Cabin Warmth

On these early spring days here in the PNW (actual summer, with temperatures in the 70s, doesn’t arrive here until the second week of July) the cabin is mighty cold when I get up.  With outside temperatures in the very low 50s and when there is a wind blowing, the cabin temperature is not much higher than the outside.  We sleep comfortably under our (nearly) year-round comforter, but once out from under it... wow.

So it is my job to rise earlier than Jane and light the Dickinson heater.  This only takes a couple of minutes and pretty soon it is pumping out heat.  The fan installed behind the grill above the heater disperses the heat throughout the saloon and keeps the overhead from over heating. In an hour or so, the cabin is nice and cozy, and just the place for Jane to sit in her seat with a latte and enjoy the view out the windows.

Cabin Warmth

Dickenson Heater Maintenance

Dickenson Diesel-fired Heater

Have one of these?

Is the flame getting smaller and smaller over the years?

If so, eventually it will need to be cleaned - estimated MTB cleanings is about 15 years.  Diesel fuel is not quite free of ash - so ash will accumulate in the pot.  But more importantly, the diesel cokes out from the heat of the burner, leaving behind deposits of carbon.  These accumulate in the bottom of the pot.

But even more importantly than that, the carbon also accumulates in the fuel entrance to the pot, at its center bottom.  The feed from the float tank to the pot is strictly by gravity, with the head driving the flow only a couple of inches...  it doesn't take much to significantly decrease the flow when there is only this tiny pressure to drive it.
 
Thankfully, Dickenson anticipated this, and provided an easy port for cleaning.

If you look at the fitting where the diesel enters the pot (look from the bottom of the heater), you will see that instead of an elbow (which would have sufficed), Dickenson used a tee.  If you remove the plug from the bottom of the tee (watch out, some diesel will escape - have a container under the fitting when you remove the plug), you will find that you can push a typical Phillips screwdriver up thru the tee and into the pot.  This will clear out any coked out diesel or ash that has accumulated in the feed and entrance to the pot.

Next, you should also remove the copper pipe which leads from the float tank to the tee and clean it - some carbon may either have accumulated in it where it attaches to the tee, or may have been pushed into the pipe when the screwdriver was used to clean out the tee.


(Yeah, I know I am talking about heater maintenance in July, but: PNW)

Dickenson Heater Maintenance

Storm windows? On a boat??

We use Eolian all winter long (at the dock anyway), therefore we heat her all winter long.  On houses, storm windows are used to provide an extra layer of insulation against the winter cold and weather.  If you have ports like these:

Do you have ports like this?

...you can easily make and fit storm windows for them too!  I  don't take credit for this idea - it came from Drew, 6 years ago.  

But in any case, it couldn't be simpler.  First you need to remove the screens from your ports (we don't have ours installed - no bugs to speak of in the PNW... :^) ).   It is easy to do this.  The rubber gasket that traps the screens in place is not glued in - it is just wedged into a slot on the port frame:

Just pull it out

You just need to pull it out.  If you haven't ever had yours off, they may be glued in there with algae and other growth tho.  With the gasket off, simply lift the screen out of its recess.

Of course, you'll need the actual storm windows.  For these you'll want some kind of thin plastic - less than 1/8" (the thickness of the screens).  I made mine out of the glazing from a couple of old poster frames that were destined for the recycle bin.  I just traced the outline of the screen on the plastic sheet and then cut them out on my bandsaw.  I suppose you could use a sabre saw, or even a hack saw (tho the corners would be tedious).  And you might even want to smooth out the edges with a bench grinder and/or a file - I did this with mine.

And just slip them in where the screens were

And then you just drop them into the recess that the screen was in, and reinstall the rubber gasket.  (If you look closely, you'll notice that there is a joint on the gasket - this should go to the top.)  Be sure to get the gasket flange firmly pushed into the slot all the way around, otherwise the window won't close - you could break it if you try.

Easy peasy.

Storm windows? On a boat??

The new heat pump

The dust is settled.  The tools are put away.  And once again Eolian is warmed by a heat pump.  So which one did we choose, and how did we settle on it?

Our old heat pump was a 16,000 BTU model.  This size was just about perfect for Eolian, as confirmed by the past 5 years of comfort.  This is also about the largest size available to work with 110V (larger units require 220V, which we do not have).

