Too Much Humidity And Heat Even At Night

I have a 1998 Ford Coachmen Ecoline/Club Wagon 19RD. I am going to use tonight as the example. It is 69 degrees F outside. It’s suppose to rain tomorrow so high humidity. It was partly sunny today so a decent amount of rays but now it is night at 1am. Inside my campervan it is 78-80 degrees F and 65-70% humidity. I have foil, a 16 inch fan in the back and a van size dehumidifier which has been running for at least an hour. The windows are closed with foil on them but even on nights when they are open it is still the same thing. I am going to let the dehumidifier run all night to see if it just needs more time but I don’t have much hope.

Why won’t my campervan cool down even at night? Is this common for campervans cuz they are small? My last RV was a 25 foot class B. Does my example sound normal or am I doing something wrong?

Greetings!

Ventilation requires both input air, and an outlet for air. Preferably on opposite ends of the vehicle. Higher vents to exhaust heat, since heat rises. Keeping everything closed holds the heat in. A single fan blowing out, will draw air in from other open windows/vents.

Parking in the shade can seem like a miracle. Otherwise park with front or back facing the sun instead of a side, and use a windshield cover in either the front or back window.

Cheers!


"The simplest solution is usually the best solution." ~ Truth Matters



Update: Ok from my research the amount of heat and humidity in my campervan is normal. It being 10 degrees F over what is outside is normal. In my previous 25 foot class B I had 2 ceiling vents, more space. bigger windows and probably better insulation. That is all I can think of why the change is so dramatic for me. The humidity never bothered me in my 25 footer regardless of how much and the only time I needed to go to a campground was when it was like 85ish F outside. I am regretting switching.

Personally I can not live in a van where the stuffiness is this high. I was in it tonight before it rained. It was 69 out and 72 in the van. 70ish humidity. With both the side and back doors open I was fine. But when I closed them cuz it started raining, it didn’t take long before I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Yes I have fans and what not. This is a really big issue because how am i going to sleep? I can escape into a Panera or something or just have the doors open on really hot days but if I can’t close my doors and be comfortable then I can’t sleep. Worst I will just get sick again from heat exhaustion in my sleep. During the winter I was fine so I guess this is really just a summer issue. But regardless I really wish I could have the bigger RV comfortability in a smaller package.

Does A/C fix humidity too? If I can sleep while plugged in at a camp ground then I guess that is fine. I just don’t have a plug in near me right now to test. I don’t mind spending the extra money if it’s only for the summer. But needing to be plugged in at 69 degrees F does not give me hope for the future. And I won’t mind getting a new van that is up to 23 feet in length but I don’t know if that would fix the issues.

Swamp coolers have kept me comfortable for many years. You can make one easily that uses a 12vdc fan, and it won’t draw any more power than a fan alone.

Some people are also using Peltier powered heat pumps that provide both heating & cooling. Basically the same as an indirect swamp cooler, except instead of using evaporation to cool the water, it uses the Peltier chip to heat/cool the water.

