Our 48 foot
Endeavour power catamaran came with three self-contained reverse-cycle 18k BTU A/C units, all put in pretty terrible places, and piped really awkwardly through the multiple rooms of the
boat. All three units are ~13 years old now, are rusting out, starting to have controllers flake out, and all of the
water lines need replacing. Given our general annoyance with this system, I'm exploring what the "right" complete system replacement would look like.
Requirements:
* Individually control cooling/heat to 5 different rooms (3 bedrooms, upper/lower salon), 2 bathrooms on top that'd be nice to be able to support as well
* The upstairs 18k A/C can't keep up on most warmer days -- too many windows -- so I'd like to be able to focus more
cooling capacity up there
* Energy efficient enough to run one or two smaller zones (bedrooms) overnight on
batteries like we can now (30kwh 48v
lithium 10kva
inverter setup)
* Ability to integrate diesel-based heat for when we move back to the
west coast in a couple years
I think, if I want all three of those things, a chiller system is the only one that is even possible -- I don't know of any way to integrate
diesel heat into a split system? Is that where you'd all land too? Is a chiller system at least roughly as efficient as a self-contained unit for
cooling a
single room, so we'd expect comparable or less energy usage than our
current setup for running overnight on
batteries? We could also make it only cool one room instead of the
current setup that cools 3 bedrooms and a bathroom from the one unit, so in theory would be able to use much less
power.
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