I know you didn’t know that the air conditioner was not invented for the sake of comfort, it was invented to control the humidity in a room full of papers that would shrink due to the humidity. Read the full thing here. Little did Willis Haviland knew that his invention would bring such great comfort to mankind, that his invention will make it to camping tents. It’s crazy, right?
Yes, of course, you need an air conditioner in your tent to maintain a proper sleeping atmosphere in your tent. Temperature drops in nature can be pretty harsh, and anyway who doesn’t like a little comfort while they sleep. Here is our article on how to insulate the tent.
I know there are a ton of tent air conditioners available in the market, but don’t you love the satisfaction of DIY items and all the money you saved and maybe some electricity. Who knows?
Imagine coming to a well-cooled tent after a long, tiring, strenuous day of mountain climbing or hiking. You will have to have a sound sleep to restore your energy and reward yourself by relaxing in your tent colled by your portable air conditioner. Who doesn’t want this feeling?
DIY for an air conditioner for camping tents might require some technique and some thinking, but it will give the results.
Let’s get started, shall we?
How To DIY An Air Conditioner For Camping Tents?

Since we are talking about air conditioners, the DIY might be tricky, but not with our easy steps to follow. If you can cool your tent and save money as well, then why not?
1. Carry Your House Window Air Conditioner With You
This method has to be the easiest and probably very effective one. You cannot forget about the convenience of this method.
- Just bring your small house window air conditioner with you on your camping trip.
- Keep it on some elevated ground such as a stool or a stand.
- Plug it into your RV or a generator. Here is how to ground your generator for camping.
- Place it at the entrance of the tent with the zip open as much as needed to fit it and not leave the zip open wide.
- Ans there you go the house cooler will do its job of keeping the heat outside and keep your tent cool.
2. Build Your Own Solar-Powered DIY Air Conditioner
Building this only takes you an icebox cooler, a small 10$ fan, and a modest solar panel that can be run on batteries as well. And also try to take the ice with you.
Step 1: Find the right icebox for the air conditioner.
- You can either use the old one you have and no longer use it. Or you can easily buy a cheap icebox online.
- Try to find one with a styrofoam lining ice chest and it is easily available for around 2-3$.
- The basic idea is to prevent heat transfer from the atmosphere.
- The cooler should be able to prevent the ice from melting and no other container will do the job.
Step 2: Mark out the holes for the fan and duct on the lid.
- These measurements for the fan and the small duct should be exact or at least near to perfect for preventing the heat to enter the icebox.
- You should be able to seal the holes after you fix them with the fan and the duct. Leave enough space to seal the hole.
- The hole for the duct is easy to make but the hole for the fan should be able to hold it in the right place. The fan should not go fully inside the icebox.
- Consider buying a fan with mesh covers in it, because they come with a frame around that can rest on the hole and stay in place.
Step 3: Drill and cut the holes
- Now that you have marked these holes accurately, you need to cut them out.
- You can either use a jigsaw or a drill to cut them out, or you can use a combination of both to make it easier.
- The plastic lid can be a bit tricky to cut, but the right tools will get you through it.
- First, drill a hole with the drill, and then the rest of it can be cut out with the jigsaw or a hand saw.
- If you are using a styrofoam icebox, just a hot knife is enough to cut the holes out.

Step 4: Fit the fan and the plastic duct
- If the holes are of the right size, both the fan and the plastic duct pipe will be fitted just fine.
- If not you can use some kind of clay or duct tape to fix them right or seal the holes.
- Sealing the holes is necessary, to prevent heat transfer.
- Sealing with clay might make it a bit bulky.
- Here is the amazon link for the duct pipe that can be useful to you.
- The fan should be fitted with the face inside the cooler, this will bring air inside the cold surface and make it cool.
Step 5: Put the ice inside
- The more ice you put the more cool air you get.
- Using a whole block of ice is a practical thing to do.
- Using cubes of ice will get the air in the touch with more ice and the ice will melt faster.
- If you find carrying blocks of ice to the campsite is impractical, then you may also use frozen water bottles with water-filled instead of ice.
Step 6: Connect the fan
- The last step is to connect the fan to the solar panel.
- It is an obvious thing to mention about placing the solar panel exposed to the sun.
- Make sure the chords of the wire are long enough to easily set up your air conditioner to the panel kept outside in sun.
- If the weather has been cloudy, or the sun keeps hiding behind the clouds from time to time, then you can replace the solar panel with any kind of battery strong enough to run the fan.
- A 12V battery is enough for a small fan.
How Does This Work?
This DIY air conditioner works on the mechanism of heat transfer. The fan brings in air and the air after coming in contact with ice, gets cool. This cool air then finds an escape through the duct pipe we attached beside the fan.
You just have to place the open end of the duct pipe towards you and you are good to go.
3. Mini Milk Carton Air Conditioner
Well, this sounds a bit weird, but it works like magic. It is portable and you can even carry it around when you go hiking or climbing. The steps to build are elementary, but the requirements may take you a trip to the nearest hardware store.
Requirements-
- Computer fan
- 12V AC adaptor
- Empty milk carton
- Cardboard cutter
- Hot glue gun
- Battery
- Wire stripers
Steps:
- Take an empty milk carton or any juice carton that has a round mouth like plastic bottlenecks.
- Wash/ rinse the carton to get rid of the smell of the beverage.
- Make sure the size of the computer fan that you use should be smaller than the carton.
- Place the side of the carton up, that has the round opening.
- Mark the hole for the computer fan to be fixed.
- Keep the hole smaller so that it can stay put in the place.
- Place the computer fan with the help of a hot glue gun in place.
- Connect the computer fan with the battery and stick the battery on the base of the carton. (not the base in the correct position, but the original base)
- You can disconnect the battery whenever not in use.
- Put the crushed ice or the small ice cubes through the mouth of the carton.
- And you are ready to go!
- The working is same as the previous one. You can drain out the ice if left extra from the mouth. Isn’t it nice to have a personal air conditioner?
FAQs
Conclusion
I hope now you can consider taking some pain to build an easy AC for your tent when not compromise your sleep and comfort. Getting a sound sleep while you are on a camp is necessary.
Even if you are on a small camping trip with your family to a nearby campsite, and just want to enjoy a barbeque in the outdoors, wouldn’t it be nice to sit and chill in your air-conditioned tent?
If you have any new ideas on how to DIY AC for a camping tent, do let us know in the comment section. We would love to hear those.
Check out other useful guides on camping on our website.
Until then happy camping!