I have a 20ft HC shipping container that houses some storage, tools, construction material and also a small solar set up. Located in the Southern California Desert temperatures are on the warm side especially from May to October (90-120F ambient, +10-15 degrees inside the container.
The top of the container is almost fully covered with solar panels, 2k watts worth of panels and mostly all four sides are shaded with shade sails.
I need to add some sort of AC to the container to keep the solar equipment cool, mainly the batteries. All I’m currently running is a small fridge, some vent fans, cell booster, and a 4g lte modem and a wifi camera.
All of my storage and solar equipment is in the back 8ft of the container. I was thinking of constructing a wall to block off that back 8ft and then cutting a hole in the wall for a 8k btu window AC unit to just keep the back 8ft cool(under 90F). My question is how efficient would this be dumping the heat into the other 12 ft of the container. I don’t care how hot the front 12ft of the container gets. I was thinking I could exhaust the front unconditioned space through a hole in the floor with a powerful in-line fan. I’m currently exhausting the entire container in the same fashion and it seems to work fairly well.
I’m trying to avoid cutting any holes in the walls of the container at this time for various reasons if anyone is wondering why I don’t just exhaust to outside the container. I know it seems counterintuitive but replacing a small 4-6” hole in the wood floor is easier for me to patch than a 15x24” square cut out in the metal wall. I don’t have a welder at this time.
The top of the container is almost fully covered with solar panels, 2k watts worth of panels and mostly all four sides are shaded with shade sails.
I need to add some sort of AC to the container to keep the solar equipment cool, mainly the batteries. All I’m currently running is a small fridge, some vent fans, cell booster, and a 4g lte modem and a wifi camera.
All of my storage and solar equipment is in the back 8ft of the container. I was thinking of constructing a wall to block off that back 8ft and then cutting a hole in the wall for a 8k btu window AC unit to just keep the back 8ft cool(under 90F). My question is how efficient would this be dumping the heat into the other 12 ft of the container. I don’t care how hot the front 12ft of the container gets. I was thinking I could exhaust the front unconditioned space through a hole in the floor with a powerful in-line fan. I’m currently exhausting the entire container in the same fashion and it seems to work fairly well.
I’m trying to avoid cutting any holes in the walls of the container at this time for various reasons if anyone is wondering why I don’t just exhaust to outside the container. I know it seems counterintuitive but replacing a small 4-6” hole in the wood floor is easier for me to patch than a 15x24” square cut out in the metal wall. I don’t have a welder at this time.