Air Con Game Changer! 12v Mabru Install
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- Опубликовано: 23 сен 2022
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Unlimited air conditioning on a boat is becoming possible... with the right equipment. Even though we're upgraded our solar and have a large lithium battery bank, our old AC powered CruisAir air cons would still be too power hungry. So in our quest for maximum energy efficiency, we ripped those out and installed new 7k btu Mabru DC air cons.
Now we just need to finish up the rest of our refit so we can get back in the water and enjoy what an absolute game changer these will be!
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Have the same unit in our catamaran in SE Asia…full time live aboard family of 4…sleep is good 👍. Just ordered the 12k btu unit for the salon. You’ll enjoy it. Thanks Mabru
I WISH we had these when we were in SE Asia. Man it was hot there!
Looks clean and professional! Good job!
Great job David. Thank you.
Nice work David, I think you will be very happy with the end result. Being able to do away with the generator and live off 12V and solar is a game changer.
We just finished bolting in all the new solar panels today and I'm going to start wiring them in tomorrow. Can't wait to have all that power!!
Great install!
Thanks guys, good to see y'all.
Stay safe. We love y'all.⛵👍🏼🐾
Thanks for the great video. It gave me some ideas on improving my current installations. Looking forward to the watermaker install.
Glad you could find some inspiration! If you don't have it already, that 'air-bleed' valve is a great addition.
I remember when you put in solar and we're adamant about having an MPPT for each panel. Saved that video. Actually,saved all your how-to's. They are just that good. 👍🏻💪🏻✨🌊💨⛵️🏝👙🌞✨
Nice details
You do great work. I enjoy watching your projects. The only suggestion I would make would be to maybe think about putting a union between the strainer and ball value. If the pipping ever needs to be taken apart unions can save a lot of time. Again great job!
Thanks for the tip! I feel like I'm fairly decent at learning the basics needed to do a project fairly well, but there are always things you don't know that you don't know!
Great video! I can't wait to hear your feedback once you have the vessel in the water
Glad it meets your approval! Watching all the Mabru install videos was incredibly helpful in planning how to do this myself!
nice work. what's the airlock valve do?
The airlock valve is intended to be an easy way to bleed the system if any air gets in it. Otherwise you have to loosen one of the hoses on the pump and that is quite tricky and can get very messy!
I just did the Mabru easy install and the variable fan and compressor is crazy since.....once in the water your going to be amazed and happy at load numbers. how many Amp Hours of Lithium you going with ?
I'm super excited to be able to test these out. Though by the time we are finished with projects and launch, we may be trying their heating function first! 😆
Our lithium bank is now 1,000 amp hours at 12v.
I've been looking at Mabru. Thanks for the detailed install review. I had very little knowledge of boat ACs but now I do, thanks to you. How is the 12V system and eliminating the genset? I've had issues with my gen set and considered a solar electric system. My generator only runs my AC and cook top. I can change to propane for cooking and only really need the air at night for sleeping. good work.
The change has been amazing. We've been in the Bahamas for 5 months and have run entirely on solar power. It takes a bit of power management sometimes, especially if it's cloudy for a few days in a row, but we haven't had to run an engine for extra battery charging at all.
The Bahamas are nice given that the nights in the winter are actually quite comfortable. So we devoted more power to heating water (usually 2x a day) and only ran air cons if it was a super sunny/still day. Now that the water is getting a bit warmer, things don't cool off as much at night so we're cutting back to hot water once a day (cold showers are much more tolerable now!) and using the extra power to run air con at night. We put up a sheet to section off our berth since there is no need to spend more power to cool the entire hull!
Love all the learnings and techniques you are sharing. Would be great to hear why you are going through the effort to switch to the Mabru 12V units. What efficiency do you expect to gain? What comfort (if any) do you expect to lose?
I had good intentions of trying to include some of the rationale behind the switch in this video, but we're just too busy with boat work and other projects to do that subject justice at the moment. So I'll try to cover all that when we're back in the water with a full review video.
But for a sneak peak... 😃 Since we made the decision to remove our genset, we're on a quest for peak efficiency in our key systems. I expect that these DC powered Mabrus will consume less then half the power that our old AC powered CruisAirs would (which would also require wiring in soft starts and probably upgrading our inverter!). I'm confident the comfort/performance in the owner's hull and our aft guest cabin will be practically identical to what we had before. The big question is how the salon will do. We now have a smaller unit there than before BUT Amy would constantly get frozen out of the salon if we ran air con there. So as long as it takes the edge off a super hot day in the salon and I can retreat to our cabin for real cold, I'll be happy!
Your answer is in this video a handy comparison is at 12.33 min. the Mabru uses almost a third of of the energy to provide the same BTU output.
ruclips.net/video/nFA3FNAHv_I/видео.html
Will you feed all 3 AC’s off the same seacock?
Do you have the theoretical efficiency gains in terms of the old 110v compressor compared to the DC unit? As you know we are doing a new build so keen to see the numbers and see if we can go a generator free build and still have Air conditioning. Seems with all the new tech it’s very doable now.
