I think it’s not a bad idea. I love camping. I hate trying to sleep in hot night weather. The last camping trip I went on, I never slept in mytent. Instead, enjoying the hammockWhy not build an insulated box, big enough to crawl onto a matress and sleeping bag.
The AC unit could be quite small. Maybe even one a gas powered weed-eater could generate. It would have to be a quieter moter than that or any 2-stroke motor. A very small air-conditioner and fan would work. But it would need fuel power.
A friend of mine said that a week-eater engine could have a pipe-like attachment welded on. A one gallon tank should hold it for awhile. I am obvioulsy not a mechanical type.
Is there something like this on the market?
What is my friend talking about with a weed-eater attachment?
Any ideas or suggestions how to make it happen?
Camping is supposed to be roughing it without all the comforts of home. Once you start bringing elaborate devices for your comfort, you might as well get a Winnebago.
WAG: People get creeped out when staying inside an enclosed box for a long period of time. There are a number of coffins designed for personal protection which feature battery backups and A/C but they run in the several thousand dollar range IIRC.
Perhaps a cooling mechanism could be incorporated into a sleeping bag. Either a forced-air circulation system, or a series of water tubes (like the Apollo spacesuit underwear). It would be a lot mroe efficient than trying to cool the entire tent.
You’d still need a hefty refrigeration unit. The human body generates about 100W of heat, and there’s more heat leaking in due to improper insulation. You can probably get by with solid-state coolers (Peltier devices), but you probably need at least 300W of power. Batteries are right out. Honda makes a portable 900-W genreator which should do the trick, but it weighs 30 lb and consumes half a gallon of gas per night (0.6 gallon capacity, 8 hour running time). Not exactly a man-portable setup.
If you have access to river water, you could drastically reduce the power requirments since the river water is colder than your body so it provides natural cooling. Stick 2 pipes into the river, one for inflow and one for outflow. Hook up a series of water pipes through your sleeping bag into a resevoir with a pump. Add a computer controlled temperature sensor that pumps in more river water when the temperature increases above a certain threshold and you have yourself a cooling system.
The amount of complexity involved in creating and implementing such a device is antithetical to the spirit of camping. I suggest solutions more in line with getting a better ventilated tent, leaving off the tent fly (weather permitting), camping in cooler places or at cooler times, or sleeping in a hammock down over the river instead of your tent.
There are any number of other helpful strategies, as well: a cot for airflow under the bed, a cool damp bandana around the neck, a small battery-powered fan, etc. Such things have the advantage of being feasible, portable, and affordable. An air-conditioned sleeping compartment does not.
I have one. It’s called an apartment. My dad has one on wheels, it’s called an RV trailer. I’m not sure how I would transport a stand alone one for camping, though.
There are things you can do to camp cushy. I really like my double dome tent - one dome is a large tent, the other dome is a full screentent. the two zip together with a little “hallway” between the two. This means that even if it’s raining, I get a great breeze through my tent with no water inside. The air comes in the screen tent and through the zip-through hallway and door to the tent. The opposite wall of the tent has a large screen window protected by the rain fly, so there’s a perfect cross-breeze.
There’s also battery powered fans at Walgreens and the like. They are wonderful set up one at your head and one at your feet. The look too tiny to be useful, but provide just enough of a breeze on still days to be worth it.
Slepp nekkid. It’s much, much cooler. Also take a topsheet along. When it’s really hot, soak the topsheet in water, ring it out and drape it over you as you sleep. I actually take two sheets, and use my sleeping bag as a cushion and a back-up warm place if it gets cold. I put one sheet on top of the bag and one sheet on top of me. That prevents my sticky backside from sticking to the nylon sleeping bag. Cotton is cool to sleep on.
Another thing that none of the others have mentioned is that if you are camping anywhere near other people, the sound of a gasoline engine running all night will make you some enemies really quick. Most campgrounds have rules requiring generators to be turned off after 10 or 11 pm.
Not to mention the impracticality of carrying such a contraption anywhere. What camper on earth is willing to lug around 50 pounds of generators, air conditioning equipment, and coffin (not to mention gasoline!) so they can sleep a bit better at night?
I bet the overwhelming majority of folks who would be willing to lug around such stuff have already bought an RV for their own comfortable style of “camping.”
An adsorption based refrigeration system might be more practical. You could regenerate the adsorbent during the day, using say a camping stove, and utilize it at night…almost silent, only the sound of boiling refrigerent.
Google “icey ball” for discription of an item that was popular before rural electrification. This used anhydrous ammonia as a refrigerant, and water as the sorbent.
Water/13X zeolyte is another workable pair, without the issues that come with the ammonia.
Add part a to part b, and silent AC for camping. Of course you have to schelp along the solar panes, deep cycle batteries and inverter/converter thingy.
Actually, this is interesting=) one of the guys that camps Pennsic with us has a solar setup we use for recharding digital cameras, PDAs, cell phones and running laptops to download pictures in in our camp=) We have been thinking of improving the storage and running some safety lights overnight instead of going through the cyalume sticks like we do now. Wonder if I can talk him into airconditioning my tent=)
That is a DUH! response. Of course, in the cool weather this is not neccesary. That is not what I am posting about. This question is not only about camping, but a concept. A concept that if addressed, maybe could make an entrepenuer some cash.
At Burningman, so I have heard, one of the camps brought a tractor trailor with a cooler. A big scale thing for its project. I am only proposing the feasibility of this on a smaller scale.