Dometic Cool Cat Conversation

srosa707 · July 12, 2018, 10:09 AM

Does anyone have any experience with the Dometic Cool Cat Heat Pump system?

Dometic Cool Cal Link

The previous owner of my '73 Brave re-roofed the rig and removed the rooftop A/C unit. He also installed a center brace bar that runs the length of the RV right down the middle of the inside of the roof. Adding a rooftop unit now would be quite the hassle. This Cool Cat unit produces 10,500 BTU's of cooling power which is the less than the 13,500 the rooftop units produce. I have not seen or heard of one of these being installed in a full size RV, just pop-up trailers. PO added a "roll-around" A/C unit in the closet and it produces 8,000 BTU's which has proven to be insufficient in the California summer heat.

For this discussion, I am primarily interested in the cooling ability of this unit, not the heating. If anyone has experience with one of these, I'd love to hear about it.

Rickf1985 · July 12, 2018, 11:52 AM

Someone here just recently posted about a heat pump installation. Do a search for "heat pump". Can't be too many of them on here.

Found it'

http://www.classicwinnebagos.com/forum/index.php/topic,14533.msg89481.html#msg89481

srosa707 · July 12, 2018, 02:05 PM

Saw that. Not a Cool Cat and not the setup I want to run. Just wondering if anyone has experience with the Cool Cat?

1969dc22 · July 14, 2018, 08:21 PM

I installed the 10000 btu heat pump in my 22 ft. we went camping a couple of weeks ago in very humid 100 degree weather. it did an great job removing the humidity and a pretty good job cooling. Needs more ducting to spread around the cool air. i will be adding that soon. what i worry about the cool cat unit is i dont know if it would be able to cool the entire camper because i dont know if it could put out the airflow. it looks like it has just one outlet coming out of a cabinet. in my experience that would not be enough.

khantroll · July 17, 2018, 04:52 PM

My 15k roof top air struggles to keep my 24ft rig cool, and that is with a thicker roof and more insulation then it came with from the factory. Have you considered a mini-split? I've known people who put them in trailers with great success. Probably not the most elegant solution though.

srosa707 · July 17, 2018, 11:06 PM

Khantrol, I have not looked into the mini split. Can you point me in that direction so I can take a look? I am not familiar with them at all. Also, what AC unit do you have on the roof? Modern unit or older?

khantroll · July 18, 2018, 08:24 AM

I have the modern Dometic Brisk Air 2. I bought it brand new about two years ago. It appears that they have discontinued that line after they absorbed atwood, but it's a 15k roof top air conditioner.

A mini-split is a type of air conditioner similar to central air in a house, minus the duct work. Here is one example video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFkLrGx6la8

srosa707 · July 23, 2018, 11:04 AM

I brought my Brave home from storage last week and used it over the weekend. I took some measurements and it looks like I will not have a good spot to mount the Cool Cat so I will be looking into a rooftop unit.