Thursday, September 8, 2016

AC Trouble

The air conditioning in my stateroom isn't working... again!

What?!?! You ask. How are you surviving in 93 degree heat with 49% humidity and very few windows that open?

Easy. I say. I have three other air conditioners.

Boats like mine are the best for having multi-zone HVAC systems. The units are spread throughout the boat: one in the main stateroom, one in the guest stateroom, and two on opposite ends of the salon. It's great. We can have a nice cool stateroom for sleeping without wasting energy cooling the rest of our home. The AC in the forward (guest) stateroom is rarely turned on because the room is closed off from the cats, the blinds are drawn, and we spend little time in there. In fact, I just checked, the forward stateroom is currently 83 degrees without AC at 3pm on a hot Baltimore day.

When I go to bed tonight, my stateroom won't be as cool as I want it to be, but it will be comfortable.
See that red circle, those two windows lead into the head attached to my stateroom. The stateroom spans the entire stern of the boat. So, while I don't have working AC, I do have things in my favor:
  1. My stateroom is down a couple steps from the salon and we all know heat rises.
  2. I have a fan running on the far side of the stateroom circulating air and helping that hot air find its way out of the room.
  3. Part of the stateroom is below the waterline which helps keep it cool (think about your basement in the summer).
  4. One of the units that cools the salon has a small vent in the master head.
I should be okay for one more night until we get a chance to solve the issue. We may have growth in our AC water strainer. That's been happening a lot this year and it restricts the amount of water going through the system. With all the debris in the water from the recent storms, we may have sucked up a plastic bag (as we've done before) that is also restricting water flow. My hope for now is that the other units continue working until tomorrow.

Living on a boat still beats living on land in my mind.