Vault Bed Heat Pump Build (Heating & Cooling) 🥵🥶

[Cybergirl]

I absolutely love the lexan hinged insert idea. I am still waiting on my truck but unless there is an interior tailgate release that no one has mentioned, I’d be insanely nervous locking myself in the vault knowing that either phone or truck battery could die. A hinging panel that could be popped out in emergency would be awesome. Even if tight to climb out, one should be able to reach the tonneau and tailgate buttons from inside.

On a related note, I wonder if one could add an interior tailgate release pullcord or similar.

Finally, can your phone app connect to the truck via bluetooth or do truck and phone need wireless service to communicate? A lot of the places I camp have no or unreliable mobile service.

Not to worry, there's an emergency release pull behind a small pop out cover in the gate. Yes, the app works without wifi

It would depend upon how well you can sleep with noises cycling on and off during the night. It looks like putting a heat pump on a lexan cover like that would transmit a lot of noise inside the vault, and it might not have a pleasant quality to it. I know I would not sleep well with that sound all night.

As for heat, what's wrong with an electric blanket? In an enclosed space like that, with a comforter on top and insulating mattress below, I would probably have to turn it off once the bedding had warmed up, even if it was well below freezing outside.

That will be determined in a real life test. The unit is very quiet in Sleep Mode so I'm not expecting it to be particularly intrusive, but we'll see.

I've always been a bit wary of electric blankets.

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[Gigahorse]

Not to worry, there's an emergency release pull behind a small pop out cover in the gate. Yes, the app works without wifi

That will be determined in a real life test. The unit is very quiet in Sleep Mode so I'm not expecting it to be particularly intrusive, but we'll see.

I've always been a bit wary of electric blankets.

You may also be able to set it to "continuous" or "fan always on" so you don't hear it turning on and off a bunch.

 

[Cybergirl]

Finally, can your phone app connect to the truck via bluetooth or do truck and phone need wireless service to communicate? A lot of the places I camp have no or unreliable mobile service.

Grok says:
The Tesla app can control your car using Bluetooth, even without Wi-Fi or cellular service. However, certain features may require an internet connection, such as streaming music or accessing live traffic updates.

In order to use the Tesla app with Bluetooth, you need to pair your phone with your car.

 

[mbrockus]

Will this bring in fresh air or will you be trapped in a fog of death vapor if your body is releasing some super strong sulfur.

 

[Cybergirl]

Will this bring in fresh air or will you be trapped in a fog of death vapor if your body is releasing some super strong sulfur.

The BougeRV is not ventilating the vault. However, it is dehumidifying the vault air. It's not clear to me how "leaky" the vault is. I suspect that air infiltration occurs to some extent. If there's not enough it would be pretty easy to add an exhaust fan on the Lexan panel to help the air exchange rate.

 

[Cybergirl]

I did a test of my BougeRV A/C setup for the CT vault today. The outside air temperature here in Arizona was 72F. The temperature inside the vault was 79F at the start of the test after being exposed to the sun for several hours on the driveway. I pulled the CT into the garage to get out of the sun and installed the Lexan panel and A/C at the gate end of the tonneau cover. I set the A/C to maximum cooling, and let it run for three hours. At the end of the test the outside air temp was 71F and the temp inside the vault was 63F, a drop of 16 deg. The BougeRV was pulling 200W plus or minus through out the test as measured on my KILL A WATT meter.

I then crawled into the vault and closed the gate to get an idea of the noise level. There was no noticeable vibration from the A/C unit resting on the Lexan panel. What I could plainly hear was air flow mixed with fan noise coming through the white ducts.

This video will give you an idea of the noise level. In "Sleep Mode", with the fan on low speed, the sound was not objectionable from my perspective.

 

[Tinker71]

Was waiting for this BUILT!
Careful running it in your garage overnight as there can be some funky things if your pumping heat into an enclosed space with a heat pump so maybe park outside or leave the garage door open a little.

LET US KNOW How it goes, especially the energy consumption overnight and temps outside/inside the vault!

I think I will still remove my window so I can crawl from the vault to the cab in an emergency or if I am in a bad area, but your setup looks great.

Nice looking build!

Awesome. Now we need a straight 48vdc model.

 

[Crissa]

Awesome. Now we need a straight 48vdc model.

...Or 800v.

I know it's scary, but connectors can be designed.

-Crissa

 

[C T Rick]

Heating would be much more efficient and silent with an automatic electric blanket. While my wife throws it ontop of herself. I lay it below me. Makes no noise and has adjustable settings.
I’m running mini splits in the bedroom now and have done away with the electric blanket 3 years ago. . But they are traditional 2 piece units 12,000 btu /1 ton . Real efficient and low energy consumption. I have them in the bedroom only so they only work the room we spend the most time in when you think about it. I have done a friends house with 4 units placed in 2 bedrooms, living room and overlapped the kitchen with dining room. They are the bomb. Infact they are so quiet that when I first installed my first unit, I taped a ribbon to the grill to verify it’s running.
If all you need is cooling, then your unit seems fine. Add the electric blanket and you have a system that should work. Heck, even electric heat tape low wattage could work if you run it in the channels of the bed.
Rick

 

[Cybergirl]

This is the only post I have up that is somewhat time sensitive and would appreciate it getting published.

Yea the removal of the rear window is not for a family with small kids, but the CT I feel was designed as a work truck not a minivan, although some of the features turned out that way.

