An Actually portable Air Conditioner?
- Thread starter BillyK
- Start date
A V-Berth can get really hot during the day so I doubt the limited volume of cold air that this unit may put out could cool it. It seem it is mostly a personal face cooler from their demo video. The whooping 630Watt/hour battery translates to 52 Ah at 12V; who are they trying to impress?
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The best way to keep the cabin cool is to keep it from getting over heated. A boom tent awning and a small awning over the V-berth hatch do wonders to keep things cool. Especially covering the hatches. Keep the sunlight off the deck and allow good air flow.
2300 BTU unit for $1400.. Here in the Louisiana heat and humidity, wouldn't do much without being in a closed off place; may work in a vee berth if the hot air exhaust can be easily put overboard..
The small unit in the companionway seems a bit better
but not quite as portable..
The small unit in the companionway seems a bit better
GE 6,000 BTU 115-Volt Electronic Room Window Air Conditioner with Remote AEL06LX - The Home Depot
This 6,000 BTU 115-Volt Electronic Room Air Conditioner effectively and quietly cools the indoor temperature inside your home for a more relaxed and comfortable living environment. In addition, this unit
www.homedepot.com
That works in the north and on the coast but... on an inland lake in Alabama ... a tent has no real chance of keeping a boat cool
There are a few tests of these units on Youtube, they seem to work for small spaces. This guy ran it in his car and dropped the temperature from 105°F to around 90°F in 20 minutes.
That's pretty impressive for such a small, portable unit. Sure a window air-conditioned in the companion way would be cheaper and probably cool faster but also more intrusive.
I watched that video and want my 5 minutes back.
(I admit I skipped some sections). He was measuring on the output of the unit, not the ambient car temperature. Waste of time and money, IMHOThe purpose of a tent is not to cool, but to keep the surface underneath from overheating. The temperature inside a boat's cabin that is being hit directly by the sun can climb to 120F but a boat's cabin under a tent can be kept at ambient temperature. The mass of air in the gap between the tent and the surface absorbs the heat and allows for ventilation to exhaust that heat. I know, if the ambient temperature is hot, it will still be hot inside the boat. The big difference is when you run an air conditioner, that it will cool the space to a lower temperature and much faster. You can tell cruising boats docked in the tropics will have a full deck awning.
I have tried a portable 120V 9,000 BTU unit in a small boat and it really did not work. The hose used to exhaust the hot air gets quite hot and radiates heat into the air you are trying to cool. Pumping air out of the cabin just creates a small vacuum which will suck hot and humid air from the outside to seek equilibrium. These units do not have the cooling power to arrest the heat coming from the deck area plus that generated from the mentioned inefficiencies. Late in the evening, with the sun gone and the ambient temperature lowering they could make a sleeping situation bearable. That little unit here would not stand a chance in a boat's cabin.
I’m not sure if this is the type of unit Benny was using but it works great for me. I’ve used it in upper 80 low 90 degree days and it keeps the cabin cool. You can’t tell from the photo but I made a adaptor for the exhaust and attach the exhaust to a window in the cockpit. I think it’s a 6000 btu unit. We dont use the aft cabin so it works for us.
Seems like the consensus is that it wont have enough power to really make a difference. i was thinking that it would be good at night once the sun went down.. but i think even at that, you're all right.. not enough power to really do the job.
That is the same type of unit and it could be the difference in humidity between NJ and FL but it did not work for us. It did work better in the evening after the sun went down but it could not keep up with the heat entering the cabin. At first I thought it was the unit and took it home where it worked fine in cooling a large room. I did some research and the CFM of air that it expels through the exhaust hose is enough to create negative pressure (vacuum) which draws hot and humid air back into the boat. I did notice that our unit would shut the compressor off after 30-40 minutes way before the cabin reached the desired temperature. By the time it cycled back in a lot of the cool gained had been practically lost. Thought the compressor may have been overheating or the temperature sensor was getting a wrong reading but at the house it worked fine. To drive the point home, I switched to a 6,000 btu window unit at the companionway and that one cooled a lot better. Have heard both experiences good and bad from a number of others so I guess it may depend on the type of boat, the usage, or the particular make of the A/C. My point was that that little portable unit had no chance of working.