Heat vents for the rear deck.

ChrisK

My latest project. The wife and I sleep with our heads to the rear of the trailer. Our pillows usually end up blocking the rear heat vents, We get heat but I can't help but think it is not as efficient as it could be like that so I drew up these vents in CAD, 3D printed them, and installed them in the back deck. They fit in a 2 1/4" hole (thats the biggest hole saw I had on hand). I tested them this morning and I could feel the heat coming from them so I guess they are doing as I wanted them to.

Nomad

Cool - Covering up the standard heat slots with bedding really cuts down on the heat flow - There's another thread where several of us have drilled vent holes or slots in that same cover. Some of us added front rails so we could actually store stuff back on that shelf.

ChrisK

I thought about just drilling holes but since I have a 3D printer, I have to overdo things. 
We put stuff on the shelf at night. 

ChrisK

BTW - If anyone wants a set, let me know. I'm already making a set for OutbackAZ.

Nomad

boo - As he mentions - He used a 3D printer.

ChrisK

Yup, I print them. It was close to the same diameter but a little loose. I secured them with 2 small dabs of Shoe Goo.

Nomad

Just out of curiosity - what printer and how long did it take?

ChrisK

I built a Prusa i3 variant. It takes about 5 hours to print 4 of them. I also built an Ultimaker 2 clone that can probably print them faster but it was busy printing other stuff.

jdargis

Looking for vents- check out on Amazon:
Maurice Franklin louver vents
different sizes and colors 

jkjenn

I actually thing that back shelf is big enough for a register. You could then use a deflector.

Nomad

But with reisters you would have to cut bigger holes and probably wouldn't be able to use the shelf as a shelf.

Verna

I would think you will need to worry about stability, because the normal register vent is too wide for the shelf. The register would go very close from front to back. With what I'm doing to the shelf, I'm having to put extra supports under it. Pictures later. 

Tabaz

Just got my vents from Chris K.  The grey color matches the seat fabric. They look very professional and should let heat out while not allowing anything to fall down the holes. 2 1/4" wood drill should do the trick nicely.  Thanks Chris!

Ratkity

OutbackAZ said:

Just got my vents from Chris K.  The grey color matches the seat fabric. They look very professional and should let heat out while not allowing anything to fall down the holes. 2 1/4" wood drill should do the trick nicely.  Thanks Chris!

Great to hear Outback!! I love this forum! I have a set of vents on order. The cool-geek factor is a bonus.

Michigan_Mike

Absolutely!  Love the ideas and creativity that flows within this group.....  Well done Chris!

Tabaz

This section of the forum won't let me post a photo. Strange.

Verna

OutbackAZ said:

This section of the forum won't let me post a photo. Strange.

The only reason it would stop you would be if the photo was humongous.  Make sure it's 800x600 pixels. There are many resize apps out there to help you. 

Photomom

How wide is that rear shelf? Standard floor registers from the home improvement store are 4" wide. 

Nomad

6 7/8" - depth

Tabaz

Verna - the size of the photo is not an issue.  I always resize to 800 x 600 pixels before attaching.  When I click on the "attach image" icon, I just get a tan box with a cursor - no way to "browse" for the file I want to attach.  I've posted several photos in other discussions with success.

Nomad

Verna - Just tried the file upload and got the same thing - just a url box with no option to go choose an image.

ChrisK

Ah, I can finally get back in. Seems this forum is broken toSafari users. I have to dust off Google Chrome (shudders)

Nomad

ChrisK - Haven't tried the forum on my Mac/Safari real recently but is working fine thru iPad/Safari. The forum software is not known to be real Apple friendly. Probably old crusty outdated PC code they can no longer really manage. There's lots of that out there unfortunately that can never be modernized.

Verna

Sorry, Outback. I just tried it on my iPad and you are entirely correct. I should have listened to that little voice that said "try it before you answer!". I've sent a PM to Mike. This category was just created in the last few weeks, so it could be there is one option that wasn't checked. 

ChrisK

Yeah, I jad to put my images on my web space and link to them. Thought that was odd.

Verna

Fixed!  Thanks, Mike!   (And yes, I know this photo has nothing to do with the subject, it was the last resized one in my library.)

Tabaz

Chris' rear deck heat vents on seat fabric.  A perfect match.

Michigan_Mike

There was a setting in the dashboard area (for this discussion area) that "some how" was switched off and this prevented the posting of photos to this discussion area....  Obviously things were working prior to the incident last night and hopefully all systems will remain normal.  

Thanks for bringing it to our attention!  

ChrisK

We are at McDowell mountain regional park this weekend and got to test the vents. At first, the Alde was putting out almost no heat on electric only. I switched to gas and it heated up really fast. I played with the wires going to the Alde and turned off the gas and all was well after that> might have a loose wire. I read another thread on this forum about that. Anyways, the vents worked very well. We could feel the heat coming out really well. Later in the night, I woke up and found all the side vents blocked by pillows but  the new top vents were pouring out heat. 

Sgtjohn

They can build a T@B out of Legos, let's print out a T@B!

Nomad

Sgtjohn ... 4 vents = 5 hrs ... 1 T@B = 2,438,195 hrs (just a rough estimate)