As far as the heat pump in an enclosed area be careful of CARBON MONOXIDE
Especially as small as the vault is, having the exhaust pumped into it you can run into issues. I would say at a MINIMUM use a carbon monoxide detector if your going to be piping that into the vault with you in there.
Tesla needs to make the HVAC go to the back, preferably through a midgate because people are going to camp and sleep back there and between space heaters and heat pumps could run into issues.

This is nonsense. The vault air is pulled over a heat exchanger coil and pushed back into the vault. There is no combustion of any sort involved that would produce carbon monoxide.

 

[JBee]

For heating I would be using a electric blanket as well and some insulation either on top of the vault, that also helps to keep the hot or cold out, and offers better rain protection.

In general theres no reason at all to run a heat pump if you are just going to loose the heat through the vault cover anyway. Better off with more insulation, even just better bedfing, and a little bit of power draw on a electric blanket.

You could also duct the warm/cold air into your sleeping bag directly would use a lot less power. Ideally somone would make a air conditioned sleeping bag. That way you could only heat and cool the insulated sleeping bag itself, and would only need to add or subtract the right amount of body heat. At that point even a decent solid state pelteir element would do the trick I think, with some dedicated air channels.

But the biggest problem in such a small enclosed space will be the humidity from breathing and the lack of fresh air. So what you really want is a heat recovery ventilation system with a decadent wheel, which not only gives you fresh air, but also recycles the heat/cooling energy back and allows you to reduce the humidity without much energy use at all.

The good thing is that if you knock out the humidity first, you don't need to use so much energy to cool or heat, because the water content of the air is lower to start with. Water thermal mass is better than concrete. The other advantage in warm humid weather is that the body can use perspiration (skin evaporation) better, so you don't need much cooling to begin with.

I've said this before many times, a long time ago, but I'm surprised Tesla doesn't already use a HRV to reduce HVAC energy consumption. It's really not hard considering the amount of heat exchangers they already run anyway.

But in saying all that I think Tesla dropped the ball a bit with not making sleeping in the CT a little bit more convenient, like in all their other models.

Even the R3 hatch back is better.

 

[Woodrick]

I guess it's not as big of deal for some, but the idea of putting a sleeping bag in the bed, closing the tailgate ant the tonneau cover seems to be the equivalent of getting buried alive.

While I know there's a emergency release, even the concept of getting closed in the bed and my phone maybe not able to open the cover, or you can't get turned around to pull the tailgate release just yells claustrophobia.

 

[Cybergirl]

For heating I would be using a electric blanket as well and some insulation either on top of the vault, that also helps to keep the hot or cold out, and offers better rain protection.

In general theres no reason at all to run a heat pump if you are just going to loose the heat through the vault cover anyway. Better off with more insulation, even just better bedfing, and a little bit of power draw on a electric blanket.

You could also duct the warm/cold air into your sleeping bag directly would use a lot less power. Ideally somone would make a air conditioned sleeping bag. That way you could only heat and cool the insulated sleeping bag itself, and would only need to add or subtract the right amount of body heat. At that point even a decent solid state pelteir element would do the trick I think, with some dedicated air channels.

But the biggest problem in such a small enclosed space will be the humidity from breathing and the lack of fresh air. So what you really want is a heat recovery ventilation system with a decadent wheel, which not only gives you fresh air, but also recycles the heat/cooling energy back and allows you to reduce the humidity without much energy use at all.

The good thing is that if you knock out the humidity first, you don't need to use so much energy to cool or heat, because the water content of the air is lower to start with. Water thermal mass is better than concrete. The other advantage in warm humid weather is that the body can use perspiration (skin evaporation) better, so you don't need much cooling to begin with.

I've said this before many times, a long time ago, but I'm surprised Tesla doesn't already use a HRV to reduce HVAC energy consumption. It's really not hard considering the amount of heat exchangers they already run anyway.

But in saying all that I think Tesla dropped the ball a bit with not making sleeping in the CT a little bit more convenient, like in all their other models.

Even the R3 hatch back is better.

When cooling is called for, the BougeRV A/C unit will extract water vapor from vault air.

Humidity build up will be more of a problem inside the vault when outside air temperatures are cold. I've given up on the idea of using the BougeRV unit for heating. It's not designed to serve that purpose. It seems like an electric blanket is the most practical way to keep warm while sleeping, even if the tonneau cover is left partly open for ventilation.

I don't yet have a sense of the amount of air infiltration that occurs normally within the vault. It will be easy to increase air exchange if necessary, although at the expense of additional power draw. I'm not aware of a tiny portable HRV that could work for the vault.

 

[Woodrick]

When cooling is called for, the BougeRV A/C unit will extract water vapor from vault air.

Humidity build up will be more of a problem inside the vault when outside air temperatures are cold. I've given up on the idea of using the BougeRV unit for heating. It's not designed to serve that purpose. It seems like an electric blanket is the most practical way to keep warm while sleeping, even if the tonneau cover is left partly open for ventilation.

I don't yet have a sense of the amount of air infiltration that occurs normally within the vault. It will be easy to increase air exchange if necessary, although at the expense of additional power draw. I'm not aware of a tiny portable HRV that could work for the vault.

Maybe the best use would be like a heated air mattress, where it blows warn air under you.

 

[Cybergirl]

I guess it's not as big of deal for some, but the idea of putting a sleeping bag in the bed, closing the tailgate ant the tonneau cover seems to be the equivalent of getting buried alive.

While I know there's a emergency release, even the concept of getting closed in the bed and my phone maybe not able to open the cover, or you can't get turned around to pull the tailgate release just yells claustrophobia.

Yes, that could be a problem for some people, psychologically.

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