[Jim]

The comment about Liberty going to roof airs is not a surprise. Our coaches are all about compromise. The cost to put slides in a coach is the tradeoff from floor space to bay space and upstairs storage space at a minimum. When more than 2 slides are added the additional trade off is the loss of the ability to provide OTR due to the inability to duct air flow.

Of course that is a simplistic view and there are undoubtedly many factors that come into play when deciding on systems.

Cruiseairs are rumored to be unavailable. Regardless of if that is fact or not, when a coach has 4 Cruiseairs valuable space is used for both the evaporators and the condensers compared to a roof top unit. Except for the increased height requirements usually made irrelevent when a satellite dome is installed roof airs will not require the use of any space in the bays or the living area.

So while a coach with 4 slides loses bay space, or at least the ability to easily utilize some bay space, none is taken up with Cruiseair condensers allowing the converter more design flexibility downstairs, while being able to recapture some upstainrs space previously occupied by evaporators. That is actually a huge benefit because it returns space to the living area.

The merits of roof units versus Cruiseairs can be argued until the bovines return home, but the bottom line is when slides are given a higher priority sacrifices have to be made.

[Archived]

OK…….So what blinds you gonna get?

[Archived]

For you that have OTR Air that the ducting wasn’t changed by the converter, why hasn’t someone designed a simple air deflector that would still push air up but just inside of the shades? I can envision a simple duct maybe an inch or so high that would become the new lower resting point for the blinds with a deflector aimed upward and inward of this mini duct.

[Davy]

Gil,

The problem is air getting behind the shades and making them billow out because it has nowhere else to go.

Part of the reason so few converters used OTR is the complexity of dealing with OTR and ducting. It sounds so simple but nothing could be fiurther from the truth. The converter has to think of and resolve all the issues ranging from balancing the flow to providing adequate return. And they have to do this while covering the walls and windows with cabinets, and shades and everything else making air handling a serious engineering problem.

It could be as simple as diverting the air flow outward beneath the window sill. That would save an expensive job of integrating a grille into a Corian or hard surfaced sill, and it would eliminate the billowing of the shades if they were left down. But then you have the black glass acting like a solar panel dumping heat into the coach above the air flow and anyone sitting in the path of the air flow needs a snowmobile suit.

So the OTR conversions I have seen flow air up the windows so nobody gets direct air flow on them, and the heat from the windows becomes a non-issue.

The cost of OTR is not the purchase price of the option. It is the expense of designing everything to handle the system’s output and return air without having cold air onto the occupants. Poor Tom has never had the pleasure of OTR so he is trying to deal with his broken blinds which are impacted by his OTR. If he had a non OTR coach he wouldn’t have even mentioned his blinds. But then again he would have needed them down so the heat coming from the windows would not overcome is inverter powered AC unit.

(Couldn’t resist.)

[Ronald]

Ah excuse me, my blinds are working just fine. All up or all down. We always used to keep the blinds down while driving to keep the heat out, but now with the real OTR, we could care less because the window heat is no longer a factor.

I now have learned how to restring a blind, so that’s not so scary anymore, but it’s not an easy job.

[Corey]

Right on, Tom

With real OTR air conditioning, not only can you raise the blinds and enjoy the scenery as you travel (after all, isn’t that the point with those Prevost windows?), but you could probably open those windows as well and still stay cool if it was safe to do so….

Happy Fourth!