Clive Blanchard, Consulting Engineer says: 'Getting the correct size air conditioner is crucial to maximise comfort and minimise costs.'
Marine air conditioner selection program sizes air conditioning for ferries and other marine vessels.
Naval Architecture is too competitive an industry for you to be able to waste time on air conditioning. At the concept stage you need to be able to quickly estimate the total load so you can determine air conditioning costs. You also need to quickly calculate the likely maximum air conditioner power draw to help you size the generators.
Once you are into detail design you need to work out the detailed needs for each area. The best way to do both is with the Marine SureCool air conditioner calculator.
Order the Marine SureCool air conditioner calculator to find the size now
The best way to check the required size is to get a consulting engineer like myself (Clive Blanchard, Consulting Mechanical Engineer)to do a heat load calculation. However this is likely to cost a minimum of $500 (probably more). Most naval architects and contractors would rather do it themselves, so I have developed a simple, quick, accurate on-line selector for you to check it!
This program is easy to use and has been developed using industry standards combined with my experience giving independent reports on problem air conditioning.
The ten factors that a sizing guide needs to take into account to accurately select the size of air conditioner that you require are:
- Where the vessel will be used-on the water! Many contractors use rule of thumb methods based on buildings! Even when they use a proper program and do a detailed heat load calculation, the programs used are designed for buildings and often aren't based on the correct construction methods.
- Allow for the reflectivity of water. Most building air conditioning programs assume the reflectivity of soil and don't correctly allow for water
- Size of the spaces
- Size of windows (not just whether they are small or large)
- Direction of the windows and tinting
- Amount of insulation
- Whether adjacent spaces are air conditioned or not.
- Typical performance of currently available air conditioners (note that most selectors available are based on the performance typical for air conditioners made in the 1970's- however modern air conditioning units behave differently, in some ways better, but in others worse.)
- The number of people and their activity level
- The selector should also show you what items are contributing most to the load so that you can see how you can reduce the load to reduce the air conditioner size, and costs.
Our selectors are the only ones easy enough for untrained naval architects to use, that meet all the above requirements.
If the air conditioning you select is too large, your price will be too high and you will probably lose the job! Even worse, if the air conditioner is too small you will have a very angry client. Don't risk your reputation, it is possible to be confident of comfort for $349.00 or buy on-line for $299.00 (Australian). This is only a fraction of the cost of what you could save on a typical marine air conditioning project.