Expedition Yacht

Since my first post on air conditioning I ‘ve learned a lot about this topic.  Most importantly: it’s not at all that simple to create a system that’s really comfortable and pleasant and easy to maintain.  A few formulas you can find online to calculate how many btu’s (KW’s) of cooling capacity you need only go so far.  What about fresh air capacity, cooling and reheating that same fresh air? Measuring /adjusting the mix.  Condensation in ducts.  In short, a lot of issues.   

The Ft. Lauderdale boatshow was a good source of info where I visited the stand of NR Koeling which gave some very good advice.

Initially I had kind of figured out a system of Webasto (see my first post). Made in Germany so good stuff.  But, NR Koeling highly recommends systems from Climma (Italy), specially designed for maritime use while they added a few tricks of their own.

But, with the Euro/USD exchange rate going out of control,  I’ve also been looking for US-based hardware solutions and one good option seems to be Marine Air systems by Dometic.  Actually the mega yacht Perle Blue by Hakvoort actually has a Marine Air system which was designed by Heinen & Hopman, another great name in marine airco system design.

So,  the jury is still out on that.  It seems, however, that Marine Air has much smaller off-the-shelve fresh air handler units which may be very convenient in our situation where 2-3 of such fresh air units would solve a few issues.

So, still an open book.

Originally, the ship only has a central heating system. That’s just fine for fishing in the North Sea but won’t do in the tropics.

We plan to settle for a chiller system like those of Webasto Marine Airconditioning, a traditional chiller system (using chilled water and air handlers in each room). A diagram is shown below, courtesy of a French Webasto dealer website.

Their Dutch site is www.webasto.nl.

We’re looking at a 4-compresor 252.000 btu unit.