In choosing a replacement, I wanted a unit that provided more protection for itself against failures, in particular a seawater delivery fault.  This could happen as the result of a valving error, a seawater pump failure (happened to us), or a blockage of the discharge (happened to us; it caused the failure of the previous unit).  These are the 16,000 BTU units I considered:

Mermaid

This is the brand of our previous unit.  The new version appears to be essentially the same.   The only protection provided is against freon high pressure.    Allows the use of a conventional thermostat.  Condensor not over the condensate pan.  Starting inrush current works on a 20 amp circuit, as confirmed by our old unit.  ℬ1.700

Webasto FCF

Physical dimensions too large for us.  Huge inrush current of 38 amps - Webasto recommends a 40 amp breaker.  Must use supplied controller.  This unit is not suitable for boats with 30 amp panels.  ℬ1.564

Dometic

Similar to the MarinAire, but without the shroud, gauges.  Also has a different compressor - inrush current requires a 40 amp breaker, like the Webasto.  Not suitable for a boat with a 30 amp panel.  Must use supplied controller.   ℬ1.825

Flagship

Their units come by default with electric resistance heating.  Ummm...  this is no different than using space heaters.  They would build me a reverse cycle unit for, if I remember right, ℬ2.300.  Also, the only protection provided is against freon high pressure.  Allows the use of a conventional thermostat.  Rugged-looking units.

Marinaire

This is the unit we settled on, ℬ1.565.

What I like about it:

• Very well packaged:  sturdy box with polyethylene foam pieces completely filling the voids, multiple strapping, and then the entire thing was shrink wrapped. 
• Supplied from the factory with liquid-filled high and low pressure refrigerant gauges
• Extremely low starting current: 17 amps. 
• The condensate drain pan is stainless.  And it is insulated against sweating.  Three drain locations are provided.
• The condensor coil tube-in-tube heat exchanger is mounted over the condensate pan.  For a heating application this is critical, since the condensor will be quite cold and will sweat.
• The fan can be rotated so that the discharge can be pointed in any direction.
• The fan housing is insulated against sweating
• The fan is very easy to remove - just loosen a hose clamp and disconnect a Molex connector.
• With the fan removed, the unit is only 8" wide - it easily fit thru an existing opening in our under-settee location.
• I see other signs of quality construction.  For example, that fan Molex connector is a locking connector, yet it was also secured with a snap tie, and then secured again with an industrial strength twistie.
• The unit protects itself against damaging operational conditions with the following sensors:
  • Evaporator coil temperature (freeze up, overheating)
  • Freon high pressure
  • Freon low pressure
  • Provision for insufficient water flow protection
  • Abnormal operation protection (not sure what this entails, but the unit is microprocessor controlled, so it could be almost anything...)
• Very flexible mounting options. 
• The unit is entirely covered in a molded shroud.  This protects the delicate plumbing from damage and provides additional sound insulation.
• The unit is very quiet - really, all you can hear is the rush of air into the cabin.
• Fan speed is automatically controlled, rising and falling as conditions dictate.
• Condensor tubing is internally grooved, improving freon heat transfer
• Evaporator is coated with a hydrophilic coating so that moisture condensing on it (in air conditioning mode) does not bead up but instead runs off in sheets, improving heat transfer from the air.
• COP of 4.5.  That is, for every kilowatt-hour drawn from the ship's supply, 4.5 kilowatt-hours of heat are delivered.  More simply, the heating efficiency is 450%.

What I don't like

• No provision for a conventional thermostat - you must use the supplied unit.
• The supplied unit is not a thermostat; it is a controller.  It is powered from the main unit, with no battery backup.  While its eePROM retains previous settings, the display is off when there is no shore power.  In particular this means that when we are at anchor we have no reading of cabin temperature.
• The supplied unit only has a single temperature setpoint - there is no provision for having the setpoint automatically drop at night and rise in the morning.  In particular, with this unit I must get up in the cold to turn up the heat.
• Temperature is not measured at the controller as you might expect.  Instead it is measured at the return air entrance, and reported at the controller.  If the air in the boat is well-mixed, this makes little difference.  If not, the controller needs to be set to a lower temperature to prevent over-heating the boat.
• The lowest temperature setting that can be set in heat mode is 61°.  With our previous unit, when we were away from the boat I set the temperature to 55°.

Meh items

• The unit has a humidity management mode.  If we were in a humid climate, this might be important.  But not here in Seattle.
• The unit comes with a remote control. 

[We also considered diesel-fired heaters, like the Webasto.  These would have had the advantage of supplying us with the same heat at anchor that we have at the dock.  But with diesel at $4-5/gallon, a diesel-fired heater cannot compare cost-wise with a heat pump that delivers roughly 5 kwh heat for every 1 kwh purchased.  The break-even cost would be about $0.76/gallon diesel.  Also, there was the problem of where to run the stack.  Finally, neither of us like the jet-engine noise of the diesel heaters.]

The new heat pump

On the other side

It's funny how some events can strike a bright line in your life, dividing it into "before" and "after".

Our new heat pump arrived on Saturday, and Angela made it possible for us to pick it up at Dockside Solutions office on Sunday morning (thanks Angela!).  We managed to get it down the dock and onto the boat in between bouts of cold, pouring rain, tho as it turned out, protecting it from rain was probably not as necessary as I had anticipated, due to its superb packaging.

