The Mighty CanDoAlot!

[ShaktisBoy]

It's Alive!!!

I call it the mighty CanDoAlot, and Just Like DR.Frankenstein, people told me I'm crazy or that a project like CanDoAlot is simply not possible but yet here I sit in my air conditioned 40 foot leopard catamaran after having charged my batteries and making a 100 gallons of fresh water all provided by the mighty CanDoAlot. A little back story so my story makes sense and to give those who dare to buck the conventional wisdom a little hope that just maybe their crazy idea will work. How did I get here you ask? Simple, all it took was an extremely expensive failure of a cheap rubber heat exchanger elbow to destroy our Northern Lights 6KW generator. Yes we thoroughly rinsed the machine and applied many bottles of salt-off and anti corrosion spray but in the end salt water managed to get in every nook and cranny of the Northern Lights generator before the automatic shutoff system sensed the problem and by then it was only a matter of time before the Northern Lights generator gave up and died. I had seen the little Kubota based DC generators at boat shows for years and was always intrigued by what the companies selling them claimed but I wasn't willing to swap out a working generator for an unknown and often maligned DC unit but here I was facing a $15,000 repair bill on a machine I never really liked and that was hard to service the way it was installed in Mulligan. Enter Dan Forest of AquaMarine Inc in Washington state, (did I mention I'm in Florida?) who's company sells such a unit. The thing is less than 1/2 the size of the Northern lights it was going to replace and about half the weight, it is modular with many bolt on accessories to make the unit more versatile but admittedly the unit requires a great deal of planning and patience to install without it ending up looking like an amateur slapped it in the vessel. For our cruising area Florida / Bahamas we knew we wanted air conditioning, water making, and of course a fast charge capability all of which are provided by the mighty CanDoAlot. Here are the results of the installation.

1. Mulligan lost more than 200 pounds
2. I can now charge my 900 AH battery bank from 50ish% state of charge to 95ish% state of charge in 90 minutes or less.
3. I can air condition the entire vessel using the automotive type AC kit provided by Aquamarine while anchored using less than 10 ounces of fuel per hour.
4. I can make water at a rate of 24 gallons per hour while charging the house bank.
5. Last but not least this unit takes up so much less space I can now store dive gear for 4 including tanks and BCs in the same space that the Northern Lights used to occupy.

Total cost of installation was about the same as the repair of our old unit coming in at just over $15,000 of course no labor was involved which would have driven up the price but I like to know exactly how everything works on Mulligan necessitating a hands on approach anyway.


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[44'cruisingcat]

SO..... this is about a genset right?

[motion30]

I wasn't quite clear. You are using an automotive type air conditioning compressor driven off your generator motor?

[ShaktisBoy]

Yes a DC Genset that runs a high pressure pump for the water maker and 30,000 BTU automotive type Air conditioner. I have been tinkering with it for months and was worried I may as well have set fire to the money spent. However in the end it worked out way better than I had hoped due to the space and weight savings, less than 1/3 of the fuel burn and super fast charge time, however the cost was almost identical to what I was going to pay to get my AC genset renewed. It would have been easier to replace the AC genset but I would have always wondered....


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[downunder]

Is the motor a single cylinder Yanmar. I was thinking they would have been noisy and vibrate a fair bit?

Do you have a photo of the unit before installation. Link to supplier? Found it.

[ShaktisBoy]

The company that markets it is AquaMarine. http://www.aquamarineinc.net/. I too though the unit would be really noisy but it turns out to be about the same as the old NorthernLights with its sound shield. I did line the compartment it is in with 1/2 inch vinyl lined sound proofing. In fact with the air conditioner fan running we cannot really hear the genset at all from our cabin. CanDoAlot is based on the single cylinder Kubota EA330. It absolutely sips fuel and charges the house bank much faster than the old unit.


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[s/v Jedi]

This is BS. I bought a 6kW Northern Lights genset new for $7,500.- so impossible that repairing one costs double that.

