Cool it!

   Its been getting hot in here. the days are in the 80's and the temp in an uncooled, closed up boat with teak decks can climb into the 100's. The bad news is our AC was on the way out, and now its dead from the dock power issue. I went and got a new start solenoid, to no avail. The start coil was dead as far as I could tell, and the unit was in bad shape mechanically anyway after 20 some years.

Timing (and Christ) were on our side again. I needed an 18,000 BTU unit to replace our main. I started to look online at the usual places. Then I checked the local craigslist. There was a newish unit here in town!!! $550, with pump and all. I investigated by only sending an email. I waited 3 days before heading off to sailors exchange. When I got to the exchange I asked about getting a unit, I was told there was a unit that did cooling only on the shelf for $600. Bummer, because we need heat as well. Just so happened as I was doing my regular deal browsing I was approached by an employee. He told me he had a unit for sale and once he described it, I knew it was the one on craigslist. We got to negotiating, and when we were done he was going to keep the pump I didn't need, deliver it, and the unit was mine for $350. WOW!!!

 It worked great until a few days ago. It was a really nasty hot day, and it just could not keep up. Then came the error message for overpressure. This basically means there is not enough water flowing to cool the refrigerant. So I took my little cleaning snake, and I ran it thru the tubes, in a 90 degree cabin. Nothing. Then I reversed the flow. It worked! now the unit is flowing nicely, along with the aft AC unit. And in the first hour the two working together have dropped the temperature at time of writing to 82. we will see how it holds out in the long term. Even if it breaks, being a new digital unit, it will be worth fixing.

The new unit is actually smaller in size. It looks like it was just designed in a better way, but with newer technology also so the compressor is smaller. The compressor does run very very hot, not sure how the old one ran, but ouch, its hot. Now I just need a way to utilize the extra room that is left over. I still have to secure it, and because its not 100% yet, I am waiting until I know its all done, before I secure it once and for all.