I expect that the 7k but Mabru's will consume about 250-350w when we're running them. We always ran the old 8k btu CruisAirs off the genset, but the math for them works out to 633w when cooling and 816w when heating. That doesn't include any inverter loss and to run those w/o the genset, we'd also need to fit those with soft starts and likely upgrade our inverter again to handle the air cons and other AC powered loads.
So with our 12kw lithium battery bank, we should easily be able to run a Mabru air con over night. The big question will be how we do with solar generation from our new panels and if the new setup can handle charging up the batteries on a regular basis. But we also have the option of NOT running air con to conserve power, which puts us right back to where we were before and we somehow managed to survive 8 years that way! 😆
I assume the communication cable was a RJ45 since you mentioned Cat 5. Its really easy to put the ends on if you have the plugs and crimping tool. Its all pretty cheap to buy and you'll always have it.. I know it would have been A LOT easier if you could cut the end off and crimp a new one on. The company will tell you the order of the wires.
Our cables are standard pinout, no funny business to make it as simple as possible to service. As long as the pins match on both ends, the cable is good!
Nice hose cutter. I’ve never seen one with a ratcheting mechanism. Would you recommend it? And if so where did you get it? TIA
It works really well on all the hose we typically use on the boat and I'm definitely glad we have it. The one thing it struggles with is the metal wire reinforced hoses. I have to use some wire cutters to finish that cat.
I can't remember the brand we have, but searching "ratcheting hose cutter" brings up a ton of options!
Great video! Can you tell me what that extra 3-way valve is for? Is it for helping to prime the system if that pump is not self-priming? Is it for flushing the system with mild acid, eg Barnacle Buster?
Good question. At first I was going to say, so they can clean/change the water strainer, but then the valve should be before the strainer, and the through-hull seacock does that. Then I thought, so they can work on the pump? But, then again, they have the seacock. So, David, what is the deal there? Is it a backup cutoff should the seacock fail?
When these systems are opened to clean the strainer air gets in and must be purged so the pump will flow properly. This allows easy purging without removing hoses.
Laura nailed it! Not only can air get in when cleaning the strainer, we've also had air get into our old air cons if we were on a bumpy sail and forgot the close the valve on the thru-hull.
It only took one time of having to carefully loosen the hoses to clear the air block to find a better solution. The "air bleed valve" is a lifesaver!
@@laurapitre5797 Thanks! I did not think of that.
How big is the supply wire for the Mabru? Seems like it should be at least #8??? We currently have 230v Dometics and I’m concerned the increased wire size is gonna make for some very hard cable pulls….
We actually went with a 1AWG wire for the install in the salon. 12v definitely requires significantly larger wire size and yes... the cable pulls are among the toughest part of the install.
This is a handy wire size calculator that we use all the time if you'd like to figure out what size wire you'd need: boathowto.com/wiresize/abyc/
What are you working on in the background Amy? Great video David!
Amy has been doing all the fiberglass work on Starry Horizons during the refit. And _something_ in the shower has been one of her projects! 😉
How many Maybru units will you have? My wife said you were installing 3, but I never heard that... As others have asked, it would be great to see a watt vs watt comparison. Thanks!
We're going to have 3. One in the salon, one in our cabin, and one in our port aft guest cabin for guests who need it. And I'd love to do a watt vs watt comparison, but we need to get in the water first! 😆
Niiiiiice work 👍🏻 Yet you never mentioned why the new system and how it is a game changer 🤷🏼♂️💪🏻
I did film a bit talking about that specifically but decided we'll go into more detail on a full review video.
What was the rough cost of the new unit?
Mabru actually has the cost on their website: mabrustore.com/collections/mps-dc-units
All the extras, like fuses/cables/hoses are going to vary a lot depending on where you install things.
I think that the Emily and Clark's marine DIY AC is significantly better. But if you're going for a "floating apartment" feel then an oversized, power hungry AC might be better for you. In my opinion, if have to run a generator on a sunny day you're using too much power.
Perhaps you misunderstand the limitations of Clark's AC unit? It is not designed for the volumes of catamaran living spaces.
This is a DC system that can be easily run off their solar and lithium battery bank. There is no comparison between this system and the home brew design you are referring to.
I've said it before, but one of the great things about boats is that there are millions of ways to outfit and set them up. What works well for one boat/couple may not be the right solution for someone else.
Our catamaran is our full time home, and after 8 years living aboard, we have narrowed in on the comforts/amenities that we want. Air con that works for our space and with the rest of our electrical systems is high on my priority list because I've done plenty of sweating in the middle of the night in some very hot places.
I do mostly agree with you on the generator though. I never really liked when we had to run ours, which is why we got rid of it!
Clark has little interest in creating a system for a catamaran. He states in his video that his design is adequate only for cooling ONE stateroom.
That getto clark unit is not marine ac. Its a hodge podge that would never see the inside of my boat,
Water dissipated heat is an unnecessary mess. 8000 BTU's is way too large for most boats. A good video should tell how to budget wattage and how to make cooling effective and not waste it.
A chisel would of made that hole easily.