Air Conditioner Swap?

[IL_Travelers]

Is the Truma air conditioning unit a viable swap to eliminate or greatly lessen cabin noise?  
Is the Atwood available?
I will gladly pay “whatever” to have any quiet unit installed. 

Who could do this for us. We are in Illinois; however, have wheels, will travel!

HELP!  This is nuts. The noise is deafening!

[NCeagle]

IL_Travelers, several owners have replaced the Dometic with a RecPro Houghton unit.  There's a pretty nice thread with a lot of information in it on the model numbers, noise levels, etc.:  https://olivertraveltrailers.com/forums/search/?q=earplugs&quick=1   We have a Houghton and it's very quiet.  Haven't used it a ton yet, but so far so good.

[IL_Travelers]

Thank you so much.  Just what I needed to see!

[SeaDawg]

The Houghton is very, very quiet. Katana pilot found it at recrpro, and provided a link. 

The Coleman mach 10 ndq is also quite quiet, according to reliable reviewers like fitrv and technomadia. It's pretty difficult to find, also, though one dealer has the black (not for me) outdoor unit on sale this week. Coleman has been around a long time, and Winnebago uses the ndq in some of their vans, so it might be easier to find parts and service for the ndq, going down the road.

Dometic is supposed to have released one of their European inverter ac units for retrofit, but I  haven't seen one anywhere, yet .

Good luck.

 

[Linda Ruble]

Did you change out to the Houghton unit yourself?

[SeaDawg]

1 hour ago, Linda Ruble said:

Did you change out to the Houghton unit yourself?

If you are asking that of me, yes. I, my husband, and a friend did the swapout from a 2008 dometic (very heavy) to the smaller Houghton 9500 btu in an afternoon. 

As far as I  know, four or five of us have swapped for Houghton unuts,,and we've all done it ourselves. 

Any good rv shop could do it, if the would tackle it. Not difficult. The most difficult part for us was getting the very heavy old Dometic off the roof, safely. Second most difficult,  getting the new Houghton unit on the roof,  safely. The rest was pretty easy.  Thank goodness for younger friends,  good ladders, and safety ropes.

[Kaleigh]

So good to know this is an option - ours doesn’t bother us too much by using a rain noise machine BUT definitely would swap if we ever started having any issues with ours. Thanks for the info!

[Roadrunner]

On 6/3/2021 at 11:08 AM, IL_Travelers said:

Thank you so much.  Just what I needed to see!

 

On 6/17/2021 at 6:29 PM, SeaDawg said:

If you are asking that of me, yes. I, my husband, and a friend did the swapout from a 2008 dometic (very heavy) to the smaller Houghton 9500 btu in an afternoon. 

As far as I  know, four or five of us have swapped for Houghton unuts,,and we've all done it ourselves. 

Any good rv shop could do it, if the would tackle it. Not difficult. The most difficult part for us was getting the very heavy old Dometic off the roof, safely. Second most difficult,  getting the new Houghton unit on the roof,  safely. The rest was pretty easy.  Thank goodness for younger friends,  good ladders, and safety ropes.

Did you opt for the 9500 btu unit for its lower power requirement and how is the cooling.   

[SeaDawg]

We opted for the 9500, for the smaller size and less power. 

But, we have the smaller Elite.

[Roadrunner]

I've had very little use for the A/C on my L2 but this summer it is needed. I purchased a Honda 2200i generator and it will run the unit at close to sea level but not at 7200 feet. I have the easy start  installed and have considered putting in new jets on the generator but then the generator would run too lean at sea level. By the specs on the Houghton 9500 the Honda 2200i should be able to run it. Do you use it while boondocking on a generator and how well does it cool the trailer?

 

[SeaDawg]

We haven't needed ac yet this summer in the mountains,  but we used it a lot while cleaning and setting up the trailer for the summer. I was impressed with the comfort and quiet in the early Florida heat. It cooled the trailer quickly.  I also tried the dehumidifier mode, which is likely just the ac running at a lower speed, according to a friend of mine. It did work. 

Our Elite trailer is smaller, but you might ask Recpro maximum square footage recommended for the areas where you like to camp. The old 13,500 literally froze us out on low. This one brings the temp down quickly, 20 below ambient if I want, and doesn't seem to cycle excessively. The 9500 is only 1500 btu less than the 11k Oliver is installing now on the bigger trailers.

The 9500 does NOT have a heat mode, like the bigger unit, so you should be aware of that.

The swapout was pretty easy, except for getting our old, very heavy dometic off the roof. A younger friend came over to the house and helped us, and he did the work on the roof. 

[SeaDawg]

As a note, we did try the unit with our Westinghouse 2500 watt generator,  and it started and ran fine. We've used the Westinghouse this summer for power tools. It charges the Makita batteries, runs an old 2+horsepower skillsaw, or a tablesaw, or a chop saw. It has issues with our small compressor (2 hp, but probably  a high Startup power draw,) and have to reset frequently. 

All of these are one saw at a time not two.