Also, the other genset can not do the same thing on 1/3rd of the fuel consumption. You may be willing to have less BTU's of A/C or less gpm RO etc. but the difference comes from somewhere. Size & weight probably comes from the new unit running twice as many rpm's.


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[downunder]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

This is BS. I bought a 6kW Northern Lights genset new for $7,500.- so impossible that repairing one costs double that.

Also, the other genset can not do the same thing on 1/3rd of the fuel consumption. You may be willing to have less BTU's of A/C or less gpm RO etc. but the difference comes from somewhere. Size & weight probably comes from the new unit running twice as many rpm's.


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Yes I was surprised a Northern Lights 6kw would be $15000. Yes I think they are 3000-3600 rpm

[ShaktisBoy]

Jedi not just repairing. Yard fees, removing the old genset from vessel Crane and crew plus new unit plus shipping plus tax. I just love it when I see the BS comments because I to thought 7500.00 max and damn near choked when the quotes started coming in. In our case the salt water coated the entire machine everything's no from the alternator forward on the engine to the starter on the side and the entire rotor / stator assembly. The diesel itself was ok but the rear bearing had to be replaced due to corrosion concerns if it was not addressed. Basically we were looking at a complete rebuild of the engine plus all new external components.

Here is the exact machine sold by wholesale marine.
http://www.marinewholesales.com/en/product.php?id=1392

Here is another
http://www.marinnovative.com/index.p...ducts&cat=70&a..

I could keep going but there it is. Am I still full of it? Or maybe I'm telling the truth?


Now If I look around I can find some rebuilt no ware to etc for 5 to 7 k still no shipping or labor or tax etc


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[ShaktisBoy]

That should have said no warranty


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[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

This is BS. I bought a 6kW Northern Lights genset new for $7,500.- so impossible that repairing one costs double that.

I wouldn't say it's impossible that repairing something could cost more than replacing it. That's pretty common. Our stove would cost more than Greece's national debt if you rebuilt it from spare parts.

Of course, replacing would make more sense....

[ShaktisBoy]

The new unit is one cylinder and does run between 2400 and 3000 rpm. Here is the chart for fuel burn. Note at max rpm the burn is 282 grams per kW hour. About 1/3 of the 3 cylinder Northern lights.


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[rabbi]

the first few sentences I thought you were talking about a new oversized solar array that you installed and that the Migthy CanDoAlot is referring to the sun.

Cost would be a fraction. Weight would be a fraction. Your batterie pack could be smaller and still would not go to 50% because they are charged from sunrise to sunset. Water production is slower, but who cares as long as the total amount over the day is enough?
OK, airconditioning is out of question with solar but other than that.



In my previous boat I had a very small solar array but big generator, big watermaker, big charger, big battery bank, A/C, dive compressor and all that. Everything was big, expensive and required quite some maintenance.

Now I have a big solar array but small watermaker, small battery bank. Works perfectly.
No A/C and no dive compressor but really I don't miss these. I would never go back to a generator unless it came with the boat for free.

[s/v Jedi]

Fuel consumption is related to load on the engine, not to rpm's.


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[ShaktisBoy]

Yes it's called the law of thermo dynamics. Your comparing apples to oranges in this case Jedi. The fuel saving come in the form of displacement and hp required to turn the various devices attached to it. The Northern lights produced 10 HP at full load and did only one thing generate electricity. It's foot print was huge and weight nearly double that of the new unit. This units engine is 5.2 hp at full load which will run the high pressure pump for the water maker, the compressor for the air conditioner or the 200 amp alternator. When charging the batteries once the amp draw drops below 100 amps it has enough power to run the high pressure pump for the water maker at the same time. The unit will not run the Air conditioner compressor and HP pump at the same time. But if the batteries are charged to a rate where they are accepting less than 35 amps DC then we can run the air conditioner at the same time while we complete the charge and enjoy the relief provided by the air conditioner. So what I'm basically saying is for the cost of a few months of my life, some busted knuckles and about the same amount of money I was going to have to spend to repair or replace the old unit I can do 3 things at once the boat lost almost 200 pounds and gained a huge storage space where the old unit used to reside.


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