubic feet of air per minute. One fan can replace all the air inside your campervan every few minutes when running on high.
For a Max fan to work correctly, you’ll need to combine your MaxxAir fan with an open window, window vents, or even a second Max fan for the best cooling. With two Max fans, we can keep inside of our van comfortable until about 90°F when parked in direct sun.
Removable Window Vents
Window vents are a game-changer that we only recently discovered. When paired with a MaxxAir fan, window vents can provide steady airflow through the front of your van that can help prevent heat buildup. Window vents are held in place by the driver and passenger’s window channels and are typically secured by rolling up the window until the vent is pressed into place.
The window vents we use are made out of aluminum and have a c-shaped channel along the bottom edge that the window slides into, making the vents impossible to remove from the outside of the van. We liked the secured design of these window vents as we feel comfortable leaving them in place when we leave the van somewhere. Plus, they came with bug screens!
It is also possible to make your own window vents for your campervan. Most DIY vents use plastic gutter covers that are then cut down to the shape of your window opening. If you have some screen material available, you can also add some screen to the inside of your DIY window vents to prevent bugs from entering your van.
Swamp Cooler Air Conditioning For Van Life
If you plan on traveling in areas with low humidity, then a swamp cooler, also known as an evaporative cooler, could be an excellent option for your campervan. Swamp coolers work by drawing hot air into a chamber that contains ice water. The hot air rapidly drops in temperature before being blown out of the cooler by a fan.
Swamp coolers can be highly effective in low humidity environments, dropping the ambient temperature in a given area by up to 25°F. Unfortunately, due to how swamp coolers work, they are ineffective if you are in a region with higher humidity. As air can not effectively cool the air by passing over ice water.
You can make a simple DIY swamp cooler with an old portable drink cooler that you are not using anymore or just a five-gallon bucket. As long as airflow goes over ice water before being blown into your living space, it should help you stay cool.
RV Rooftop Van Life Air Conditioning
An RV rooftop air conditioner is the ultimate way to stay cool during the hot summer months. RV air conditioners work the same way that household ACs work. They have a freon that cools a condenser that hot is blown over to rapidly cool the air before entering the inside of your campervan. Some even have heat pumps that can keep you warm and toasty in the winter.
Due to their high energy consumption, RV air conditioners are not practical for off-grid camping for most campervans. Additionally, RV air conditioners mounted on your rooftop means you have less room to install solar panels.
That is not to say it can not be done. If you can go all out and have a massive solar system in your van, it is possible to use an RV rooftop air conditioner off-grid. Converting a bus instead of a van gives you way more roof space for solar panels and more interior space for batteries. Both of which make running a rooftop RV air conditioner off-grid easier.
If being able to be off-grid and the amount of solar you can have on your van doesn’t matter much for you. Or, if you know you will be staying in locations where you can plug into a power outlet for long periods, then a rooftop RV air conditioner is one of the best ways to keep cool.
DIY Window Unit Van life Air Conditioner
As much as we try, we cannot always travel with the weather. That means we need an air conditioner for our campervan every now and again. We can’t install a rooftop RV air conditioner as being entirely off-grid is important for us, and while swamp coolers work, they do not provide enough cooling ability for us. So we came up with our own DIY solution for van life air conditioning.
We designed a wooden insert that fits our driver’s side window and holds a standard window unit. A standard 5,000 BTU air conditioner works perfectly for our extended-length campervan. Even when we get up to 100°F temperatures, we stay cool and comfortable inside. The only downside is that we need to be somewhere to plug an extension cord in so we can run the air conditioner.
How We Built Our DIY Van Life Air Conditioner
We built our window unit mount in three parts. A lower section over the window channels of the door that rests on the door. This lower section has the shelf that the window unit sits on. Two upper sections hold the window unit in place. One on the inside and one on the outside of the door. These upper sections are placed between the top of the door’s window frame and the top of the window unit. When all three parts are in place, the window unit is secured and has no risk of falling out.
We made our DIY window unit mount out of leftover scrap wood. To get the correct shape of the window, we used butcher paper to create a template. There was a bunch of trial and error to get a final shape that worked best for us. The shape of each part will be slightly different for everyone depending on the van you have and what type of window unit you use.
We have been thrilled with our air conditioner solution so far. The best part is that everything can be stored underneath our bed when we do not need an air conditioner. If an air conditioner is required, we can pull the window unit out and stick it in our door to keep us cool.
TL;DR
- Have good insulation: You will not be able to keep the inside of your van comfortable if your van is not insulated correctly. An uninsulated van is no different from an oven.
- Have window covers: Glass provides no insulation due to being a great heat conductor. Make sure to have insulated window covers made with Reflectix to prevent heat from entering your van through your windows.
- Have good airflow: A van with no air circulation is a hot van, even if fully insulated. It is essential to have good airflow to remove hot air from inside your van.
- Travel with the weather: The best way to stay cool in your campervan is to travel with the weather. When summer starts, head north and to higher elevations. For winter, head south and to lower elevations.
- Rooftop ACs draw a lot of power: Rooftop RV air conditioners draw a large amount of power, making them challenging to use off-grid.
- Have a MaxxAir fan and window vents: Having a Max fan along with window vents helps have good air circulation to keep you cool.
- Have a removable air conditioner: Having a removable air conditioner for your campervan like our DIY vanlife window unit allows you to have an AC when you need it without taking up valuable roof space.
