More on V-Berth Fan
Leslie Paal asked "I saw in your blog a part about putting fan under the V-berth. Could you give a bit more information how did you do it and what areas could you ventilate." Here's more:
When the boat was new to me I washed out the area under the v-berth with a hose and bleach, etc. To dry it I put one of those round dehumidifiers from West Marine over the step, aimed downward, so that it would blow warmed air into that area.
There's a 6 inch inspection port, the kind with the screw-on cover, in the side of the hull liner, just under the nav station. Unrelated to cleaning out the v-berth area, but while the dehumidifier was still in place, I removed the cover and noticed quite a bit of air flowing out of the port. I tracked it down to the dehumidifier.
I thought this might be somewhat useful since the space between the hull and liner, where I could see it, was somewhat moldy and I was using a lot of bleach and elbow grease to get it cleaned out. Being an occasional pipe smoker I used the opportunity fire up a bowl and use the smoke to see where all the air was going.
I took a straw and blew a bit of smoke in front of likely openings and observed the air currents. Turns out there was a bit of air coming out from the finger-holes in every locker door, from under the stove, and from the bilge when I took off the floorboard.
The water-tank area under the port settee was always pretty cool and damp and I wanted to ventilate that area anyway so I bought several 1 inch Perko "locker vents" from Defender. I installed them in several places such as the sides of lockers that were only accessible via under settee cushions (no doors) and also in a couple dead air spaces like under the nav station seat/quarterberth and under the galley's pan.
After installing the locker vents I did the pipe-smoke test again and could see that some air was moving out of all the new vents. Not much in some places but there was still a bit of air movement in areas that were probably pretty stagnant for a lot of years.
I spent last winter and last summer going through the ritual of opening the step and laying the dehumidifier on the opening every time I left the boat for more than a day or two. Everything stayed real dry in the lockers.
To make it more permanent I bought a 5 inch, AC-powered, computer fan from Radio Shack for under $10 on clearance. I wired it in to the AC outlet in the v-berth's aft bulkhead and changed that receptacle to a single outlet with a switch.
The boat is always in a marina when it is not being used, not many moorings up here, so the thought is that if I'm not plugged into shore power I'm probably using the boat and that kind of ventilation is not an issue. There are 12-volt fans available at Radio Shack (and many other places) that use very little power. One of these could be wired directly up to a solar panel or even to the boat's batteries. I had pretty good luck with my catboat using only solar power to keep the batteries charged through our gray winters.
McMaster-Carr has 200 watt and 400 watt heaters that mount over the computer fans. These would be, I assume to keep equipment, mounted outside in a box, warm. The West Marine dehumidifier has a 100 watt element in it and I'm not sure how much the heating element, vs. the fan, contributed to the success. If necessary I'll add one of the 200 watt elements at around $35 but I'm hoping I can avoid that.
When the boat was new to me I washed out the area under the v-berth with a hose and bleach, etc. To dry it I put one of those round dehumidifiers from West Marine over the step, aimed downward, so that it would blow warmed air into that area.
There's a 6 inch inspection port, the kind with the screw-on cover, in the side of the hull liner, just under the nav station. Unrelated to cleaning out the v-berth area, but while the dehumidifier was still in place, I removed the cover and noticed quite a bit of air flowing out of the port. I tracked it down to the dehumidifier.
I thought this might be somewhat useful since the space between the hull and liner, where I could see it, was somewhat moldy and I was using a lot of bleach and elbow grease to get it cleaned out. Being an occasional pipe smoker I used the opportunity fire up a bowl and use the smoke to see where all the air was going.
I took a straw and blew a bit of smoke in front of likely openings and observed the air currents. Turns out there was a bit of air coming out from the finger-holes in every locker door, from under the stove, and from the bilge when I took off the floorboard.
The water-tank area under the port settee was always pretty cool and damp and I wanted to ventilate that area anyway so I bought several 1 inch Perko "locker vents" from Defender. I installed them in several places such as the sides of lockers that were only accessible via under settee cushions (no doors) and also in a couple dead air spaces like under the nav station seat/quarterberth and under the galley's pan.
After installing the locker vents I did the pipe-smoke test again and could see that some air was moving out of all the new vents. Not much in some places but there was still a bit of air movement in areas that were probably pretty stagnant for a lot of years.
I spent last winter and last summer going through the ritual of opening the step and laying the dehumidifier on the opening every time I left the boat for more than a day or two. Everything stayed real dry in the lockers.
To make it more permanent I bought a 5 inch, AC-powered, computer fan from Radio Shack for under $10 on clearance. I wired it in to the AC outlet in the v-berth's aft bulkhead and changed that receptacle to a single outlet with a switch.
The boat is always in a marina when it is not being used, not many moorings up here, so the thought is that if I'm not plugged into shore power I'm probably using the boat and that kind of ventilation is not an issue. There are 12-volt fans available at Radio Shack (and many other places) that use very little power. One of these could be wired directly up to a solar panel or even to the boat's batteries. I had pretty good luck with my catboat using only solar power to keep the batteries charged through our gray winters.
McMaster-Carr has 200 watt and 400 watt heaters that mount over the computer fans. These would be, I assume to keep equipment, mounted outside in a box, warm. The West Marine dehumidifier has a 100 watt element in it and I'm not sure how much the heating element, vs. the fan, contributed to the success. If necessary I'll add one of the 200 watt elements at around $35 but I'm hoping I can avoid that.
posted by John Williams at 10:12 AM
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