Troubleshooting a Rooftop RV Air Conditioner

Roof air conditioners don't have a whole lot of maintenance that's required. But there are a few things, and probably the biggest issue in insufficient cooling, is owners not understanding that there is a cold air return, and a filter that needs to be cleaned periodically. This one happens to be a roof air with ducted roof, and the cold air return is right here in this grate. And one of the things I noticed right away, when I pull that down and look at all that dust we get off of here. And this unit's only used about twice a year.

So I'm gonna pull this down, and I would bet that we're gonna see... Oh yeah. A unit that is just filled with dust and dirt. And what happens when something like this gets plugged up, is that we don't get air flow coming through it. So the compressor up on the roof, it's gonna work harder, and we're not gonna have as much air flow coming through.

We're not gonna have as much cooling out of this unit. Now, sometimes this filter will be underneath the roof air that, that's not ducted. Some models will have a cold air return back in the bedroom, or underneath the dinette, such as the Winnebago True Air. They've got a unit that's a compressor outside below the air, and it comes up through the top. So make sure you find the filters in here and clean 'em, at least once a year.

And like I say, this one's only used probably twice a year, but it's filthy dirty. And I would suspect that this is not getting proper cooling when it's, when it's running. Another thing you wanna check too, is to make sure you have enough voltage. What I see at the campground sometimes is when people try to use two roof airs at one time, or they plug into a 15 amp circuit and try and run a lot of stuff out around in their coach. And if you don't have at least 115 volts, if the campground has low voltage coming out of it, that compressor is gonna work a lot harder, and it's not gonna cool as efficient.

And the last thing in troubleshooting, if the unit's not running, first of all, I'm gonna check the outside pedestal, make sure I've got electricity coming into the coach. If a back bedroom air conditioner isn't working, a lot of times, those are hooked, when running a generator, a lot of times those are hooked to the generator with a second circuit. You had a 30 amp circuit that's gonna run your front air. The bedroom air is hooked directly to the generator. There's this, there's a circuit breaker on the side of that generator.

Check to make sure that that hasn't tripped. That very, very often happens in those units. So then if I have a unit that's not running in the inside, it's pretty much I gotta check the circuit breaker at the distribution panel. Otherwise I'm gonna have to take that unit in, and have a certified dealer take a look at it. If I'm getting insufficient cooling, and I've checked everything else that we've talked about, the filters, the voltage coming in, and then I'm gonna probably, I'm gonna need to take it in, and have them check the coolant level in it, the amp draw.

It could be that the compressor is drawing too much amperage. I need to take it in and have it looked at. There are a few things that you can do to troubleshoot insufficient cooling, or a unit not operating.