reverse cycle a/c heating

dabsolute470

dabsolute470

Well-Known Member
Joined
22 Jan 2010
Messages
639
Location
wickford essex, boat fambridge
www.coverdalegroup.co.uk
hiya, we are looking at buying a boat with a/c reverse cycle heating.
anyone know if the system is efficient and up to uk winter heating, also is it expensive to run or a big drain on the pontoon power.
we are trying to make our mind up between a princess 500 or a 43 pearl both have the same heating system.
thanks for your help

steve
 
I have three ac/heat units on my trawler.... If they do not have electric heat strips in them and they use water flow in the heating cycle....we call them heat pumps. The only problem I have encountered with them in the 10 years we have had units like these on two different boats....was during the winter. We were in Pensacola, FL.....and during that winter we had about 12 fronts that moved through and brought freezing and below freezing temperatures. Yes, North Florida gets cold....maybe not as cold as the great white north, but it has even snowed and had icing problems...

At any rate, if the water around the boat drops below a certain temperature the unit will literally freeze up and shutdown as the compressor will trip its reset button. The water flow will ice up.

You would have to check the units that are in the boats to see what the tolerances are...and much will depend on how cold the water gets where you are.

Beyond that....we love the units...especially in the summer. It gets rather hot and humid in FL....air conditioning is not optionally here!!
 
Steve,

Look in the area(s) where the A/C's are located and look for hoses and pumps that feed to the unit(s) and follow it out to the side of the hull. The discharge should be above the waterline.

I know that some manufacturers here, like Mermaid and one other at least have actually installed "electric heat strips" in the units instead of make the units heat pumps. Personally I would prefer that but at the time we installed ours they were not available.

I grew up in Orlando....but back then...before the Mouse hit town...it was a small town and Kissimmee was hardly a "speed bump"..... I was in Indiantown at the marina there the end of December and most of January....and if I remember correctly it dropped to 27 degrees F, and it snowed in Daytona Beach, so I know Kissimmee was cold as well.

If by chance the units are "Cruis-Air" then they are likely to be water fed units.

Rob
 
Cruisair

Hi steve, we had a princess with this system and we loved it. We found that it worked fine with uk winters over the 5 years we had her. That said we used to leave her in St Katherines dock all winter where I suspect the water temp was artificially high due to surroundings. We also kept her on the east coast which is pretty chilly at times and that system neve failed there either..but we did put her on the hard for a couple of months a year. Two small issues.
1.be prepared for one call a month from the Marina who will tell you your boat is sinking. Due to the fact that the system pumps large amounts of water out thrrough a skin fitting when ever it's on.. Eventually people get used to it!!!
2 when I had the main water pump serviced the engineer suggested I upgrade to something that looked like ex water treatment works as he had heard that small pumps on these systems had overheated and I'm some cases started to burn out.
 
thanks Martin

i will watch out for those pumps.. i have found out there are 3 a/c units on board
only ever had eber heating on my last 2 princesses and that was very good.
was the a/c heaters a big drain on the shore power ?
we use the boat all winter and will be on the east coast ( fambridge ) we used to have our 470 in burnham and the old eber heater used to get the boat over 27 deg.
the princess 500 is a 1992 and miles away but the peal is local so i might just pop back there today and see what make the a/c units are.

the pearl is such a hard boat to value as there are not many of them about, the princess 500 howvere is a know quantity.
 
I have reverse cycle Cruisair and a couple of small 2kw fan heaters.

I'd heard reverse cycle was inefficient, so didn't use it at first. There is separate diesel heating to the cockpit, so used the fan heaters to take the chill off in the saloon.

However I do now use the reverse cycle more than I did. It seems to produce a more long lasting warmth (not sure why, as it is just blown hot air) and it is quieter. With the fan heaters as soon as they go off it seems to get cold immediately.

If I recall the air-con also does some dehumidifying (it has a setting specifically for it). Not sure whether that only works when it is cooling or whether it also that happens with the heat cycle. Someone more knowledgeable will be along to answer that.
 
We have Climma a/c and heating strips, chosed because you don't need the water circulation and thus quieter (mostly for the next door neighbour) We find it's quite underpowered and have to suppliment it with oil filled rads. We are based in northern med spain which is hardly cold challenging.
 
We have used our reverse cycle AC on both cool and heat many times. It works fine unless, as has already been pointed out, the water is close to freezing. The only prob is electricity usage. I dont know what our system uses but it's certainly more than 16A. I guess whether thats an issue will depend on whether your marina charges a flat rate for leccy or by usage. Personally, if I was going to live on board a boat a lot during winter, I'd want diesel fired heating as I think it would be cheaper to run and its going to work whatever the water temp and during power cuts
 
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