An Effective DIY Air Conditioner To Try Out On Your Next Camping Trip

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A favorite summertime outdoor activity — camping — can quickly sour under boiling temperatures, which are becoming all too common each season. Soaring temps can make sleeping in a tent difficult or impossible on a hot day, with heat trapped inside and the bug flaps closed. Those who gravitate toward RV resorts or luxurious glamping spots throughout the U.S. may come to expect an available outlet for plugging in a portable air conditioner. But tent campers are usually out of luck when it comes to finding a cool breeze on a hot day. However, a simple DIY air conditioner made using a regular cooler or ice chest can change all that, making even the hottest campouts more comfortable.

Start by gathering the pieces of this air conditioning unit, many of which you might already have on hand. You'll need an inexpensive styrofoam or hard-sided cooler that you don't mind damaging, a small rechargeable or battery-powered fan (like the O2Cool Treva 5-inch battery powered fan), a length of pipe, hose or a dryer vent that will direct that cold air out of the box, and a knife (for styrofoam) or a drill or jigsaw (for a hard-sided cooler) to cut two holes in the cooler lid. You'll also need duct tape or caulking to attach the parts and seal up holes. And don't forget the ice! 

On one end of your cooler lid, cut a hole the diameter of your fan at a slight angle so it fits snugly, facing down into the cooler. On the other end, cut a hole that matches your pipe, hose or vent. Use duct tape to affix the parts and seal around both holes (or seal with silicone caulk), then fill the cooler with ice. A block of ice will last longest, but a bunch of frozen water bottles (a simple ice hack that keeps hikers hydrated) or freezer packs will also do the trick. YouTuber Baum Outdoors demonstrates how a version of this DIY unit lowers temps inside a sealed tent, testing the results with a thermometer.

To make things even cooler, place your cooler outside the tent, ideally in the shade, so the air being pulled in is as cool and fresh as possible. That means your vent attachment needs to be poking into your tent. Some tents, like the Ozark Trail 6-person Dark Rest cabin tent, have built-in electrical ports or side vents that can be modded to let the vent through.

How often you'll need to refill your ice will depend not only on the heat, but the quality of your cooler's insulation., but even the cheapest styrofoam cooler can keep an ice block solid for a couple of days. Of course a fan blowing warm air over the ice accelerates melting and evaporation. In fact, Baum Outdoors found he had to refill his chest with fresh ice several times throughout the day, meaning you'd need to bring another cooler with extra ice to make this trick work mid-day. Nevertheless, this DIY air conditioner could easily become one of your new must-haves for summer camping.