With the background of the electric space heaters' whine, and the fan we have to circulate the heated air the Dickenson produces, I worked most of Sunday to disassemble the unit, get it into place under the settee seating, and reassemble it in place.  I also made inventory of what would be required to permanently mount it and hook it up both electrically and plumbing-wise.

On Monday we made a foraging expedition to various marine stores in Seattle to get the miscellaneous fittings and parts required.  As usual, our trip would have been shorter if we had just gone to Fisheries Supply first.  And then I crawled under the settee once again and got to work.

By Monday afternoon, we had water running out of the boat once again, and blessed heat streaming into the saloon.  I shut down the Dickenson and the space heaters, and there was...  peace.  The heat pump is very quiet.  Very quiet.  The only thing you hear is the rush of air entering the saloon, and even that will be diminished when I complete hooking up the ductwork so that heat is delivered to the whole boat, not just the saloon.

This morning, having slept the whole nite under the aegis of the heat pump, I perceive yesterday afternoon, when I turned on the heat pump for the first time, as one of those bright line events.

And we are on the other side of it.

On the other side

Crap

Uh oh...

We've been going thru a cold spell here in Seattle...  several days where it never got much above freezing, and nites in the low 20's.

Tuesday morning when I got out of bed, it was 49° here in the cabin.  That's pretty cold - a few more degrees and we'd be talking about the temperature inside your refrigerator.  I lit the Dickenson and thought about it.  The heat pump was running its little heart out, but it was delivering cold air.  On the other hand, heat pumps are not known for their great temperature rise, so it could have been that the air was so cold going into the heat pump that it wouldn't be much warmer coming out.

But I had a really bad feeling about this.

I stuck a thermometer in the heat pump's air discharge - it was actually colder than the cabin!  Whoa.

Now, I need to note an event that happened in the middle of November.  It was very windy out, and the wind had a lot of easting in it.  That had Eolian shoved against the dock, hard.  And she was surging back and forth, rolling the fenders.  And as it turns out, the outlet for the water which is the heat source for the heat pump is right there by the fenders.  On that morning too, we had awoken to a cold cabin.  I surmised (correctly, it turned out) that the boat's motion had rolled a fender over the water outlet and held it there long enough for the evaporator in the heat pump to freeze up.  I waited a couple of hours and tried the heat pump again, and it worked normally.  At the time, it seemed that that was the end of it.

Thinking that the same thing might have happened on Tuesday, I shut down the heat pump and waited a couple of hours before trying it again.

But when I turned it on, it pegged the ammeter and tripped the breaker.   

<engage engineer's grey cells>

I surmised that the early December freeze-up had cracked the inner tube in the tube-in-tube heat exchanger where the freon is heated by the circulating seawater.  And that it took this long for the freon to slowly leak out.  And that when it was finally all gone, seawater got into the freon tube, made its way to the compressor and hydrostated it.

This morning (Thursday), after having had enough time to get used to the inevitability of things, I pulled the heat pump.  At the moment of truth, I cut the small copper freon line going from the evaporator to the compressor, and was rewarded with a stream of seawater.  Nailed it.

Crap.  It's junk.  But I should be able to sell that copper heat exchanger for maybe $25 as scrap.  That'll at least cover the beer that this incident has required.

So now we are heating with the diesel Dickenson and a couple of space heaters, in what is turning out to be the coldest part of this winter.  But they're keeping up; it's 70° in here.

And I've ordered a new heat pump (ℬ1.565).  This one comes with safeties for:

• Overheating protection
• Freeze protection
• Insufficient water flow protection
• Abnormal operation protection
• Low pressure protection
• High pressure protection

Our previous unit had safeties for:

• High pressure protection

That's it.

The lack of low pressure protection, freeze protection, and/or insufficient water flow protection was the reason the unit started the slow-motion self-destruct sequence when the water flow outlet was blocked.

Once bitten, twice shy.  It should be here next week.

Crap

Murphy was our dinner guest

What's wrong with this picture?

Last Friday, an hour or so before our dinner guests (the crew of s/v Ghost) were scheduled to arrive, I noticed that our heat pump was blowing cold air.  It had been working fine for weeks/months/years.  Until then.

Of course, with that timing there was no opportunity to look into the problem.  So we lit the Dickenson heater and went on with the dinner as scheduled.  And then when we went to bed, I put out the Dickenson because I don't like to sleep with it lit.

So this morning, it was not exactly warm inside Eolian...  50°F. That's pretty cold sleeping.

And so this morning I had some immediate tasks to attend to.  First was to relight the Dickenson.  Then to make Jane her latte, of course.  Then finally to look into the heat pump failure.

