Hot Weather Tips to Keep Your RV Cool

There is no doubt summertime is prime time for RV camping. The weather is great, the kids are out of school and exciting new adventures await you around the next bend. What more could an RVer ask for? How about a nice cool RV to beat some of the heat? It can be challenging to keep your RV cool when the mercury is rising, but following these simple tips is a good start:

The first thing you should do is make sure the RV air conditioner is operating properly. Lots of folks don’t know this, but an air conditioner that is working efficiently will condition the air 16 to 22 degrees lower than the ambient temperature. This simply means if it is 90 degrees in the RV, a properly operating air conditioner will cool the interior space somewhere between 68 to 74 degrees.

The next step to staying cool is inspecting and cleaning the air conditioner filters. Clean filters will improve the efficiency considerably. There are a couple options for cleaning the filters. You can wash them in warm soapy water, rinse thoroughly and let them dry, or you can clean them using a vacuum cleaner attachment. It’s a good idea to keep a new set of filters in the RV in the event the old filters have seen better days.

When it’s hot outside and you make campground reservations or check in at the campground office, be sure to ask for a shady campsite. The shade helps keep the RV cool and helps the RV refrigerator and air conditioner operate more efficiently.

After you get set-up and settled in, use our patio awning and window awning to provide additional shade and assist in keeping the RV cool. Closing window blinds or day/night shades help keep the cooler air in and the heat out.

Your RV refrigerator is directly affected by outside temperatures. Parking in the shade will help the refrigerator work more efficiently. Another thing that helps is a thermostatically controlled refrigerator vent fan. These fans dissipate heat from behind the refrigerator moving it up and out of the vent. If you are mechanically inclined, refrigerator vent fans are fairly easy to install, or you can have your local RV dealer install one for you. Either way it’s worth it! A properly installed vent fan can improve the refrigerator’s performance by up to 40 percent.

Another element in keeping the RV cool is proper ventilation. Proper ventilation helps prevent excess heat from building up in your RV. You can install vent covers over the RV roof vents to allow for ventilation. They are inexpensive, easy to install and they let the fresh air in (even when it’s raining) while the heat escapes. You can use vent covers on each end of our RV to help promote cross ventilation.

Fans are another way to promote ventilation in the RV. There are roof mounted high powered 12-volt ventilation fans with intake and exhaust functions, or you can take some portable fans with you.
A few other tips are to start and run the air conditioner early in the morning when it is cooler outside, try to avoid opening the entry door as much as possible, and to cook outside rather than inside whenever possible.