Talking to many of the boat manufacturers at the Miami show it would appear that unsurprisingly new boat sales are down. On the flip side many accessory and after market vendors appear to be having a good show.
Interest has been brisk at the Webasto booth where they are showing the FCF-DV which stands for Feel Cool Fast dual voltage. The 5000 BTU air conditioner has been around for a few years now and I can say from experience having installed a few of these in the past that it is a compact, quiet and robust unit. So although the AC unit is three years old or so what makes it appealing to show visitors is that Webasto have done a deal with Xantrex and are now offering the unit complete with an inverter. Of course although you could buy both the AC and inverter as separate units Webasto are offering the two together as package for just under $3000. Webasto are offering a 2 year warranty and technical support on both components and additionally the unit also comes with a purpose built wiring loom and control panel making it a plug and play exercise and therefore for a competent DIYer.
The inverter senses when the mains power is connected and automatically switches off the battery connection so there is one less thing to worry about. My only concern with this whole package is that the battery drain will not be insignificant especially if the unit is working hard. I have asked Webasto for some figures on the battery current drain and will bring you those as soon as they become available to me.
All in all this seems like a good deal to me and perfect for boats in the 26 to 40 foot range. A larger 9500 BTU unit is available for larger craft which as you would expect has a larger inverter to cope with the heavier start up current.
Mark,
I did look into running an air conditioner on batteries a few years ago. The math didn't work out for me. It takes about 500 watts to run a 5000 BTU Air Conditioner. That's about forty amps at 12 volts. Even figuring a 50% duty cycle, it didn't seem as if my batteries would get me through the night and still start my engine. I bought a little Honda portable generator that I plan sit on my dive platform to power the air conditioner at night. Very quiet.
Carbon monoxide is a big concern so I plan a lot of testing with a CO monitor before I actually go to sleep with this rig running.
Posted by: Bill Parks | February 17, 2009 at 01:16 AM
Webasto seems to be a good brand, thanks for sharing its main features here and am sure many would benefit from this.
Posted by: Air Conditioning | April 08, 2010 at 04:12 AM
I really appreciate for your brilliant efforts on spending time to post this information in a simple and easy to understand format.
Posted by: Millar Dhiner | January 20, 2015 at 03:10 AM