Here's what I believe happened:  Yesterday afternoon and evening were quite windy, and there was enough easting in the wind to have Eolian tight against the dock, surging back and forth against the fenders.  So how is this relevant?

Apparently the movement of the boat had the fenders squished against the outlet fitting where the chilled exhaust water from the heat pump exits, blocking the flow.  Blocking the flow momentarily would not seem to be a major issue.  But with a longer interruption there is a problem.  Recall that the heat pump is withdrawing heat from the water to heat the boat, chilling the water in the process.  With the flow blocked, the water froze in the heat exchanger, permanently blocking the flow, even after the outlet fitting was uncovered. 

When I started the heat pump this morning, water circulation began immediately.  And inspection of the heat exchanger showed that there was no leakage.

Now I gotta relocate those fenders.

Murphy was our dinner guest

Renewal = removal?

Looking back, sometimes it seems that our time on Eolian has been dominated by deinstalling things and hauling them off the boat, some large, some small, and some almost trivial.  Here's what I remember so far, over the 15 years that we have now been responsible for her care:

• I think the first think to go back in 1997 was a rusty  suspended metal three-basket set.  It was ugly beyond belief.
• Remove a whole host of corroded brass doodads that celebrated dolphins. 
• Remove another host of straw fabrications, presumably procured in Mexico and attached to various places with generous quantities of silicone
• Removed an ancient battery charger, and eventually the batteries that it ruined.
• Removed (and refurbished) the insulation of the refrigerator
• Removed and plugged the refrigerator opening that had been cut into the countertop, apparently by a drunken logger with a chainsaw that needed sharpening
• Removed (and replaced) the refrigerator door
• Removed (and replaced) the original stove/oven.  This was at least 20% by weight congealed grease
• Removed a 110V crash pump - a large 110V centrifugal pump.  In a situation that needed it, it was likely that the time spent getting it to prime would have allowed the water to rise up and drown the generator.  
• Removed (and replaced) 3 bronze head thru-hulls and associated leaking bronze tapered plug valves
• Removed (and replaced) the original bilge pump, installed when there was nothing else in the hull, apparently.  Spelunking skills were required.
• Removed a corroded and non-functional antenna tuner
• Removed an unbelievable quantity of "mystery wire" - wires that went nowhere and caused no end of difficulty in troubleshooting electrical problems.  At today's copper prices, I wish that I had saved it for recycling - I'd be rich.
• Removed (and replaced) the old bowsprit
• Removed (and replaced) the old inner forestay pad eye
• Removed  (and replaced) the old Benmar autopilot
• Removed the leaking fuel daytank
• Removed (and replaced) the refrigerator cooling water circulating pump
• Removed (and replaced) the holding tank
• Removed (and replaced) the bilge pump controls
• Removed (and replaced) the forward electrical distribution panel
• Removed two non-functional diesel filters
• Removed (and replaced) the stern lite
• Removed (and replaced) the masthead lite
• Removed (and replaced) the old microwave
• Removed (and replaced) the water heater
• Removed (and replaced) the corroded section at the foot of the mainmast
• Removed (and replaced) all the running rigging
• Removed (and replaced) the old cockpit canvas/bimini/dodger/side curtains
• Removed (and replaced) the old Groco heads
• Removed (and replaced) all the head plumbing
• Removed (and replaced) the exhaust elbow
• Removed (and replaced) the exhaust manifold
• Removed (and replaced) the alternator
• Removed (and replaced) all the original instrumentation (except windspeed/direction)
• Removed (and replaced) the original inverter
• Removed (and replaced) all the interior cushions and upholstery
• Removed (and rebuilt) all the cockpit cushions
• Removed (and replaced) the large fixed cabin windows
• Removed (and replaced) four of the eight opening ports
• Removed the original 110V space heaters
• Removed (and replaced) the original TV
• Removed (and replaced) the original VHF
• Removed the LORAN set (replaced with GPS)
• Removed the remains of the original airconditioning equipment
• Removed a non-functional oil change pump
• Removed (and replaced) the mizzenboom gooseneck fitting
• Removed all the original wood-grain formica
• Removed (and replaced) all the engine rubber hosing
• Removed (and replaced) the original fuel level senders
• Removed (and replaced) the original fresh water pressure pump
• Removed (and replaced) the original anchor wash-down pump

Woo boy.  I'm pretty sure that there's more, but the list is depressing enough as it is.  And there are investments that don't show up properly in the list, like a new bow lite, or a new inverter/charger.  Many of the removals above constituted their own projects which are documented elsewhere on this blog (you can search either by keyword or by label, over there on the right).

It seems that our waterline should have moved down...

Renewal = removal?

