OFF GRID AC . . . ON A BOAT! Sailing with a solar Mini-Split air conditioner on a catamaran! (S1E4)

In this week’s episode, we capture a few intimate moments about living in a boatyard, sanding successes, botched repairs, and possibly a YouTube first with an onboard mini-split ac unit. The Successes: - Amanda was able to sand the entire inside of one hull this last week, having a total of about 10 man-hours! - We were able to remove the tarp from the cabin. - The AC unit kept up on a near 90 degree day! - Fixed the shower with a headband. The Fails: - John miscalculated the panel repair from our last episode and had to cut part of it to try again. - One of the windows wasn’t completely sealed and leaked on the bed during a storm, and almost happened a second time before we sealed it. - John bought the wrong size angle grinder pads . . . again! More on the AC: So we decided to put a mini-split ac unit on our boat for several reasons, a few including: - Extreme efficiency, our unit (22 Seer Pioneer 12000BTU 110v mini-split) draws about 360W on it’s max cooling setting . . . NICE! Other portable AC units can use as much as 1200W, which would force us to run a generator daily to bridge the difference in our solar production. - Portability, which is really important when you do not know what the final layout of your space will be. In our case, we may chose to move the AC to a completely different part of the boat before we finish, which would not work for a marine AC system. - DIY Friendly and takes less than a day to put together, pretty self-explanatory. - Noise, there is none! The indoor and outdoor units are almost completely silent, the ‘quiet’ refrigerator makes more noise. - Dehumidifies, like a lot! Having an old wood boat, humidity is a super big ‘no no’. This unit has done an incredible job keeping things dry, even with massive holes in the side of our boat. So far, we are extremely happy with how this unit performs. Though it looks unsightly now, we will likely be building it into the outdoor section, making the outdoor unit nearly invisible. The lines running across the wall on the inside will be concealed by cabinets in the future, leaving only the stylish head unit. As for the power, we are pretty confident that this 12000BTU unit will cool our 11x11 cabin without struggle, even with all windows open on a 90+ degree days. During the nights, we believe that the unit will be able to cool inside the hulls reasonably well with assisted circulation. All that said, there is just no tradeoff on the power consumption. The unit pulls as little as 50W when a stable temperature has been reached, and no more than around 950W on ‘turbo’ mode. The unit can cool our entire cabin 15-20 degrees in 10-15 minutes, which is awesome! The fact that we still have massive holes in the side of our boat, and even leaving the cabin door open, this unit still keeps up and does it’s job. We have no idea how this unit will hold up in a maritime environment, but even planning for a short lifetime, it is a well worth investment for us and we look forward to sharing updates on it’s performance at sea! Check out the unit here: https://www.amazon.com/PIONEER-Air-Conditioner-Pioneer-Heatpump/dp/B01DVW6CAU?th=1 Like our content? Join our Patron community! https://patreon.com/Maroonedby5