Early on in our woes with air conditioning, we were told that our pump relay was bad and we let the tech dealer replace it. Looking back with much more knowledge about the system now, and much more knowledge as to the incompetency of that particular dealer, I'm not sure why they thought it was bad – we didn't have any pump or starting problems. We had a non-modulating condensing unit where a modulating unit should have been – a screw up that happened before we bought the boat. Anyway, we invested in a new pump relay, following the technician's advice at the time. It's a Marine Air 2-6PRP.

Would the PR8X run those 8 solenoid valves as they are? And what kind of cost are we talking about for the PR8X? We really don't want to throw a lot of money at that system since once it begins to fail again beyond a relay or something simple here and there, we are going to install self-contained units in the staterooms…yeah, I know, there are a lot of nay-sayers who think there should not be self-contained units on a boat this large, and we were one of them at one point, but the system as it is put all our eggs in one basket and when one breaks, all of the staterooms are down and that creates an emergency especially when we have charter guests onboard. We've been stung by that bee over and over and over and it has changed our way of thinking about that system. Even the guy who worked for Hatteras at the factory and who played a significant role in developing that system advised to replace it with self-contained when the time comes. He said the system worked better on paper than it ever did in the field. I also ran into another owner who has this very same boat and he became frustrated with the system for the same reasons as me, and he went to self-contained and has no regrets.

I be coolin' now!!

I think I'll go separate one of the boys from the other six.

I ended up not putting in the access port for the acid flush – there simply was not enough room in my small, crowded engine rooms to do it right, so I'll just flush the old fashioned way. It's no big deal….I was just trying to create a way to do it easy. If I had larger engine rooms with more wall surfaces, I might could have gotten it in there.

I only had to things I had to tighen up to stop a slow drip, so not bad! And…the water is flowing OUT of the boat. LOL So, I got the wiring right.

The flow overboard looks the same as before. Could be that the Obe's impeller was worn (I'm sure it was after 2 years), or it could be that the difference between the two just isn't significant enough to really notice. My cooling tubes feel fine and the compressors are not cold, not hot…but just right!

That March pump sure is loud though. It has a fan on the back of it which appears to account for some, if not most, of extra noise – sounds like a vacuum cleaner. It is something I certainly am having to get used to. I have developed quite "an ear" for noises on this boat which is why I can be awakened in the middle of the night from a water leak 50+ feet away at the other end of the boat and other things that are not quite right. And this pump is a "new" noise I'll have to get used to. The first night I ran it, I kept getting up throughout the night and going in the engine room to look at everything because I was so sensitive to the strange, new sound. Didn't get but about 3 hours sleep, if that.

Soon…soon…it will be time to shut the entire system down completely for the winter.

Now, at some point, I want to build a cold-plate deep freezer under my pilothouse bench, but that will be another thread.