Eco Wave Flow 2 Portable A/C

[LANCECASPER]

2 hours ago, Grant_Waite said:

I would like some sort of adapter to split the airflow between me and the co pilot seat. I fly alone mainly but it would be nice to have.

If you do a “4 inch y duct splitter” search on Amazon you’ll see some possibilities or at least some ideas
. 

[Grant_Waite]

29 minutes ago, bcg said:

Cool, thanks for the info. The venting looks clean.

Could you stop the exhaust leakage with a little duct tape?

I'll share whatever I come up with when I do mine. I'm considering maybe adding a fan in the tube bringing the cold air to the front, I think one of the reasons the Plane AC worked so well was because it moved a lot of air, that's why I asked about the airflow. I always thought it better to move a lot of cool air than a little bit of cold air. Maybe something along these lines - https://a.co/d/e0rgzwx

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I don’t think they would add anything to the unit. Then you have to figure out a way to power  the fans. It blows enough air that it feels quite cold. I’ve seen these and would love to have one in my plane but don’t even know what all I’d need to power it but probably a bigger alternator as well. They are certified. It looks like the same ones they have in most commercial airliners to power your electronics. https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/mci10-06624.php 

[A64Pilot]

“booster” fans in house ducting is common, they don’t drop the temp of course but do increase the CFM and often negate the friction of the ducting, and of course even a fan feels cooler so add in the fan effect with actual cooling and it’s likely you will feel cooler, for instance turning the fan on max in your car adds no cooling, but it does feel cooler with more air blowing on you.

You could use 12V boat bilge blower fans, not quiet things but they are made to fit inside ducting and do move a lot of air, you might could slow them down and quiet them with a PWM dimmer and have an adjustable speed fan. I’ve never tried so I don’t know if that would work or not.

[bcg]

3 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

You could use 12V boat bilge blower fans, not quiet things but they are made to fit inside ducting and do move a lot of air, you might could slow them down and quiet them with a PWM dimmer and have an adjustable speed fan. I’ve never tried so I don’t know if that would work or not.

This is exactly what I've got in mind, for the reasons you've mentioned.  I found a 270CFM bilge blower that will fit 4" duct for $30 and a 10A PWM dimmer for $14.  I can work the wiring out so it plugs in with the charging cord for the AC, I've already got a 10A power port in the back seat for my B-Kool that should do the job, and 3D print something that will let me put the dimmer on the duct near the discharge so we can easily adjust it.   I'm not really worried about the noise of the fan, I'm sure the ANC will block it out like it does the fan from the B-Kool, that sucker is pretty loud as well.

I'll report back with the results, good or bad.

[bcg]

I got the hose adapter modeled today, I need to figure out how to orient it best for printing the overhangs. If anyone else decides to go this route,let me know and I'll print you a couple. I'm not sure what the Etsy guy printed them in, I'm going to use ASA though, it's strong and has the best heat tolerance of anything I can print.

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[Grant_Waite]

4 hours ago, bcg said:

I got the hose adapter modeled today, I need to figure out how to orient it best for printing the overhangs. If anyone else decides to go this route,let me know and I'll print you a couple. I'm not sure what the Etsy guy printed them in, I'm going to use ASA though, it's strong and has the best heat tolerance of anything I can print.

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I will gladly buy 2 from you. I’m not impressed with the one from Etsy. I am however impressed will your ability to model and 3d print anything you can dream of. The locking mechanism isn’t tight so it bleeds some exhaust air. The locking mechanism on the hose EcoFlow provides is insanely tight. Or at least on mine it is. I have a hard time getting them off. I can’t tell from the picture but if you could add some sort of ribs for the flex foil hose to slide over, that would be awesome. The Etsy one has nothing so it won’t stay on unless you have a hose clamp. I would love suggestions on how I might go about holding up the cold air hose so it’s suspended a bit. As you can see right now it’s just laying over the head rest. It slides off whenever I move my seat forward. When I first get in. I was thinking of something along the lines of the straps they use in house ducting to suspend them. Not sure how I’d attach something to the plastic headliner. Velcro maybe? Oh here’s some better pictures after today’s flight. 

[bcg]

4 hours ago, Grant_Waite said:

I will gladly buy 2 from you. I’m not impressed with the one from Etsy. I am however impressed will your ability to model and 3d print anything you can dream of. The locking mechanism isn’t tight so it bleeds some exhaust air. The locking mechanism on the hose EcoFlow provides is insanely tight. Or at least on mine it is. I have a hard time getting them off. I can’t tell from the picture but if you could add some sort of ribs for the flex foil hose to slide over, that would be awesome. The Etsy one has nothing so it won’t stay on unless you have a hose clamp. I would love suggestions on how I might go about holding up the cold air hose so it’s suspended a bit. As you can see right now it’s just laying over the head rest. It slides off whenever I move my seat forward. When I first get in. I was thinking of something along the lines of the straps they use in house ducting to suspend them. Not sure how I’d attach something to the plastic headliner. Velcro maybe? Oh here’s some better pictures after today’s flight. 

