Staying cool in the Noovo Plus

Do hot days inside your Noovo Plus LB get you down? Is the air in the lounge area, one of the top-selling features of your van, stagnant and too warm? Are you starting to regret your purchase? If you are not yet an owner, are you starting to think that maybe the Noovo Plus LB suffers from an unacceptable design flaw?

Fear not! A solution is at hand.

The problem isn’t that the Truma air-conditioning unit isn’t strong enough. As you’ll note if you have the van, when the air is uncomfortable in the lounge area, it will be, at the same time, chilly and drafty in the front of the van, cold even.

Perhaps you’ve considered adding air flow diverters, clear plastic panels that guide the air coming out of the Truma straight down, or even backwards a bit, toward the lounge. That will certainly help, but that sort of thing always reminds me of visiting certain relatives when I was a boy who kept their couch encased in plastic wrap. A good solution from an engineering perspective, no doubt, but not something that you’d really want to do.

There is a better way, a solution that cools the lounge area without installing any additional accessories. This solution not only equalizes the temperature in the front and rear of the van, but you will also find that it gets positively chilly, even drafty, in the lounge area. You’ll likely have to turn the AC down to be comfortable on those hot days, saving significant energy.

Here is the basic idea behind the solution: You want to create better airflow from the AC to the van, but the lift bed is blocking that airflow. The solution is to unblock that airflow. Just follow these steps.

Step 1
Lower the lift bed all the way down. Place all pillows, stuffed animals, etc. to one side (the same side).

Step 2
Raise the bed almost all the way up, stopping about two or three inches from its maximum position. (Except for the tallest people, there will still be plenty of room under the bed to sit comfortably–you might not even notice the difference.)

Step 3
Adjust the mixing slider on the Truma all the way toward the front which (somewhat counterintuitively) will direct most of the airflow rearward.

Step 4
Turn the Truma rear rotator wheel to point the rear airflow as much toward the ceiling as possible.

That’s it. What you’ve done here is to create a channel for the cool air to pass over the bed (unblocked by pillows) and then waterfall down the rear of the bed, into the lounge area. The cool air will then mix with the other air in the van, eliminating the stagnant air under the bed, and will bring the entire van into a more even temperature distribution. 

Once you get used to the idea, on hot days you can skip steps 2 and 3, and just push your pillows to the side when you get up in the morning and, when you raise the bed as you normally would, just don’t raise it all the way.

Yes, your mattress and pillows will be cold when you first lower the bed at bedtime, but they warm quickly (and perhaps after a hot day, you might find the coolness agreeable).