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Hi Everyone, This is Dave and Nikki. New owners of hull #7. We are renaming her BooRie and she hales out of Hampton Va. We will be pulling out the “vintage HVAC’s that are hogging up the bilge and installing a pair of new Hvacs. We are working out in CA right now and I can’t do the math to determine my required BTU’s but I’m thinking of a 10K unit for the aft berth (B layout) and a 16K for the rest of the boat. Does that sound about right?
Thanks!
Dave and NikkiAttachments:
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David,
We put a 12K unit in the saloon…one vent. It does fine keeping the boat cool in FL summers.
However, we did it as a “survive while we’re unhappily in a marina” measure, not to chill the whole boat to 68 degrees. So take it with a grain of salt.
The biggest issue we ran across was running the ducting. I could find no acceptable way to run it fore or aft without major work.Evan
Revery #2191 user thanked author for this post.
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Ours is a 12K as well, located under the aft bunk. I think our install is unique in that the compressor unit pumps coolant to two air handlers, one in the aft cabin and one in the main cabin. No necessity to run ductwork. The forward cabin and head compartment get nothing, though the forward cabin cools nicely (at night) if we place a fan at the doorway to the compartment, blowing main cabin air forward.
The system works very well at night, not so much during hot Florida days, but much, much better than nothing. We have an arched awning we built for the deck, over the boom, and that improves matters a lot! We can maintain 80 or 82 in main cabin on hot days, and if we were ever to get desperate, we could close off the aft cabin and live in there. With it’s dedicated air handler, it cools well in the hottest of conditions.
David
Blue Moon, #1891 user thanked author for this post.
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BooRie has a pair of 12k’s in her bilge that also uses tubing to route coolant to air handlers throughout the boat. As you can see.. they look pretty rough and, the PO’s state that only the aft one works and you can’t get to the forward one without first removing the aft one. I haven’t had a chance to even try them. I took one look at the wiring and said “NOPE”
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I installed a 16K Mermaid 12 years ago in the wet locker located at the foot of the midship companionway. We sail out of the Mobjack Bay in the southern Chesapeake just north of Hampton.
16K cools pretty good most of the time. We take measures like previous posters on hotest days (shade tent over main boom, close aft cabin).
Our single 30 amp service would not support more AC along with the other 110 things running.
Rick
Eclipse #73 -
We live aboard in Second Wind in Charleston SC. I recently replaced an old Mermaid 12k with a new Dometic ECD 16K. I find the 16K provides noticeably better cooling than the 12K, although some of that difference is undoubtedly due to old versus new. The location for the unit is in the locker (no longer wet I hope) at the bottom of the main cabin companionway. I have a very short 6″ duct into the main cabin and 4″ ducts to the forward and aft cabins. The difference in size and length of the ducts means that the main cabin stays cooler than the forward and aft cabins. Overall I am satisfied with the capacity of the 16K unit. If I was to try to improve the cooling at this point I would focus on ducting and air flow rather than more cooling capacity. Using two separate units could probably provide better cooling distribution but does have its own issues such as additional costs.
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