Engine Room Air Conditioning?

Good points!

Pascal
I have a Lazzara LSX 64 with two chillers. Each one alternates on and off between cycles unless the demand calls for both. If I lose one I do have the other which can do the whole boat even in summer. Are yours the same or do you manually select which chiller to run?

Pascal
I have the original chillers for over 6 years when boat was built. Luckily I don’t lose chilled water or sweat. I have found that most boat builders undersize their units for the Florida market. I had a Sunseeker with the Sahara package A/C and when in the Bahamas in the Summer it was not great. When I had the Lazzara built I oversized the units and added more air handlers in the salon which is a glass palace and needs it.

Since my chillers are a little over six years old you are scaring me of a future large expense. Although I think the new chillers are no longer copper but titanium which should have a much longer life.

Our chillers crashed at 6 years, they were cupronickel and raw water side was likely aggressively cleaned before we purchased. The inter pipes pin holed and dump the Freon. Titanium out performs Cu-Ni in salt water and much more resistant to corrosive de-scalers. I like the chillers over standard compressor units , especially when you get to 5 or more air handlers.

Agreed. My controls for the two units are staggered, so the second only gets called when the load is heavy. The modern screw compressors also spin up, so there is no traditional load spike at start. I let #1 carry the majority of the load, and periodically I shut it down and exercise #2 for a while. Same with the redundant cooling water pumps. Alternate them with strainer sessions.

Mine automatically alternate. When chiller one reaches its temperature and shuts down then next cycle chiller two will run. When both chillers run at same time when reach temperature one will shut off and begin alternating cycle. Thus I have nearly same hours on both chillers

Same thought process has had me spinning over adding a small first stage unit that is somewhat sacrificial. I've spoken with a company building 24k BTU 24v DC units, thinking that's a terrific use of both DC as well as adding longevity to my "big" chillers.

We had one boat with ac in the er. The salon air handler was in a built in sofa with a drop going thru the floor directly into the er, You could turn air on/off in the er. It was great to have in the summer while doing maintenance.

You'd want a smoke, fume and fire plate on the ER side of such a duct lest anyone get the idea of just running a duct to their ER via a Y duct valve or worse.

Not sure if it was original install, it was a simple supply duct with a plastic cover that would open and close on the er ceiling. Good point, a friend of mine still owns the boat, I will make him aware of that. Thanks for the suggestion.