We were starting to push our luck sticking the dogs in the back of the truck on RV trips without some way to keep them cool. I had started looking for various ways of doing this as far back as last fall and after the trip to Lake Gaston, I began cobbling something together. I had gotten the idea from a YouTuber who builds “Frankencoolers” and it looked like this was the design for me. I had to buy a few things from Amazon, such as an inexpensive bilge blower, small radiator (for PCs) and a water pump, but I tried to source the rest from whatever we had laying around or the local hardware store for fittings.
The basics of it are:
- A cooler to hold ice
- An air box on top of the cooler
- Cold water from the copper coils in the cooler are circulated by the water pump through the radiator in the air box which the fresh (warm air) is pulled through and then blown into the truck cap.
- A directional tube for the blower allows me to aim the flow of air wherever I want.
- I wired it into the truck’s DC system and I have quick connects to remove it from the bed for overcurrent protection (fuse) to keep everything safe.
It works like a champ but it goes through 20lbs of ice in about 2 hours. On our recent trip to NY, it pulled the temperature down from 87 to 74 in about 35 minutes. That’s a pretty comfy ride for a couple pooches.