Send me your address and I'll mail you a couple once I finalize them - bernie@graniers.com  Just cover the postage, you're really part of the design team so I'm not going to charge you for them.

I'm still test fitting and should have it worked out this week.  One of the things I'm working on getting right is the tightness of the fit, I'm adjusting the gap in the tab still.  I made my shoulder a little wider than what I was seeing pictures of and I'm considering maybe putting a little pocket in the shoulder that will let me put some felt weatherstrip in it so it's got something to compress and fill the gap.  I'm not sure if that's going to be necessary yet though.

Good idea on the ribs, I'd just put an indentation for a hose clamp or zip tie to clamp the hose into.  A taper with some ribs would be easier though.

I'm not sure about how to attach it to the ceiling yet, I haven't gotten to that part on mine.  Embarrassingly, I realized once mine showed up that the reason it was so cheap was because it didn't come with a battery.  The Delta 2 1024W battery was on sale for 40% off (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9XB57XM) so I ordered one of those instead of the small one.  I'm still waiting for it and my battery cable to show up before I can use it in the plane.  I don't know if it would help much with keeping it high but, it would be possible to print a rigid duct tube and a 90 to bring it up to the ceiling and then the rest would just be keeping it there.  Actually, now that I'm typing this and thinking about it, doing it that way it wouldn't need to be round, it could be flattened out into a more rectangular shape along the ceiling and have vents along the way for the front and back seat passengers.  I'll have to play around with that some in CAD and see what I can come up with.  It would have to be done in sections because my printer build area is only about 10 cubic inches.  Something modular would be more flexible though.

[bcg]

It's nice and tight against the AC, I've just got to model the ribs up top so there's no need for a hose clamp or zip tie. It took 3 tries to get it as tight as I wanted.

The ribs are modeled, printing that now to see if I got the taper right.

 

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[Grant_Waite]

8 hours ago, bcg said:

Send me your address and I'll mail you a couple once I finalize them - bernie@graniers.com  Just cover the postage, you're really part of the design team so I'm not going to charge you for them.

I'm still test fitting and should have it worked out this week.  One of the things I'm working on getting right is the tightness of the fit, I'm adjusting the gap in the tab still.  I made my shoulder a little wider than what I was seeing pictures of and I'm considering maybe putting a little pocket in the shoulder that will let me put some felt weatherstrip in it so it's got something to compress and fill the gap.  I'm not sure if that's going to be necessary yet though.

Good idea on the ribs, I'd just put an indentation for a hose clamp or zip tie to clamp the hose into.  A taper with some ribs would be easier though.

I'm not sure about how to attach it to the ceiling yet, I haven't gotten to that part on mine.  Embarrassingly, I realized once mine showed up that the reason it was so cheap was because it didn't come with a battery.  The Delta 2 1024W battery was on sale for 40% off (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9XB57XM) so I ordered one of those instead of the small one.  I'm still waiting for it and my battery cable to show up before I can use it in the plane.  I don't know if it would help much with keeping it high but, it would be possible to print a rigid duct tube and a 90 to bring it up to the ceiling and then the rest would just be keeping it there.  Actually, now that I'm typing this and thinking about it, doing it that way it wouldn't need to be round, it could be flattened out into a more rectangular shape along the ceiling and have vents along the way for the front and back seat passengers.  I'll have to play around with that some in CAD and see what I can come up with.  It would have to be done in sections because my printer build area is only about 10 cubic inches.  Something modular would be more flexible though.

You could probably make something similar to this, that Peter Schiff aero sells. 

It’s a bit more complicated but a dumbed down version or something similar is probably possible. I believe the overhead duct has the build in booster fans that you were mentioning. They say it puts out 240cfm so probably uses some sort of a bilge blower or whatever it’s called. Not sure how they attach it to the ceiling. It looks like they designed it for Beechcraft. Unless that picture is a one off custom duct they made. Glad my idea of ribs helped. Yeah, the battery is an essential. I got the one that attaches to the bottom of the wave. I think that it takes up no room. Just adds a bit of height. Definitely makes it too heavy to put in the plane with it attached. I can move the unit around with both attached just not at that weird angle to get it in. I’m too the point though where I don’t take the unit out of the plane anymore. I did the first few times to charge it but now I just charge it while I clean the plane. It finally drained the smaller bit of water into my container yesterday. Good to know it works. 

