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| This is what we feel like right now~lol |
So I am obsessed with keeping warm the past few days. Yes, I know that we live in Florida and that it isn't nearly as cold here as up north, but I'm cold and 27 degrees is simply more than my bones can stand. Add to the cold, everything in the boat seems to be damp. Clothes, the walls, etc. I know that condesation is the problem, but what is the solution?
I started doing searches on the internet about heating a boat and found an article that thought was informative and thought I'd repost it here. It's from Loose Moorings and was posted by Nathaniel.
~Pamela
a warm dry boat
I bought this book that this post is named after because we had problems with moisture, problems that in the end we were able to cure on our own with a little thought and experimentation. i don’t like spending money because as an artist i don’t have much to spend, and because it’s a philosophy of mine to minimize the need for external resources. but water dripping onto my face at night from an aluminum hatch frame seemed to be a problem worth paying for a solution.
as usual when I put my mind to the problem I can usually figure it out myself, but sometimes it’s hard not to be lazy and pay for someone else to find solutions to my problems; it’s what makes the world go around, at least in this economy.
anyway, I got the book last week, and it was a waste of money. the solution to achieving warm, dry boat is good ventilation and a good heater, (and in the author’s mind your heater and stove should be diesel), which wasn't exactly a revelation.
I did learn about the energy content of various fuels, and some details of different appliances on the market, but that’s not what I was looking for. all the author's examples are for large power boats, and the physical arrangements of these boats are very different from a sailboat. the principles are the same, but I already knew the principles. oh, well. if anyone wants the book I’ll gladly pass it along, but I recommend you work on your own solutions.
I already guessed that tracy and I put out a lot of moisture via breathing, and that cooking and boiling water also pumps a lot of water into the boat. warm air holds a lot of moisture, and when that air comes in contact with cold surfaces like hatch and port frames, and uninsulated hull surfaces inside lockers, water will condense out.
since I can’t heat these objects, I can either insulate them from the interior air, move that warm moist air outside, or both. of course it’s raining out and the humidity is 100%, but 6 degree air at 100% humidity has a lot less water in it than 22 degree air at 80% humidity, so fresh air in and warm, moist air out, is key to fixing the problem.
the v berth was the worst for condensation because it is small, far from the heater in the salon, and we were both in there for 9 hours out of every day.
1st problem to deal with was that the locker had no insulation in it and our clothes were getting wet from condensation. i lined it with the bubble wrap used for hot water tanks and no more wet.
the next issue was being dripped on at night and wet hull. opening the hatch meant getting rain inside, so we experimented with different objects, and found if we put a clothes peg in the hatch frame, it left it open enough to let our breath dissipate but kept rain from getting in. the final step was getting the 120 outlet in the v berth working (the po had wired it incorrectly to the gfi outlet in the galley). I then put in a small cube-type heater on low, which is sufficient to keep the space warm; I can’t tell you how cold those sheets used to be when we crawled in there at night; it would take an hour for my feet to finally warm up.
this got rid of 95% of the moisture. there is still moisture accumulating in the bed foam where it touches the hull, and I think the only way to get rid of this last bit is to install a vent in the v berth, because we can’t open the hatch further without getting rained on.
we now slide open the companionway hatch when cooking in the galley, and judging by all the water on the inside of the enclosure, we are keeping a ton of moisture out of the boat itself. remember that propane releases 1.5 lbs of water for every pound of propane burned. that’s just shy of 1 ½ gallons of water!
we also have a small portlight that opens into the cockpit, and we usually open that to varying amounts depending on the outside temps; a lot of air comes in through it despite the full cockpit enclosure.
a po had installed a muffin fan and vent above the galley, but the way the vent was installed, the passage was effectively blocked and the fan didn’t do anything but churn air around. I changed the install and now the fan blows out a lot of the moisture while we are working on the stove.
I also occasionally turn on a small fan we have mounted on our ceiling to circulate air through the boat and push the warm air towards the cold sole.
before these few steps, we would have moisture beading up on all the portlight frames and locker hull surfaces. not any more. once I put an additional vent in the v berth I believe that we won’t have any problem at all with moisture.
To summarise: circulate a lot of fresh air inside the boat, find a way to duct moisture out that is produced by cooking and showering, and provide enough heat to warm all parts of the boat. pretty basic. the details will depend on your own boat, so you will have to find a custom solution for your own unique living environment. the interesting part to the above is that it didn’t cost anything, just a bit of thought and experimentation.
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