My coach has an optional heat strip in the AC unit. Works fine but will typically get too hot during the night. It's bad enough to have to get up to pee, I really hate to get up and turn the heat down and lay there sweating while the coach cools off....or open the door, let all the heat out, and shiver until it warms back up.

I purchased a line voltage thermostat which is nothing more than a thermostatically controlled switch. Two wires. Cut the hot wire to the heat strip and splice this in to the two ends of hot wire you just cut. Obviously, turn off the unit to off while you're doing this. On my coach the hot wire is the black wire in the three conductor plug. Its two wires so once you cut the wire, you just splice each end to the thermostat. Works great and the whole thing only took about an hour. I put it in the ceiling near the fresh air intake to the AC unit. Should get a good reading there but we'll have to calibrate what is 'comfortable' for sleeping. These things are about 20 bucks.

Here is the unit already screwed into a whole I cut in the ceiling. Not much to look at, the back side has two wires. I extended them by soldering some 10 ga wire about a foot long.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/line-voltage-thermostat/p56701-thermostat.html



This is the connector. You can see the three wires that I pulled out. You just squeeze the tip and you can pull them out the back. The black wire (bottom) was hot on my Briskaire II. The dark green wires are the wires I extended over to the thermostat. Didn't have any black 10 ga.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/line-voltage-thermostat/p56704-thermostat.html


Here it is all spliced up and plugged back in. I did not have any 10 ga connectors so I TEMPORARILY used wire nuts and taped them well so they won't unwind. I'll change them to male/female insulated connectors when I find some.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/line-voltage-thermostat/p56707-thermostat.html


Snap the cover on the thermostat. The lowest portion is still higher than the AC unit so I don't have to worry about bumping into it. My 6-7" son does but he hits the AC anyway and starts ducking every time he gets near the GMC.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/line-voltage-thermostat/p56710-thermostat.html


And here is where it is relative to the fresh air intake on the unit.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/line-voltage-thermostat/p56713-thermostat.html


This thing works great and is soooo simple to install. The fan runs continuously on our unit so we won't be awakened by the unit cycling on and off.

Today was about 40 outside and the heat strip had the coach about 75 which motivated me to install it. After an hour, I put it on the thermostat and set the temp to the low end of 'comfortable'. I then went in the shop and worked in there for a couple hours. When I returned it the coach temp inside was 65 which was still a bit warm for me today because I was wearing a jacket and toboggan.

My unit is a Honeywell Sunheat that I can't seem to find but there are a zillion on Amazon. You want something like folks use on electric baseboard heaters.

Just what I did. I expect other brands and models of ACs with the optional heat strips are similar.

... When I returned it the coach temp inside was 65 which was still a bit warm for me today because I was wearing a jacket and toboggan. ...

I'd always know the word "toboggan" to mean a sled. In the last couple years I've met people who insisted on calling their winter knit caps "toboggans." All of these people happened to be from either Kentucky or Tennessee. Wikipedia mentions that

"In the United States south and midwest, especially Appalachia, it is often called a "toboggan"."

but there's no info about origin. When and where did this usage come from?
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Etymonline.com lists this shift in the late 20's, probably because it's the type of cap you would wear while tobagganing. I imagine it was probably first called a "toboggan cap", and then eventually the "cap" was just dropped.