[bcg]

12 minutes ago, Grant_Waite said:

You could probably make something similar to this, that Peter Schiff aero sells. 

It’s a bit more complicated but a dumbed down version or something similar is probably possible. I believe the overhead duct has the build in booster fans that you were mentioning. They say it puts out 240cfm so probably uses some sort of a bilge blower or whatever it’s called. Not sure how they attach it to the ceiling. It looks like they designed it for Beechcraft. Unless that picture is a one off custom duct they made. Glad my idea of ribs helped. Yeah, the battery is an essential. I got the one that attaches to the bottom of the wave. I think that it takes up no room. Just adds a bit of height. Definitely makes it too heavy to put in the plane with it attached. I can move the unit around with both attached just not at that weird angle to get it in. I’m too the point though where I don’t take the unit out of the plane anymore. I did the first few times to charge it but now I just charge it while I clean the plane. It finally drained the smaller bit of water into my container yesterday. Good to know it works. 

I was thinking something along those lines, hopefully done a little more compactly.  We don't have a ton of head room in our Mooneys and that takes up a lot of overhead space.

I have some ideas, just have to prototype them to see what actually works in practice.  I don't know how I'm going to attach it to the ceiling, I think I'll try to use existing screws if I can model it to do that.  I'm thinking of doing something that will use vents like this.  I can probably model the thread into the plenum so they screw right into it without needing the backer.

[Grant_Waite]

1 hour ago, bcg said:

I was thinking something along those lines, hopefully done a little more compactly.  We don't have a ton of head room in our Mooneys and that takes up a lot of overhead space.

I have some ideas, just have to prototype them to see what actually works in practice.  I don't know how I'm going to attach it to the ceiling, I think I'll try to use existing screws if I can model it to do that.  I'm thinking of doing something that will use vents like this.  I can probably model the thread into the plenum so they screw right into it without needing the backer.

Yeah, I agree we don’t have much head room to sacrifice. Barons make our planes look like smart cars. Not sure what model Mooney you have but mine still has the large overhead vents. Wish it had wemacs. Something that was able to direct the air out of the from 2 vents would be interesting. I have the scoop on the roof that opens or closes to let fresh air in. I believe all the planes that had the large vents have the scoop

[bcg]

34 minutes ago, Grant_Waite said:

Yeah, I agree we don’t have much head room to sacrifice. Barons make our planes look like smart cars. Not sure what model Mooney you have but mine still has the large overhead vents. Wish it had wemacs. Something that was able to direct the air out of the from 2 vents would be interesting. I have the scoop on the roof that opens or closes to let fresh air in. I believe all the planes that had the large vents have the scoop

I've got a C so I'm smaller inside than your J.  My overhead is just eyeball vents and I don't have the knee vents the J does.  Airflow into the cabin in the C is garbage compared to a J.  I still love the plane though.

[bcg]

I'm still waiting on my battery because the first on got lost in shipping.  In the meantime, I think I've worked out how I'm going to get the hose through the baggage compartment bulkhead.  I'm going to make a piece that's flat in the baggage compartment and protrudes into the empennage that the exhaust hose can be pulled through.  In the empennage, I'll have a backer plate that's got 4 holes in it threaded for #8 course wood screws so you can just screw the pieces together instead of through bolting them.  This will allow one person to install this alone from the baggage compartment by reaching through the exhaust hose hole and holding the backing plate in place.  Then just to make it easy, I'm going to make a cover plate that will screw directly into the piece inside the baggage compartment so when you pull the AC out, you can easily close the hole up.  First picture shows all 3 pieces together, next 2 show the penetration and the backer plate.

Now I've got to figure out a plenum and vent solution that will be unobtrusive.

[bcg]

I think this turned out pretty clean. I've got a round cover plate that will screw onto the inside piece to cover the hole up when I take the AC out.

I'm still working on the plenum and ducts. My daughter and I are going to Durango for Father's Day though, so I wanted to get it into the plane for the trip, we'll just use the included hose this time.

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[Grant_Waite]

1 hour ago, bcg said:

I think this turned out pretty clean. I've got a round cover plate that will screw onto the inside piece to cover the hole up when I take the AC out.

I'm still working on the plenum and ducts. My daughter and I are going to Durango for Father's Day though, so I wanted to get it into the plane for the trip, we'll just use the included hose this time.

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Looks fantastic!

[bcg]

I messed around with some ideas today to see if they were going to work. First was using an old antenna hole to route a condensate drain out so I wouldn't have the condensate being evaporated into the cabin.

I also hooked up the 270CFM blower motor in the vent and while it definitely increased the output temp a few degrees, it made the overall cabin feel cooler. I think once I get the vents worked out, the blower will be really nice.