Hello, I have a Dodge Grand Caravan, and I don’t think small matters as we keep ours cool, I bought a small roof vent/fan & installed it, yes I cut a hole in the top, some people just freak out when you say that, I have 1 Sirocco II in the right rear corner anchored to the wood frame I put up, and 1 Nitecore NEF10 Multifunctional Portable Electric Fan in the left corner, both facing forward, the vent/fan in the daytime is blowing out as it’s reversible at night once it cools down outside, I let pull air in for a couple hours before we go to bed then I change it back. next we have this 5000mah Fan: Portable Camping Fan with LED Lantern- 40H Work Time Rechargeable Battery Operated Fan with Hanging Hook for Tent Car RV Hurricane Emergency Outages Survival Kit smaller fan hanging about halfway in the van on the side blowing around us, and this little excellent light table fan we keep on the floor or sitting on something to blow up towards the roof vent/fan Amazon.com: YOSHENMO Desk Fan, Quiet Wall-Mounted Table Fan with Turbo Airflow, 100-Speed Digital Display & 105° Adjustable Tilt, 7.5-inch, Rechargeable Battery for Home, Office, Travel Dark Black : Home & Kitchen we have a small handheld fan, and my Wife & I each have a Neckfan, that cools well, and I bought this gutter guard with screen on it https://cutt.cx/oVX0f I attached 2 small CPU fans or you can use 1 bigger one to it & traced the front door windows & 2 rear ones that roll down, I cut this to fit, & place 1 on each side 1 pulling air out and the other pulling air in, we have what they call cooling sheets we sleep with at night & if it gets too hot we have these Amazon.com it goes over your head and shoulders & keeps you cool, is all this OVERKILL< of course, why? because we want to stay cool in all temps, when it’s cold out you should see our Heat system, this keeps us cool. Most night hot or cold, we run the air and van 15 to 20 mins before bed time or the heat whichever is needed to get the Van to a nice temp, then turn our systems on to cool or heat us.also staying hydrated & having a cold drink, water or whatever handy keeps your temps down & we use what they call Cooling Towels, Soft Breathable Cooling Towels for Neck and Face, Microfiber Gym Towels, we have a pack of small washcloths, we wet one if it’s very hot and have a 2nd one to wipe dry with. and bigger towels for the gym and showers, this keeps us very cool, in all heat, in fact we rarely if ever use everything at once & find ourselves constantly turning fans down or 1 or 2 off. oh on the window fans I have 1 10000mah battery pack connected to each one so 4 of them via usb to run the window fans.

I admit my experience is limited - just a bit of car camping, and more in the winter than summer.

What color is your van? Any color but white is hotter during sun exposure. A LOT hotter.

Dehumidifiers generate heat. If the dehumidifier isn’t external, and to some extent if it is, that heat goes in the van.

In line with rspen46’s comments, I once dealt with sleeping in a non-airconditioned room by laying a wet beach towel on top of me (with no clothing), and blowing a strong fan over it. It worked pretty well. But I’m not sure if it is healthy in the long term to have your skin wet all night long. An interesting compromise might be to use a spray bottle on your skin.

If I had a ceiling vent, or any open windows or vents, I would want netting on it to keep out the mosquitoes, gnats and wasps, unless there are none in your location.

At first the “swamp cooler” (evaporative cooling) idea sounded crazy to me, because it would increase internal humidity - but as long as the evaporation occurs external to the vehicle, and the cold is brought into the vehicle by some sort of heat exchanger, and ideally the air containing the evaporation is not blown into the vehicle by a fan (because your cross ventillation is in other locations), I think it should work. After all, you aren’t talking 100% relative humidity, so evaporation is possible. But this isn’t from personal experience. I assume the other posters’ personal experience is much more relevant.

I wonder why evaporative cooling isn’t more common in houses and apartments. Granted, it would fail in 100% outdoor humidity (e.g., during rain), and they supposedly require more routine maintenance, but most of the time I think it would likely use less energy than an air conditioner.

I don’t know about your van, but in my station wagon, pointing the front towards the sun is much hotter than the back or side. You could experiment to find out what works best in your vehicle.

Of course a bigger van or RV works better - but not only would it cost more to buy and maintain, but the costs of running an air conditioner, dehumidifier, etc., will be higher.

Thanks for your input. I have been looking into ways of putting fans in the windows so I will keep yours in mind. I have been looking up more fans, preferable ones that tell me the battery charge or I can plug into my bluetti power station. I will look into all the fan options you shared. And see if changing the direction of the air flow will help. And those sheets are cheap so why not try them out? The ones I have are just ones I always had.

I don’t think keeping yourself safe against the weather can be overkill.

From the youtube videos I have see swamp coolers aren’t the way to go. They can work depending on a bunch of stuff but they come with issues that make their cons outweigh their pros.