Heat pump installation: final step

No job is done until the documentation is done, right? The final step in the project, long overdue: a proper label on the power panel for the heat pump...

It doesn't quite match the style of the Marinetics labels, but Marinetics didn't have one with the right legend, and in any case I think they may now be out of business.  It is a whole lot more professional-looking than the Dymo label I had temporarily applied.

By the way, did you know that you can buy Blue Sea labels individually?  For $1?  And that you can even get custom labels made?  Check it out here.

Heat pump installation: final step

Let there be light! And heat!

You may have one of these fairly ubiquitous Dickenson Newport heaters aboard.  I hope you are familiar with the process for lighting it, but if you are not or you struggle to get it lit, here is the process we have developed on Eolian over the years:

This is a "pot burner" type of heater.  That is, the diesel is admitted into the bottom of a "pot", where the heat of previously burned fuel vaporizes it.  Once going, it is diesel fuel vapor which is burning, not liquid.  But to get it going, it is liquid diesel which much be ignited.


Go to the head and get 4 squares of toilet paper.  Roll up three of them into a loose roll, leaving the fourth as a tail.

Open the door on the Dickenson, and use the rolled up toilet paper to wipe off the soot from the last use from the inside of the glass

Drop the paper into the heater.  You will note that there is an internal baffle device in the burner - this serves as a heat reflector which, when hot, will provide the heat to evaporate the incoming liquid diesel.  But now it is just in the way.  Using a poker, try to get the rolled up portion to go at least partially beneath the disk at the bottom of the baffle, leaving the tail accessible for lighting.  Do the best you can - usually you can't get more than one end under the disk.

Turn the oil valve all the way on (to number "5").  Note that there may be a couple of stops that prevent you from turning the knob this far in normal operation.  But if you pull up on the knob, you can turn past the stops.

Do something else for 2 minutes.  Do not lose track of the time!

Using a BBQ lighter, light the protruding tail of the toilet paper.  Close the door.  You will need to turn on the combustion air fan all the way to get enough air down to the paper to keep it lit.  When the burning paper ignites the oil, it will be obvious - the flame is a rich bright yellow-orange instead of the pale yellow and blue of the burning paper.

As soon as the oil lights, turn the oil valve back to number "1.5".

If the burning paper fails to ignite the oil, turn off the oil valve.  There is very likely enough diesel in the pot, it's just that the flame from the paper didn't reach it, or the diesel did not yet wet out the ash in the bottom of the pot far enough to reach the paper.  Roll up some more toilet paper and try again, leaving the oil valve closed.

When the oil ignites, turn the combustion air fan down one notch.  When it is all the way up, it will force smoke and fumes into the cabin.

How much combustion air the heater requires once it is settled in is a variable depending on the stack length.  Ours (stack is approximately 36") requires none.  If the flame is burning cleanly (no trailing soot tendrils off the tips of the flames, yellow in color - not orange), then adding more air just means you are pushing valuable heat up the stack.

Some notes:

1. Before lighting the heater, be sure that there is nothing combustible near or above the Charlie Noble outside.
2. In the unhappy event that you get too much oil in the burner before getting it lit, your first clue will be that the flame grows much more quickly than normal, and to a much higher level.  Should this happen, turn off the oil!  If you suspect it might be happening, turn off the oil!  In our heater, the oil burns off harmlessly when this happens, tho with a frightening pulsing roaring sound, and the heater does get very hot.  Standing by with a fire extinguisher would be prudent if this happens.
3. The oil valve is very non-linear in controlling the heat output.  Normal operation will be only be between the "1" and "2" marks.
4. The oil feed and combustion air should always be adjusted so that the flame remains above the top ring of the baffle.  This is the way the burner is designed to operate.
5. If you should ever be moved to clean the heater, be advised that the collection of ash and crud in the bottom of the burner is an important part of the combustion process - it serves as a high surface area diffusion plate/evaporator, much like a candle wick.  If all the material on the bottom of the burner is removed, the heater will be difficult to light until this layer gets re-established.

Let there be light! And heat!

Back to the future!

After six hours, and a trip to West Marine to buy yet another handful of plumbing fittings, we now have a working seawater circulation pump on Eolian, and our heat pump is once again pumping heat.  The original pump was a Cal Pump, and the new one is a Teel pump, manufactured by Dayton, a major, MAJOR pump manufacturer (model # 1P808A, recorded here so that I have it written down somewhere).

I disassembled the Cal pump, and found that the "impeller" was just 4 straight sheetmetal vanes.  I don't know the failure mode because I haven't completely disassembled it, but I assume it to be saltwater moving along the drive shaft past the shaft seal and back into the motor section causing corrosion.

And I have put away the space heaters.

Back to the future!

Back to the past...

