Has anyone replaced the blackwater holding tank on a 43 (or similar) located in the dresser cabinet below the forward birth? The current tank is 29 gallons and the space is shared with the forward AC & air handler. I would love to shoehorn a bigger unit in if at all possible. Appreciate any tips/suggestions from the group.
Not familiar with the boat but under floor at the bow is a common location for HT of many boats I ve owned or seen
Our 43 has holding tank under guest lower bunk. 31 gallons. Our forward AC compressor is in engine room. Air hander above master cabin fwd starboard closet. Switching to Elegance head with low volume fresh water flush made our HT "seem" bigger. Did 6 days with just wife and I aboard just turning on the flull tank indicator on head control.
FWIW, we replaced the holding tank on a previous boat (not Post) -- and changing innies and outies from side entry to top entry added about 6 gallons capacity. -Chris
@Greg Page - is your MKII 43’ a forward MSTR? Both AC compressors in the engine room? Original units? Good call on the Elegance. I liked your write-up about the freshwater tank/tank level monitor install. If I wasn’t on the Great Lakes, I would certainly follow suit. Here’s a photo I grabbed today of my current config. @ranger58sb - was that a poly tank? What kind?
Yes, Yes and possibly. I don't know any history of the boat before the prior owner (who did re-engine), he only had the boat for 3 years.
If I could relocate the forward air compressor / air handler, I’d squeeze in a 50-60 gallon holding tank under the bed.
AC units are one above the other in engine room. Water heater is seen off to stbd. Fwd air handler location barely visible in the pic (don't seem to have a better one) above the forward stbd closet.
Yes, direct from Ronco Plastics. Excellent customer service. Bazillions of shapes, and before fitting are installed you can mentally rotate them to whatever will best fit your configuration. Then they'll put the fittings wherever you want them. If space above is a concern, fittings can be inward instead of outward. Dip tubes supplied to order. I used separate fittings to attach the inlet line and two separate outlet lines, one to the deck for pump-out, and one to the pump for overboard discharge. Since we are seldom in a location to discharge overboard, that meant that line and the (new) pump itself was clean... -Chris
FWIW, I put a self contained unit, 6K Btu , in the void between the rope locker and the V-berth forward bulk head When my original AC unit failed. That compressor was in the engine room, STRBD side The 6 fit perfectly in that empty area. There s a bulkhead at the back of the rope locker and then the void, then the bulkhead/partition between the V berth and the rope locker. but mine is a 46 so you may not have that space up there
Our 43 has similar gap, accessed through a removable panel on the shelf at the top of the headboard. Just curious, where did you plumb in cooling water inlet/exit? Is it operable underway?
The scope of the entire job went this way: The old compressor leaked and no one around here would even think of repairing it. The advice I got over and over was to replace the whole system. The old compressor ( 10K btu ) cooled the side stateroom and the fwd V berth. I added two self contained units, a 10 in the state room and a 6 in the v berth. This required a larger volume cooling pump I kept the same location as the old cooling pump and they were very nearly the same foot print. I came off the new pump , which is in front of my STRBRD engine with a "Y" . I valved each run off the Y. One run cools the Saloon and the stateroom units The other runs up to the V berth unit by way of the same 4 inch PVC raceway that the old line set occupied. The 4 inch pvc has cables and stuff in it too. I ran the hose up through the void in the bow to the fwd unit, then back out of the unit and back down to the bilge. I brought the condensate hose back down too. The condensate dumps into my shower sump. The cooling hose passes through the bilge area where the shower sump is and parallels the bilge pump hose. I put a new thru-hull in line with the other 2 thru hulls along the waterline there. A very long way to answer your question, but yes I run the FWD AC underway and have no issues. The old 10 K BTU unit always seemed to struggle on really hot days and by adding the 6 in the bow has made a marked improvement.
Thanks. I need to file that for the future "just in case" mine die of old age. I've been looking at replacing the control for the stateroom unit, fan speed died so only runs on full, and local shop keeps saying i should just replace both units.
Flight Systems in Pennsylvania makes a replacement controller for most of the old cruise air systems. I have two in my boat.
Update with better picture of fwd air handler in top of stbd master closet (I had it open doing the AC controls replacement).
The pics in this thread have been reduced in size for users on satcom. We try to be considerate of bandwidth. Please keep pics under 800 pixels. Thanks!
FWIW, when I took mine apart, there was a surprising amount of crud on the leading edges of the squirrel cage blower. Once I cleaned it and re-installed it, the air volume and thereby the cooling improved noticeably. You would not think that the blower, drawing thru a filter and thru the evaporator, would get so dirty but it did. I had never even thought of cleaning them in the past.