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USB-POWERED FANS TCJJ Clip-on USB Rechargeable Battery Powered Fan -- $15.99 (x3)(x2)
“On a hot day, a van’s gonna get hot.”
One of my YouTube video sources said that, but no way
would I be able to find who at this point.
Sorry, whoever you are.
You are right, but I am not able to accredit you for
the statement.
Even with insulation up the wazoo (as uncomfortable
as that would be), the exterior metal shell is going to heat
up to the point where you might not even be able to rest your
hand on it for more than a few seconds.
That heat is going to radiate inward. Insulation
will do its best to interfere, but insulation alone will not
keep your van “cool” – “less hot” is the best you can hope for
(unless you are running a full AC unit in there – I’m not).
Running the engine so you can run the AC is dumb. I have done it in
extreme cases where I just said, “Hang the gas expense, I am
dying in here!” but it’s rare.
Having a gas-powered generator to run an AC unit
would be the Class A RV solution, but I’m not one of those. I have no place to
put such a unit, nor do I have a generator, nor the gas to
power it. And,
being a stealth dude more often than not, well, that whole
concept just doesn’t work.
Instead, I have fans.
I have two 10-inch AC-powered fans that will move the
air really well, but they come with a price too:
watt-hours withdrawn from my solar bank.
That was more power than I felt like using up, so I
went to the ‘zon and purchased a few USB-powered fans.
The first set I got were on big clips, so they could
be attached to the edges of shelves or vertical boards, or
bungees or whatever. They
could also work without being plugged in; they came with
rechargeable batteries inside. So when they were not running,
if you plugged them in, they were recharging.
They were only 5” or so, but they were also on
swivels and could flip vertically, so, really, there was no
angle these things could not be aimed at.
For years, I had slightly bigger fans – maybe 6” –
that were square boxes which could be stood up and turned to
face wherever. They
did not swivel or swerve or oscillate or any of those fancy
tricks, but they blew good air at your face or body.
I had four of them, so at night I would set them up
to criss-cross over my body and keep my body cooled as I
slept. They
worked great, but they ran on “D” batteries:
4 batts per fan.
You’d get about 40 hours out of each unit before having
to replace the D’s. That
sounds like a lot, but, really, it’s not even a week.
And “D” batteries are not cheap when you are buying
64 of them every month.
I still keep those batt-ops as backup and emergency
support, but once I got the USB-powered ones, it was a whole
new world. With
21 USB ports in my living space, finding 4 open ones to run my
fans is not an issue.
As with most things these days, though, the lifespan
of these fans was less than I would have hoped.
Granted I ran them almost daily for more than two
years, but that was about as far as they would go before the
internal battery wore down and would no longer accept a
charge. One of
them has been like the Opportunity Rover on Mars, performing
on and on well after its brothers have given up the ghost. Given what I paid
for them, though, I’m not displeased.
So, I ordered more.
I tried to get the exact same model, but you know how
it goes with A-zon; sometimes things are no longer available
so you get something close, hoping that it might even be an
upgrade.
The new ones are a tad lighter, and so far they seem
just fine. The
key to all of them, just as with any DC-versus-AC device, is
the power consumption. The
solar generators barely seem to notice that these guys are
even on. I can
run them all night and I know the SG’s will easily recoup
every watt and more by mid-morning. I am a big fan. (Har har har.)
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