When I arrived at the end of G-dock after having been away from Eolian for a day and a half, I was surprised to see no water coming out of the heat pump discharge.  The sinking feeling I had only deepened when I got down below and found the temperature to be 52°, 10° below the setpoint I had left on the thermostat while we were away.

Yup, the circulating pump which supplies seawater for the heat pump (to chill, thus providing the heat...) was, well, *not* circulating.  The pump motor was warm, indicating that it was getting power, but apparently the impeller was not turning.  I tried flushing the system backwards by directing a stream of water from a hose into the discharge thru hull, but no joy.  And finally, no amount of percussive maintenance (I stopped just short of destructive percussive maintenance) would get it to move water again.

So I dug out the old space heaters (yes, we still have them on board, thankfully!) and plugged them in.  I also lit the Dickenson diesel heater.  So now Eolian is back to being heated the same way she was before the heat pump installation.  And it is cold outside here in Seattle - but never fear, we are cozy here down below.

I called the heat pump manufacturer in Florida, and he promised to have a new pump here in a couple of days. 

We'll see.

Back to the past...

Tiny heat pump, with benefits

I've blathered on about our heat pump enough that by now all of you should know how they work:  They use electrical energy to move heat.  Of course, this means that there has to be a heat source.  Eolian's heat pump extracts heat from sea water.  And household heat pumps typically extract heat from the outside air.

But here's a heat source you may not have thought of:  condensing water.  A dehumidifier removes moisture from the air by condensing it.  Annnnd... condensing water releases  970 BTU/lb, 1010 BTU/pint.  So is that a lot of heat?

Dehumidifier capacity is typically rated in pints/day.  Ours is a small one, rated at 25 pints/day, or a little better than 1 pint/hr.  Using the numbers above, our little heat pump will deliver 1052 BTU/hr.  It does that while drawing 1.6 amps - that energy (about 600 BTU/hr) also gets delivered into the boat.

So let me put all that into clear perspective for you:

Our little tiny dehumidifier, which draws only 1.6 amps, is the equivalent of an 484 watt electric space heater.

We keep the dehumidifier in the head; this explains why it gets so warm in there when we take a shower.

Of course, these numbers assume that the dehumidifier is working at capacity, and that only happens when the air is very humid, like it is in the head when someone is showering.  At other times, the heat output will be less.  But like all heat pumps, the efficiency will never fall below 100%.

So think of that dehumifier as a tiny heat pump with these side benefits:

• It keeps the boat interior dry
• It provides an apparently never-ending onboard source of distilled water

I consider ours to be one of the best $125 we've ever spent.

Tiny heat pump, with benefits

I love our heat pump!

Today in Seattle is one of those cold grey days when it could snow at just about any moment.

But it is warm and cozy down below.  "Why?" he asked rhetorically.   Well, because the heat pump is busy chilling 48° sea water to near freezing, and dumping the heat recovered from it into the cabin.  This is the stream of chilled sea water leaving the boat.

Life is good.

I love our heat pump!

Let the year begin!

I am writing this at anchor in Eagle Harbor, Bainbridge Island. At anchor... not tied to the dock at Shilshole, finally!

Well, OK, there was one other nite on 4/30 when we made a quick trip over to Port Madison, but it was a quickie, and it was still cold enough that we had to use our spare sleeping bags as an additional comforter, and we had to fire up the Dickenson (or rather I had to fire up the Dickenson) to heat up the cabin in the morning. And, as opposed to that trip, I can report that all systems (including the anchor windlass) are working fine!

We left Friday evening - our original plans were to go to Poulsbo, but that would have required sailing to windward against 17 -20 kt. Instead, we just rolled out the yankee and coasted downwind, south to Port Blakely. It was a relaxing trip until we started to encounter the shipping... a lot of shipping, all apparently exquisitely timed to intersect with us. There was:

• A northbound tug and tow
• A southbound tug and tow
• A big container ship
• A submarine, traveling on the surface with two Coast Guard cutters as escort.
• The eastbound ferry out of Eagle Harbor
• The westbound ferry bound for Eagle Harbor.

Thankfully, the container ship turned into Elliot Bay, giving us a little gap in time that we exploited to put the traffic behind us.

We had a delightful evening and a quiet nite at anchor in Blakely Harbor. Our usual spot was available, and we took it.

The next morning, because it was calm, we elected to try Eagle Harbor again. In the past, the harbor had been filled with derelict boats, collections of boats, and collections of things that floated (but could not be called boats). I am not sure how it was done, but I counted only 5 derelicts - and all the anchor zone restrictions are gone too (I think that was an earlier attempt to clear the harbor). In any case, I can report that our stay was wonderful. We dinghied into town and stopped at our favorite pub for a pint, and then went grocery shopping for dinner: Shrimp Pahd Thai from scratch.

