Anyone tried the GoCool Portable A/C unit?

[heypilch]

I live in Southern California & with summer here, RV trips to the Colorado River are already booked. In the past we've always made this trip with our 32' TT, whose A/C unit worked flawlessly against the 120 degree heat outside. This year though, we'll be taking our new '11 40' TH. Though it's equipped with 2 A/C units, I know (from other's experience) that the garage area will stay pretty warm. Ours is an enclosed garage with its own bathroom that is converted into the kid's room once we get where we're going, so I want to keep it cool & comfortable back there for them.

While A/C's on full blast and a couple strategically placed occilating fans have traditionally been the "way to go", I thought that maybe there might be another way to go here. I'm looking for a portable A/C unit that I could put back there (we'll be on shore power) that would do a decent job of fighting off the heat & came across this one. Here's the link:

GoCool - Portable Air Conditioner

Most of the other units I found require a way to vent the unit's hot exhaust, which isn't gonna work obviously. This one doesn't need that, but I wanted to see what you guys might have to say about it - especially if anyone out there actually HAS one of these!

Thanks!
Tim

[Good man]

Tim,
This is essentially a large ice chest with a small fan which is used to blow the chilled air out of the chest. You can be sure that the higher the ambient temperatrue, the quicker your supply of ice will be depleted. You can be very sure that even under moderate conditions, the ice must be renewed daily.
I question if this unit will be at all effective at the temperatures you mentioned. Also, I suspect ice is a very pricey commodity in the area you will be camping.
If you want to experiment with this, you can simply get a large styrofoam ice chest, fill it with bags of ice, cut a dryer vent sized hole in the top at each end and rig a fan to blow into the chest in one of the holes and out the other hole.
I think that will answer your question for about $20-$30 and save you the big bucks.
Take care,
Jim

[Kurmudgeon]

Calling that thing an A/C is a stretch of astronomical proportions. It's nothing but a glorified swamp cooler. And at $425 it's an absolute rip. In a hot climate it would go through bags of ice at an incredible rate. Any time you remove heat from the air you have to dump it somewhere. In this case you're dumping it into ice, which melts faster the more heat you put into it.

You can go to Wal-Mart and buy a real air conditioner for $100 or less, but you will have to figure out how to dump all that heat outside. There's no magic way around the physics of cooling.

JP

[dagray]

This appears to be a swamp cooler. Is not near as good as an air conditioner.

What I have done for high tempertures is, I bought an air conditioner that has a hose to vent to the outside. The unit comes with a plastic piece to place in a window to vent it. I modified it to fit in the small bedroom window and it fits perfect. Our motorhome has only one air conditioner and does not keep the motorhome cool in tempertures above 100 degrees. It sits in the bedroom of the motorhome and takes very little space. Keeps things cooler than without it.

[Billieg]

I bought an Everstar portable A/C unit from Lowes for my office downstairs here in Fl. You need an exhaust vent but you could easly put one in the MH. You could use a dryer vent which would work well. This little unit will freeze you out in a 400 sq. ft. space and it was only $375 on sale.