10.23.2012

Winterization

Winter is coming and it’s time to think about what we need to do for winterization. Luckily Bellingham enjoys fairly mild winters.

As a result, we do not need to drain all the water in the boat. But we do need to maintain a minimum temperature in the boat. The goal is to both prevent freezing and more importantly, reduce moisture and by association mold and mildew.

We have two major of sources of heat on the boat; the reverse cycle units and the diesel heater. The advantage of the reverse cycle is that it also removes moisture as it heats the air because it is essentially a heat pump. It is all electric and hence we will not be employing the “flame” of the diesel heater. It also has an advantage over the diesel heater because the combustion process of burning diesel fuel releases moisture in the process of combustion. So we will set the thermostats at 60 degrees on two of the reverse cycle units to do most of the work.

As good as the reverse cycle units are, we are also going to supplement this with a couple of small dehumidifiers. The consensus on the docks is the Caframo Stor-Dry Dehumidifier is the way to go. We will space one each in the saloon and the two berths.

There is one area on the boat that will not get serviced by this plan. That’s the lazarette. For that we are going to use a small thermostatically-controlled space heater. Here again, we’ll go with the one most people use on the docks, Caframo True North Deluxe AC Electric Heater.

This will also require us to add a 120v outlet in the lazarette. But that is an easy project because we have an outlet in the master berth we can tap into on the other side of the bulkhead.

As a footnote, during it's third winter season one of the Caframo Stor-Dry Dehumidifier had a fan stop working. I called the manufacturer, gave them the serial number and had a replacement unit, at no cost, in a week. Needless to say, I'm still a fan of their products and service.