My campervan is white. The dehumidifier is a small portable one which didn’t change the humidity levels even though it collected water so thats being returned. I guess it just wasn’t powerful enough but anything bigger would just be a hinderance. I do need to get a bug netting for my doors but my campervan is old and the ones I keep seeing are specific to sprinter vans and the like.

I do hear people talk about their RV issues a lot but I didn’t have that many issues with my 25 footer.

  • The wind hit it pretty hard which is also true for my 19 footer.
  • It was wider so going down narrow roads and city streets gave me anxiety. I even hit some guys mirror with my mirror once who to be fair was too far from the curb. No damage cuz my mirror was a little loose so it just folded in.
  • Finding parking was annoying cuz I had to find large parking lots and the museums or art galleries I wanted to see didn’t always have a large parking lot nearby. I could get into small parking lots and as long as there was grass or something for the back to be over, I could easily be in one parking spot but crowded parking lots still gave me anxiety.
  • The driver side window motor did give out and that was expensive.
  • The tires deflated easier cuz of the weight. And I really had to make sure it was level not only for the tires but fridge, propane etc too.
  • O this is a story. I got my generator fixed when I first got the RV. I gave the guy my RV thinking he will look and give me a guestimate of the timeframe and cost. I waited a week then contacted to see whats up and he said he had RVs in front of me. Another week and I call again to the same response. I needed it back by the end of the month for a vacation I was going on so I called and just told them I will take it back since they aren’t working on it. Now I am all for waiting my turn but why do you have it if you aren’t going to do anything with it? Just give me a day I can bring it back to you. That’s when they finally said they would look at it. O how the threat of losing a sale will get things moving. And I am thinking you haven’t even looked at it? Like come on, just do a glance so I can get a guess at the time frame. By the time they started I was going on vacation. Since I couldn’t use my RV, I used the Amtrack instead. Guess what was wrong with it? A fried wire. And they said it took like an hour to locate and fix. And since I was on vacation I had to have them hold it for an extra week. Guess the total price? $1,000 something. I have had RV work done a few times and every time the wait time was ridiculous so I don’t know if thats normal or if I have bad luck cuz getting my car fixed regardless of what was wrong with it always took a week at most and they would always give me a guestimate on the time and price the day I dropped it off.

Back to the size, I wanted something skinner and easier to drive. I think it was Duluth Minnesota that I didn’t feel comfortable driving in cuz of the hills and wanted to revisit with a smaller vehicle. So I went to the opposite extreme to see if I would like it. I always thought I would end up somewhere in the middle at some point but I didn’t think I would not like being in the 19 footer this much. Especially since I sorta lived in my CRV and Jeep Patriot. Which my Jeep Patriot is still my favorite vehicle I have ever owned.

I don’t really have the money to change unless its a really good deal. And even then what if adding a couple extra feet doesn’t solve the issues? Worse gives me more issues. And I will have to put solar on the roof again. Nah my next RV needs to be fully move in ready cuz I am RV repair burned out.

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I don’t know what Peltier power is but I will look that up. From what I have researched, swamp coolers aren’t the best way to go but it’s always something to keep in mind. As time goes on, technology and strategies get better.

Thanks for replying!

Is your dehumidifier inside or outside the van? Inside would mean it pumps heat into the van. And what happens to the water? If it pools inside an open container inside the van, the water will partly re-evaporate into the van. It’s obviouslly important that the hot air outflow and the water drip be outside the van.

I think most really good reliable cooling solutions are expensive. And they use a fair bit of electricity, which could be a problem if you need to be self contained.

As best as I could find out from asking around, RV repair is a specialty, so there aren’t as many mechanics who repair them as for cars and pickup trucks, and I was told RV mechanics can earn about twice the hourly rate of car mechanics. And some of the parts are likely to be expensive. Plus, if you look at RV repair places, their lots are usually quite large and are usually quite full, which is a hint there could be problems. Though I was told a lot of the RV repairs are collision repairs, partly because of size, and perhaps partly because of the age of the typical drivers.

