RV FEATURE
AIR-CONDITIONER NOT COOLING
Have you ever serviced your caravan’ s rooftop air-conditioner? Did you even know it required regular maintenance? I didn’ t, and the thought never crossed my mind. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind.
One day, while sweltering through a tropical summer in Townsville, ours started playing up. It just refused to cool the van as well as it did in the past, and to make matters worse, water dripped out of the vents like a tap.
Separating the two halves of the pressure limiting valve is hard at first but it can be done.
Once again, the internet came to the rescue. This is another one of those very common problems that a little maintenance would have prevented. Removing the cover soon revealed the culprit: an accumulation of dust and dirt inside the rooftop unit. It blocked all the little drainage holes around the side of the cover and clogged the vanes of the heat exchanger.
This combination of dirt accumulation prevented the normal condensation from draining away. Instead, it filled up and overflowed to the only place it could – through the outlet vents inside the van.
The dust in the heat exchanger prevented it from doing its job, so the air never got the chance to cool down. It also resulted in ice forming on the vanes, which would melt, adding to the leaking inside the van.
Rooftop air-conditioners need regular cleaning to keep working efficiently.
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