I am planning to instal forced air heating in my Sam L. Morse finished BCC. To date, I have struggled with the location of such a unit and, more problematic, the routing of the heating tubes.
After some thought, I concluded that it might make sense to instal the heating unit in the sail locker; an auxiliary fuel tank in the head-area bilge (raised off the bilge floor somewhat); and to route the heating tubes through the hanging lockers on the starboard side of the head and into the lockers under the starboard settee. There would then be two heating vents below either end of the starboard settee and a third heating vent in the head area.
Does anyone have any comments on the above arrangement? Has anyone else installed a forced air heater in a SLM-finished BCC? I notice that Aura, hull #121 which I understand is being sold by Sumio, has forced air heating - does anyone know of its installation details?
I talked with John Purins and he did a simple install with the heating unit in the engine compartment, A single heating duct was pointed forward to starboard of the engine hatch. He said it does a more than adiquate job of heating the boat, has to turn it down to keep from turning the boat into a sweat shop, ha.
The BCC is still relatively a small boat, easy to heat, and with a small fan forward to help circulation, you’ll be suprised how little BTU’s you need to keep it toasty.
Thanks for that useful information, Marty.
I’ll second marty’s comment about size… granted my Nor’sea is certainly smaller than a BCC… but still, I could get Chamois from 35 degrees to 80 degrees in about 15 minutes, with just the force 10 kerosene heater and a 12v fan mounted right above the heater. Fan was critical.
One thing I really wanted to do was install a wood burning heater… I know it’s messy and annoying to fuel, but the smell… yummmm.