In the case of the generator, you may have needed a small engine mechanic. I wonder if someone who worked at a lawn mower place could handle it.

Unlike a lot of people in this forum like yourself, I haven’t driven an RV, and have only done temporary car & pickup and van camping. But I rented a 21 or 23 foot moving van for a couple days. It seemed to me that it was wider than the lanes where I drive, especially if you included the mirrors, and that visibility was even worse than my Toyota Venza. I felt very unsafe driving it. Maybe it would have been a bit better if it had cameras all around, but it really didn’t seem safe to drive much. Fortunately I didn’t need to park in a low parking garage! But it did occur to me it was large enough to live in - as big as some rooms I’ve lived in. It was pretty basic - manual windows and mirrors, which I think are more reliable - I prefer them - though in my Venza, I sometimes take advantage of the electric mirrors to see where the parking spot lines are. Of course gas mileage was not great.

I’ve camped in a truck cap that had a long sunroof, that gave me really great ventilation. That worked really well, partly because “heat rises”, even though the truck and cap were red, which was a mistake. I also had sliding windows at the front of the cap. Surprisingly, most bugs didn’t come in through the sliding windows - bugs tend to go to high points, like the top of the truck. (In some ways I think a pickup with the capacity for a cap big enough to include a shower and toilet would be great. Especially if you picked a common Ford truck that a lot of mechanics can repair, even in rural areas, and a lot of used parts are available in junkyards. And if you have expensive repairs to the cap part, you can just replace it. Except - some RV campgrounds don’t like such trucks - they want real RVs.) Likewise I once had a car with a moon roof - it stayed pretty cool too. Had to be careful when it rained, but at least where I live, rain tends to be cool, so it didn’t need to be open during the rain. And the moonroof had a partly open setting that would block the rain if the wind wasn’t too strong.

I get that you might have trouble finding mosquito+no-see-um netting that is precut for your particular van. But you can buy netting material and cut it to size, with Velcro at the edges - and glue one part of the Velcro strip to inside your van. I bet there are a lot of people here who could give you tips on that, or you could hire someone like a seamstress. Of course, you’d have to be very careful not to rip the netting when you detatch the velcro. I suppose a lot of people just use window screen material, or maybe a combination of window screening and no-see-um netting?

But like I said, there are much more experienced people than me here.

Swamp coolers are tried & true, but being an older technology, most people today don’t understand them, or use them correctly. There are multiple types of swamp coolers, both direct & indirect. Today, the term swamp cooler refer’s to both the original swamp coolers, but also it’s cousin evaporative coolers.

A swamp cooler uses a separate heat exchanger, and the evaporation process vents outside. This type will dehumidify the inside air, just like an air conditioner will.

An evaporative cooler uses the evaporation process as the heat exchanger, and can possibly add humidity to the inside air. This can be a positive in desert type area’s. In more humid climates, their setup needs to be modified to prevent unwanted added humidity, by providing an exhaust outlet to offset the incoming air. Once that is established correctly, it too can dehumidify the inside air because it will create a breeze blowing through the whole house/vehicle.

The only drawback of these coolers is that they require water refills when used in vehicles. In buildings they’re simply hooked up to a water line, so no manual refills are required.

I have a friend who works in HVAC in South Florida, and he says that swamp coolers are still very much in use in older houses, even though their owners call it air conditioning. In larger buildings, swamp coolers are now considered to be the better, newer & greener, alternative to air conditioners.

I grew up in the hot & humid swamps, and everybody preferred swamp coolers, even after air conditioning became more popular. The swamp coolers even predate electricity.

Re: Vehicle Size…

I think what you’re comfortable driving depends more on the person than on the vehicle.

I go back & forth between the twin cities & Duluth in my 40 footer, never a problem. I typically prefer street parking instead of parking lots.

Re: RV repairs…

RV shops can definitely be problematic, but can be avoided for many issues. Many mechanics can handle engine/transmission problems. Small engine/lawn mower repair shops can often handle generators.