The biggest thing though is that I tried connecting a 12v to 48v step up transformer in for charging and got the input very close to what the AC uses on Max, which should make it so we can run it non-stop. The downside is that it draws 40A so I'm going to have to run some larger wires for it. I'll do that at annual and live with the 100W charging from straight 12v for now.

My daughter and I are heading to Colorado this weekend, I'm looking forward to seeing how this works in flight.

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[AV8DR]

Bernie, this prototype looks fabulous. We are awaiting our delivery of the Ecowave2 and wanting to use the luggage compartment as the pass through for the exhaust. Just sent you an email and look forward to hearing more about your success on the prototype. 

[bcg]

I got a chance to really run the bilge blower with the AC today and found an issue.  If I run the blower at full and the AC reduces it's internal fan speed, the airflow from the blower causes the internal fan to run faster than expected and the AC gives me a "Front fan speed unexpected" message, or something very similar to that, and shuts down.  I have to remove all power from it and start it back up to clear the error.  It seems that if I run the blower at 1/2 speed, which is still a lot more air movement than the internal fan, then I don't have this problem so I'm going to limit it to that for now.  There's probably some way to disable or override that speed sensor in the AC and I may open it up and poke around to see what I can do there later.  Anyway, if anyone else is going to put the blower in their duct line like I did, make sure you have a rheostat on it so you can control the speed and avoid this issue.

[LANCECASPER]

@Grant_Waite and @bcg  - it's now mid-summer and just checking to see how the Eco Wave Flow 2 is working out. I really like the size of the Eco. Would welcome your observations,.

[philiplane]

On 5/27/2024 at 12:51 AM, Grant_Waite said:

I talked with them at Sun and fun to see their unit. It works great but I just don’t have the funds for it at this time. They are the only company to my knowledge that still makes and actually installs a fully portable A/C in any plane. It’s not too pricey of a unit but they recommend a 100 amp alternator, which adds to the cost. On my plane, I couldn’t even get a 100amp alternator so I’m screwed out of it even if I had the money to do it. That’s fine though, this isn’t my forever plane. 

Plane Power makes the 150 amp belt-drive FLX series alternator that should fit. It puts out over 70 amps at idle.

[bcg]

3 hours ago, LANCECASPER said:

@Grant_Waite and @bcg  - it's now mid-summer and just checking to see how the Eco Wave Flow 2 is working out. I really like the size of the Eco. Would welcome your observations,.

It's good, not great.  Adding the bilge blower makes a big difference in comfort but, it also causes the unit to error out for a front fan speed issue if I run the blower more than 2/3 speed.  If I switch it from max fan to eco or just a lower setting, then I have to turn the blower down to 1/2 or less.  It's not a huge issue, just something to be aware of.  The thing that sucks though, is that if it does have an error, you have to disconnect the battery to reset it, which is really tough to do in the air.

 

If I'm taking my wife somewhere, and there's room, I'm still packing the B-Kool in addition to the EcoFlow, because I don't want to be stuck with nothing if there is an error and it shuts down and because it's not quite enough by itself on the ground with 2 people in the plane.  If I ever get around to finishing the ducting and vents, I think it'll make a difference in how well it works by itself, being able to direct the cold air directly onto myself when I'm alone is a lot more comfortable than sharing it with my wife.

 

Overall, I'm glad I got it, it's fantastic at low altitudes where you just need a little extra to be comfortable and I do believe that with some modifications, I can have it working in a way that I'm really happy with.  I don't think it would be reasonable to expect it to be great as a plug and play solution though, of course the same could be said of anything with only 5100 BTU.

 

The guy in the hangar next to mine just had an engine driven split system put into his Bonanza, it looks fantastic and he says it works really well, as good as a car.  It was also $30k +/- so...

[Grant_Waite]

My plane has been down since late June so I haven’t been using it. When I did use it, it was just as hot then as now and I was pleased with it for how much it cost. Not to mention there isn’t any alternative other than it for a portable solution. Everything else is a permanent fixture or semi permanent and cost a lot more. If I had a long body that I planned on keeping forever, I could see investing in the 30k A/C system as the only way to go. There’s no doubt it’s the only thing comparable to a cars A/C. I’ve yet to be in any plane with a true A/C so I’m just speaking of what I’ve read and heard. You can’t go wrong with the Eco Flow. It requires little modification and can easily be installed and removed. Not to mention the add on battery has plenty of power to run the unit for a good hour plus on max. I typically run mine for probably 35-45 minutes cumulatively each flight. It’s perfect for me, since I fly alone 97% of the time. It works with 2 people, I just swap the duct back and forth. 74° air feels great when it’s 145° on the black top and 100° ambient. I’d imagine that it would work even better in a less humid climate than here in Florida.