Standalone Air Con for overnight

BH-WGC · Apr 30, 2015

Hi - first post!

Very seriously considering a California Beach our local dealer has.

The thing that puts me off is there's no overnight Air Con (the one I'm looking at buying has the Aux Heater fitted as an extra - but obviously that just heats) - and as we're looking at using it in Europe over the summer, it's the one thing that's stopping me.

So... how about this?

http://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/aircube-max/electriq-aircubemax-air-conditioner

Seems neat, compact... but would this work off the leisure battery does anyone know?

Any help please - many thanks!!!

snowy55 · Apr 30, 2015

Would work ok if on hook up, 610w is far too much on leisure batteries and the noise would personally drive me mad.

BH-WGC · Apr 30, 2015

Thanks Snowy. I know the noise would be a pain. Out of interest, what can the leisure battery give out in terms of watts?

shambly · Apr 30, 2015

The built in inverter is 120W I believe.

I'd expect the compressor start-up power to be much higher than the 610W running power too.

You can easily source a higher power inverter at reasonable cost but the issue is the battery capacity. It is only 144Ah (2 x 72Ah)

600W is 50 Amps of current at 12V or 50Ah of battery capacity every hour of run time. So the 144 Ah of capacity in the California isn't going to last very long, especially as ideally you don't want to discharge them below 50%...

snowy55 · Apr 30, 2015

On an SE Cali the 240v supply that comes from the leisure batteries via the inverter is 150w max.

estresao · Apr 30, 2015

The Cali Beach has no inverter

BH-WGC · Apr 30, 2015

Hmmm - confused!

rippers · Apr 30, 2015

We went through this last year with the Beach. That unit looks quite good actually but problem with air conditioning units is always how you vent the hot air, plus you need hook up.

This is our set up whilst we where in Barcelona last year

We saw these units at http://www.coolmycamper.com/ which is a Eurom AC2400 and bought from http://www.ts24.nl/product_info.php/info/7624/Eurom-AC-2400-Caravan-Camper-Airco/ for a lot cheaper.
If you interested I'll go into how we mounted it as it took some adapting. However I wouldn't recommend this unit!

This set up come with two units which are very big and heavy to transport and they are attached together permanently by an annoyingly short umbilical cord, so you need two people to move them about. Our set up despite looking a bit Heath Robinson worked really well and the van was like a fridge! however the unit only lasted two nights (into our 2 weeks trip) before it leaked its coolant inside the van! lost its charge then basically turned into 27kg dead weight that took up half the boot and was in the way for the rest of the holiday.. not happy to say the least. Was able to eventually return it for a full refund thou when we got back to UK (after berating the Dutch company on Twitter!).

We are going back to Spain again this year and honestly I wouldn't bother with the aircon unit in it again. We were in Southern Spain in August and thought we would die when that aircon unit packed up and to be honest it was actually ok. We had a 12v Fan down stairs which got the air moving and upstairs with the windows unzipped it was like sleeping outside.

estresao · Apr 30, 2015

BH-WGC said:
Hmmm - confused!

The Califorbia Beach has no inverter.The hook up option, provides you with a battery charger and a 230v "indoor" socket, but not an inverter. The internal socket only works when the van is connected to the external source.

On the another hand, the California Beach has not two leisure batteries but only one.

BH-WGC · Apr 30, 2015

rippers said:
We went through this last year with the Beach. That unit looks quite good actually but problem with air conditioning units is always how you vent the hot air, plus you need hook up.

This is our set up whilst we where in Barcelona last year

We saw these units at http://www.coolmycamper.com/ which is a Eurom AC2400 and bought from http://www.ts24.nl/product_info.php/info/7624/Eurom-AC-2400-Caravan-Camper-Airco/ for a lot cheaper.
If you interested I'll go into how we mounted it as it took some adapting. However I wouldn't recommend this unit!

This set up come with two units which are very big and heavy to transport and they are attached together permanently by an annoyingly short umbilical cord, so you need two people to move them about. Our set up despite looking a bit Heath Robinson worked really well and the van was like a fridge! however the unit only lasted two nights (into our 2 weeks trip) before it leaked its coolant inside the van! lost its charge then basically turned into 27kg dead weight that took up half the boot and was in the way for the rest of the holiday.. not happy to say the least. Was able to eventually return it for a full refund thou when we got back to UK (after berating the Dutch company on Twitter!).

We are going back to Spain again this year and honestly I wouldn't bother with the aircon unit in it again. We were in Southern Spain in August and thought we would die when that aircon unit packed up and to be honest it was actually ok. We had a 12v Fan down stairs which got the air moving and upstairs with the windows unzipped it was like sleeping outside.

Brilliant - thanks for all that detail, really useful. And reassuring!

BH-WGC · Apr 30, 2015

estresao said:
The Califorbia Beach has no inverter.The hook up option, provides you with a battery charger and a 230v "indoor" socket, but not an inverter. The internal socket only works when the van is connected to the external source.

On the another hand, the California Beach has not two leisure batteries but only one.

Thanks - shame to hear we couldn't boil a travel kettle in the morning without being hooked up.

zeratul · Jun 15, 2015

I was also surprised to find out the 230v is not working in a beach unless on hookup. But I'm planning to study the electrical schema and have that changed.. I will build in my own invertor and try to (auto or manually) switch the 230v socket to the invertor when not on hookup (in our case > 90% of the time).

barry · Jun 15, 2015

I parked 10m away from a Cali in the algarve with an externally- temporarily-mounted ac unit which whined all through the night. Made even worse by the fact we were sleeping upstairs with all windows zipped open. Temp and humidity were comfortable for us but the whine kept us awake a bit.
I chatted to the owner next day about it and he said they'd adapted to it and don't notice it.

WelshGas · Jun 15, 2015

Zeratul, I would suggest you rethink your idea. An inverter running on your leisure battery will not power any significant mains unit for very long.

Eg. Mains appliance 230v , 6amps = 1380 watts.

12v inverter able to supply that amount of power will be using 115 amps at 12v

You would need massive cables, a 150amp fuse and your leisure battery would be totally dead and useless in 30 minutes.

It is a long time since I studied Physics so I could be wrong but I don't think so. The SE inverter is only a 150 watt unit. Good for charging personal electronic items or a laptop if you don't have a 12v charger, but very little else.