Heat Miser

So we're about go through a week of lows in single-digit temperatures. The boat doesn't seem extravagantly large, except when we have to keep it warm.  This year we only have electric space heaters, no propane or diesel furnace. 

In a previous post, Alice showed you our new Envi wall heaters, which are very efficient low amp heaters (about 4 amps).  They're very nice. But when it gets very cold, we can't rely only on these.  We have an oil filled radiator, a Dyson fan heater, two Vornado fan heaters, and a tiny 200 watt ceramic heater.  In the engine compartment, we have what's called a bilge heater, meant to keep things from freezing down there.

All our heat and most of our high power devices run on shore (dock AC) power, though we could switch to our generator (until our fuel ran out) for a lot of them if the marina lost power.  The ceiling lights, pumps, and the toilets run on battery power (DC).

Just focusing on shore power, there are two 50 amp feeds coming into the boat, and each of them has between 2 and 6 circuit breakers.   Even though they are listed at 50 amps, we try hard to keep their total use on each feed at 30 amps or less, for safety reasons among others.  Also, the various circuit breakers on each feed can only support so many devices before they will trip.

Most space heaters on full power use 12 amps, so you can see if you only have a 20 amp breaker you can't do another big one on that circuit.  A microwave spikes to 18 amps!  This is why you can't make coffee and dry your hair at the same time.

If you're interested, here are the details.

So how much does electricity cost? In the summer our electric (including air conditioning) is covered by our slip fee. But in the winter you pay for what you use. To run a 1500 watt electric heater on full power for 24 hours, (which we try to avoid doing), it costs about $9 per day.

And here's a picture of the HEAT MISER !  Remember him?