Bruce wrote in
:

I live in Thailand and keep a boat in Phuket. I would say that more
then half of the sail boats that have air conditioning here are using
window air conditioners sitting on the deck and ducted through an
upper hatch. Cheaper to purchase then dedicated systems, cheaper to
repair and easier to maintain -- remember that with a water cooled
system you WILL have to clean the water inlet filter at least weekly
here in Thailand.

Charleston is just as bad, Bruce. The seawater strainers pumping hard in
summer will plug up in a few days, overheating the condensors and
overpressuring the compressors until it trips out, rendering water cooled
units useless....especially with noone aboard to stop it.

Rooftop RV units are used on all the commercial tugs, towboats, dredges,
etc. They are very reliable, cheap to buy, no regular maintenance
needed. But, sailors are a damned stubborn lot. Someone in the marine
business has convinced them there's something special about the damned
overpriced water-cooled window units eating up their interior space and
heating what they're trying to cool. Damned noisy and stupid....

When you go sailing just wrap the unit up and lash it down, somewhere.
We seldom/never never have problems sleeping while underway or
anchoring so the only time an air-con is needed is in the marina.


As this little rooftop unit sits under the boom right where the skylight
hatch you couldn't walk on before used to be, replacing it, and only
occupies 7.5" above and 2.5" below the deck it sure looks like a win-win
situation. It'll take many years for the seawater to consume these
aluminum, light units. The tug operators have some really old ones that
run just fine! Semipermanent mounted, bolted fast to the hatch hole,
they don't need to be regularly lugged around and lashed down every time
you want to go to sea. If you have no genset, a nice cover to keep the
sea off it would be nice, but unnecessary. They seal in the hole with
quite a bit of pressure that driving in the rain at 120km down a 4-lane
highway won't make them leak into an RV on a flimsy roof.

Larry
--
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