Tent Air Conditioner

red neck richie

Senior Member
Thanks for the helpful feedback.

Welcome to the thread. Glad to have you.

Just giving swamp fox a hard time. I guess I'm old school. An air condition in a tent just sounds crazy to me. Part of the camping experience is roughing it. If you want all the modern convenience of home why not just stay in a hotel. Just my 2 cents.
 

Capt Quirk

Senior Member
Just giving swamp fox a hard time. I guess I'm old school. An air condition in a tent just sounds crazy to me. Part of the camping experience is roughing it. If you want all the modern convenience of home why not just stay in a hotel. Just my 2 cents.
We don't even have a/c in our cabin, a stay in a hotel is a special treat :)
 

T-N-T

Senior Member
It's close to 100 degrees in FL right now. Well up into the 70s at night in places. Humidity in 90th percent range.

If I were stuck camping in a tent I'd go buy an AC too.
 

Nicodemus

The Recluse
Staff member
Just giving swamp fox a hard time. I guess I'm old school. An air condition in a tent just sounds crazy to me. Part of the camping experience is roughing it. If you want all the modern convenience of home why not just stay in a hotel. Just my 2 cents.


You`re giving a respected elder of this forum a hard time, in his own thread, when he is simply asking for advice. A Gentleman who is old enough to be your Grandfather.

A word of advice from me. Lay off.
 

Jeff C.

Chief Grass Master
You`re giving a respected elder of this forum a hard time, in his own thread, when he is simply asking for advice. A Gentleman who is old enough to be your Grandfather.

A word of advice from me. Lay off.

X10 :clap:
 

Huntinfool

Senior Member
That's what I would do. Go rent a pop up. It's not terribly expensive to do and will make your life a whole lot easier than trying to rig up an air conditioner in a tent.
 

redneck_billcollector

Purveyor Of Fine Spirits
Don't go camping stay at a hotel would be my first suggestion. If you decide to camp and get hot jump in a lake or pond or creek or river or ocean camp near water. No offense but yall sound like a bunch of yuppie city slickers. Pitch your tent under some shade trees.

In my 56 years on this big blue marble I have primitive camped from the costal jungles of Panama (on Uncle Sam's dime) to the tundra of Alaska (my dime) and most interesting places in between. There is not a thing wrong in the world with wanting to be comfortable while in camp. When I was in my 20s the heat and humidity of the summer time Everglades was no big deal....but now, South GA can be uncomfortable during the summer. I am looking for both a decent camp air conditioner and heater myself. Summer after next I am taking three or four months off of work and driving to the Brooks range in Alaska and plan on camping pretty much the whole trip. I intend to take the North American Trail to Oregon and then back up to Montana to head to the Alcan....exploring and fly fishing along the way. I want to see North America one more time in its entirety before I am too old. So any answer to the original post would be helpful.
 

BDD

Senior Member
I bought one of the standalone units for my garage, it’s the kind with a 4 inch exhaust hose that mounts in the window
And the unit sits in the garage. It’s about the size of a large cooler and I can lift it myself. Just ran the exhaust out the tent door,
Also very quiet. $200 -$300 , 8K – 12K BTU

I used it in a tent one time and it worked great but everything in the tent was damp from the condensation. When the
Cool air inside and the hot air outside meet on the tent roof, you have your own little weather system.
 

specialk

Senior Member
when my son was young we always used a window box fan sitting on a milk crate....it moved enuff air around to keep us cool....
 

walters

Senior Member
A/c

When we was camping at the beach last year we seen alot of tents with window units in them, seen some neat setups with them too, one fellow riders him up 2 flex ducks off his window unit, he had central air:bounce:
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
It won't help the kids but you can fill a cooler full of cold adult beverages and if you drink enough cold adult beverages you won't need an ac.

If you can find a campsite on the water with a breeze it will be comfortable at night.

The kids will be fine. Camping in the heat builds character.

With that method you don't even need any insect repellent. You can sleep on a cot outside.

I don't think one of those DIY evaporation coolers would work in Florida or Georgia humidity. They work good in Arizona. We had a window unit in our pop-up. It was a 5,000 btu unit. I think an a/c in a wall tent would work great.
I can see where a smaller nylon tent may condense more than a canvas tent. Nylon tents are bad about condensation anyway. So a window cracked open would help with condensation and pressurization.

X2 on a tarp over a tent if one is trying to keep it cool with an a/c in the daytime. Our a/c in the pop-up didn't quite cut the mustard in the middle of the day. We did try to park in the shade but that's not always an option.

The only thing about a tarp over a tent would be to get it high enough to allow ventilation to prevent condensation.

Just leave the tent by 8 AM and nap later in a hammock.
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
About camping on the water. I've noticed the lower campsites have a better breeze than the higher sites. I often thought that if I camped on a higher bluff or out on a point, I'd get a better breeze.
That might depend on the time of year but in the middle of summer, the lower your elevation to the water, the more breeze you'll have.

Also if you have to choose, afternoon shade is better in the summer. Especially if are camping on a sandbar. You might get run out of your tent early but you'll be thankful of the shade while preparing supper.
 

Hit-n-Miss

Senior Member
I built my own swamp cooler out of an IGLOO cube cooler. Took piece of 1" thick house wrap foam board and cut it to fit on the lip recessed in the top of the cooler. I mounted a 5" Electronics cooling 12v fan pushing air into the cooler and 2 pc's of 3" pvc pipes for outflow with elbows slipped on them for directional control. Fill the cooler with frozen milk jugs of water. Will cool and run for days off a car battery.
 
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