And now here we are, enjoying the warming morning. Our departure from here this morning will be timed to get us back to the dock at Shilshole at slack water, to facilitate docking, as always.

It's a good weekend!

Let the year begin!

Why didn't we...

I don't know why we didn't. You would think that we would have long ago.

Living aboard and dealing with the problems of humidity, especially in the winter when the boat is sealed up should have pointed us at this solution sooner.

In a dock gathering discussion last week, we realized that most of the other boats were keeping dehumidifiers running in the winter.

But my memories were of the huge clanking monster of a dehumidifier that my parents ran in the basement of our childhood home. It was a heavy, file cabinet-sized unit that needed its own circuit - it drew 15 amps. Not exactly appropriate for a boat.

But now we have the world's products at our fingertips - I did a quick Internet search and found this one - it draws only 1.6 amps, is small enough to live in the aft head, and yet is capable of pulling 25 pints of water/day out of the atmosphere inside the boat. It even has provision for a continuous drain (which I haven't set up yet), that would go right into the shower sump it is sitting above. Oh yeah... and that is distilled water it is producing too - ideal for the batteries. Finally, condensing water produces heat, so it functions as a small space heater too (you can almost think of it as a tiny heat pump).

One of the dangers of living with problems is that they cease to be viewed as problems after living with them long enough. If it hadn't been for that casual dock conversation, we'd still be living with the humidity.

Why didn't we...

Instinct

\ˈin-ˌstiŋ(k)t\
2b : behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level

All of our 4-legged fellow travelers here on Planet Earth do it. There should be no surprise that we want to too. When the days get short and the temperatures fall, the Nesting Instinct appears.

• You want to pull the covers over your head
• You don't want to go out in the morning (Morning? It's still dark!)
• When you get home at night, there is a powerful urge to settle in, with a mug of hot cocoa or a glass of wine (both? would that work?) and do quiet things

It was 22° F here in Seattle this morning. I definitely wanted to stay under the electric blanket (set to "beach", as Jane said last nite). Most specifically, I didn't want to get up at 04:00 and light the Dickenson diesel heater. But when it is this cold, the heat pump can't keep up, and needs some help to warm the boat up from the nighttime temp of 60° F to the daytime temp of 70° F.

So I got up. The cabin sole was cold. I got the heater going. And then I crawled back into the bed again, and pulled the blanket over my head.

It was a double blessing - I got to experience that satisfaction of surrendering to the Nesting Instinct twice in one nite.

And it was warm when I *really* got up at 05:15 to make Jane her eggnog latte.

Instinct

Project: Heat Pump Permanent Wiring Yoga

There... over there on the right hand side of the picture, near the bottom... See that grey power cord snaking out of the compartment under the dinette seating? That has been our "permanent power wiring" for the heat pump since we installed it last winter.

Now, it is a proven Law Of Nature that the incentive for completing a project is proportional to the amount of the project remaining. Thus, you can approach project completion, but it is difficult to actually get there. This is one of those items. I have been "temporarily" supplying power to the heat pump by plugging it in to a convenient outlet, for a year.

In order to properly wire the heat pump, it needed to have its own breaker in the power panel. And a decision had to be made as to whether to supply the heat pump thru the inverter, or direct from the mains. And since the wiring for the water heater had a PO splice in it and was conveniently nearby, it needed to be replaced too.

But first: power thru the inverter or not? Although the inverter can power the heat pump (I tried it), we would never do that - the battery load is unsustainable. So then, why would I choose to power it thru the inverter, as that was the final decision? The reasoning went like this:

• We have significant 12V loads on Eolian, even when plugged into shore power. Most notably refrigeration
• Significant 12V loads mean that the battery charger will be needed frequently, and will need to deliver significant power - not just a trickle charge.
• In turn, this means the battery charger will require significant amounts of power.
• The battery charger is actually part of the inverter, a perfect convergence of function
• Our Heart inverter has a "power sharing" function. That is, you can program the inverter/charger to use a maximum amount of 110V power to supply its loads (including the integrated battery charger). If the need increases beyond the power sharing setting, the amount of power available to the battery charger is reduced.
• Loads which are not supplied thru the inverter are unknown to it. Our water heater is wired direct to the mains, and draws about 10 amps. Therefore the inverter has been programmed to take no more than 20 amps for its needs, to avoid exceeding our 30 amp total load maximum.
• If I were to have powered the heat pump direct, I would have had to reduce the load sharing setting to 5 amps, since the heat pump draws 12 amps ( the load sharing is in 5 amp increments - there is no 8 amp setting)
• 5 amps is not a reasonable amount of power to share amongst the battery charger and all the power outlets on board.
• By powering the heat pump thru the inverter, I can leave the power sharing setting at 20 amps. If the heat pump is running, there will be a maximum of 8 amps available to the battery charger - not enough to run refrigeration, so at least part of the refrigeration load will come out of the batteries. But as soon as the heat pump shuts off, the battery charger wants the full 20 amps to replenish the batteries.

