Color of your popup tent camper and the heat?

[crhawkeye]

So I'm looking at the wedge style light-weight popup campers.

Black would look good with my setup (white truck with black trim) and have better resale value presumably.

The only thing that gives me pause is the heat with a black powder-coat. I'm going to be in the position of wanting to spend a good amount of the day in the camper at times and am worried about excessive heat.

I will say that I don't plan to spend time in the desert in the summer. I'm moreso concerned about a 70 degree day turning into something much hotter inside.

What's your experience if you have black? Would having the vented tent open and windows opened be enough to dissipate most of the heat?

Thanks.

 

[grantfurness]

I have a black cargo trailer & it’s hot in the summer. I don’t see why a black camper would have higher resale value than a huge camper.

 

[crhawkeye]

Assumed that since black goes with everything it would.

 

[VanIsle_Greg]

The pop up camper I am building has a white roof top, and the body sides are natural aluminum... For now. I have been thinking about spraying it the same colour as my truck... or something VERY close. I am hopeful that the white roof top will keep a lot of the heat out, and the insulation will also help. Not sure how the natural aluminum will work out? Seems pretty good so far. I think a big factor is insulation and ventilation.

 

[greg.potter]

There has been a lot of work done on outdoor located electronic cabinets which you can find on the Internet. Based on that information white reflects significantly more solar energy than other colours. In desert climates it very common to incorporate a sun shade into the cabinet design in addition to painting the cabinets white. I have also seen expedition camper boxes built with a canopy shell offset from the top of box with a couple of inches of air space between the box and canopy shell to eliminate direct solar gain on the camper box.

Some people have painted cabinets black hoping to benefit from the thermal gain during our cold Canadian winter months. A company with a bunch of gas wells in northern Alberta decided that they should paint their wellsite electronic controller cabinets black to help with heating during the winter. During the winter in the north (it commonly hits -40C a few times over the winter), there are few hours of sunlight so the heating from solar gain is negligible. In the summer however the daylight hours are long - so lots of heating. They cooked close to half of the controllers they installed that first summer.

The common practice is to paint outdoor electronic cabinets white and if the electronics aren't rated for the anticipated minimum ambient temperatures then insulate them with foil face styrofoam insulation. The foil helps to prevent radiant heat loss in the winter and radiant heat gain in the summer. The styrofoam insulation helps to prevent conductive heat loss in the winter and conductive heat gain in the summer.

Whether we are talking about roof top tents or electronic cabinets the principals are the same. I currently have a white RTT and would not consider a RTT, camper or expedition box in any other colour simply due to trying to avoid summer solar heat gain.

 

[beef tits]

Black will be noticeably hotter And have LESS resale to any reasonable person. A lot of folks seem to have a Batman complex about their vehicles, so maybe you are right, but I’d wager those folks don’t actually use their setups as often as they say they do. Personally I think black is the WORST choice in vehicle color. It’s great on a garage queen Porsche. Terrible on any offroad vehicle. Hot, scratches easily, hot, shows dirt easily, did I mention it’s hot?

If your priorities are the look of the vehicle, then you’ll be spending a lot of sweaty nights, assuming you actually use the topper and aren’t just parking it at the mall.

 

[gnel]

I too have white truck with all black trim. I went with Alu Cab silver instead of black and I´m really happy I did. Black would have looked better but would have cooked better to. I´ve gotten used to the silver look now.

 

[crhawkeye]

Some good thoughts. Basically, metal gray, white, or black are my options.

Not sure how the metal gray aluminum would do -- probably not as good as white? I will have this thing in the desert sun.

I know cars tend to heat up about 15-20 degrees when they're black. My truck is white as it is...

 

[CactusJackSlade]

So I'm looking at the wedge style light-weight popup campers.

Black would look good with my setup (white truck with black trim) and have better resale value presumably.

The only thing that gives me pause is the heat with a black powder-coat. I'm going to be in the position of wanting to spend a good amount of the day in the camper at times and am worried about excessive heat.

I will say that I don't plan to spend time in the desert in the summer. I'm moreso concerned about a 70 degree day turning into something much hotter inside.

What's your experience if you have black? Would having the vented tent open and windows opened be enough to dissipate most of the heat?

Thanks.

I had a dark blue FlipPac and was going to paint just the very top surface white coming in 1" from the sides so you could not see it unless you were above... but I sold it. Just an idea