This was a good decision - it works well. In fact, by running for a year with our "temporary" setup, we were already running thru the inverter, since the outlets are powered that way. We have had a successful one-year trial.

Now for implementation. The under-seating compartments all had to be completely emptied. The heat pump is in the compartment behind the teak-surrounded white grill (far right), the water heater is in the next compartment to the left (with the solid teak door), and the power panel is below the nav station desktop (accessible only thru the small opening, awkwardly oriented the wrong way).

Stringing the wire was not difficult, nor was terminating it at the water heater and the heat pump (other than the joy of wedging my body into those small spaces to do the work). Most of the effort was spent with my head and shoulders down in that small opening in the nav station, reconfiguring the breakers and wiring behind the panel. Jane got a particularly unflattering picture of me, immersed in the work...

So, we have accomplished the impossible: we have reached the asymptote - the project is complete!

Yoga? Who needs it?

Project: Heat Pump Permanent Wiring Yoga

Non-boating Weekend: Ode to a Heater

Adam started it - it's his fault. He put in a gas heater in his garage last winter. I visited him on a cold day, and he fired it up, and I immediately developed a serious case of furnace envy.

So I then ordered a gas heater. But, I couldn't just hook it up and run it (although I did have a temporary setup while I was working on the bowsprit last winter). My shop is open to the roof, so, although the heater could heat it, the heat went up to the roof, and then out the vents. That takes a lot of propane to keep it warm...

So. A ceiling had to be installed. And since, once the ceiling was installed, wiring would be a lot harder, I rewired the whole shop ceiling, as well as stringing a new circuit for the heater. There was gas plumbing too. And the addition of a pull-down ladder.

Next, since this is the only time to easily do this, I put up insulation. It was a pain, because the 24" wide stuff won't stay in place by itself - it is too heavy. So getting it up is tricky. I sprung for a tyvek suit, which kept me from itching all over from the job. I recommend this to anyone who has to handle fiberglass insulation... it really works (I also recommend you don't allow anyone to take pictures of you wearing the suit).

Then, since I already have more experience hanging sheetrock than I want, I hired a crew to sheetrock the ceiling. The pros got it up in less than 4 hours, for about $200 more than my cost for buying the materials from Home Depot. Way, way worth it.

Finally, finally, install the heater. I got it all hooked up and running this last weekend. It was wonderful to go out there and turn up the thermostat, and in just a few minutes time, it was warm! WARM!

Non-boating Weekend: Ode to a Heater

Fall Morning at Anchor

This last weekend we made a quick jaunt over to Port Madison. We drove over using the engine, rather than sailing, since there was no wind. We had a wonderful afternoon at anchor (I worked some more on my Betsy Ross project). My eye was attracted to this dock ramp, which the years have given organic curves.

The evening cooled off rapidly, so we made a roast porkchop dish with cabbage in the oven, and got free cabin heat besides. It all went very well with the wine and guitar later.

When we woke up in the morning, the gift from the oven was still giving. All the moisture from the propane burned in the oven raises the relative humidity inside as well as giving heat. Over night the heat dissipates, but the moisture remains. It was 56 degrees inside, so I fired up the trusty Dickenson diesel heater, and we had it up to 70 in a jiffy. Bonus: the combustion air needs of the Dickenson inhale the moisture and expel it out the stack, so aside from the heating, there is also a net drying due to the air exchange. The windows cleared right up.

Slack water at the marina was to be at 14:15, so we needed to leave at about 12:45 to arrive at the slack (avoiding difficult currents at the dock). However, there was a competing need - the wind was forecast to rise to 20 kt in the afternoon, and we wanted to avoid docking with that much of a headwind if possible. So we decided to leave early, and hoisted anchor at 10:00.

It turned out to be a wonderful sail back across the Sound - we had wind off the beam at 12-18 kt, and Eolian scooted along at 6+ kt under just the yankee. It was great that what could be the last sail of the year was so wonderful (yes, I was feeling maudlin again...)

Due to our excellent speed, we arrived earlier than planned (but had the high wind anyway), and so had to manage the docking maneuver with both a 20 kt headwind and with significant current pushing us off the dock. In some ways it was easier, since I had to use the motor a lot just to counter the push of the North wind, and this meant that I had the use of the directed thrust from the prop and rudder available a lot more than usual. Curtis and Cynthia from Wind Dancer next door caught our lines, which was a big help.

I guess I am ready for the season to be closing, tho we may yet steal a day or two if moderate weather hits on weekends.

I guess I am ready.

I guess.

Fall Morning at Anchor