Fetching the TyBoo

Hey Mike,
If you have any questions about changing a light bulb, taking out the trash, or putting ice in the cooler, let me know - I'm your man!
Tom (currently 8,555 miles from Otter in land-locked Botswana)
 
Mike- While I'm not very familiar with the Wallas, I have some thoughts to share with you.

I'd get the up-graded fan installed first, since it's simpler and more proven. I certainly wouldn't add the external fan without discussing first with Scan Marine whether there would be any unforseen complications.

The hot air box/resevoir and ducting sound like a good idea. My guess is that you'll have to add a fan unit somewhere in this set up to get a significant amount of air to the windows. A booster fan could be located in the bottom of the box or up near the y-duct for the windows. With this arrangement, you could have the auxillary fan where it will do the most good, and go with the standard up-graded fan in the stove.

The next question would be whether heat losses in the ducting would be so great as to limit the set-up's effectiveness. This would depend on the duct length, it's composition, the ambient temperature in the cabin, etc. The booster fan discussed above would significantly increase the volume of air and the total heat delivered and definitely make the system more efffective in the process.

There are a large number of 12 volt computer power supply fans available to choose from, so getting one with the right volume and amperage draw should be easy.

Have you figured out the duct routing? The type of material choosen will be important, and perhaps a foam insulation layer could be added to conserve heat in transit.

Good luck with the project. Hope these ideas help. Joe.
 
Hi WC!

What's impressive? If you're talking about the boat and truck, we'll see how impressive it is in a hundred years when I can afford to retire.
 
Thanks for your thoughts, Joe. Your points are noted and well taken. I am going to send the stove to be checked over anyway, I decided, because I am a little mistrusting of the combustion fan. That one for sure has to work the way it is designed. I am a little leery also of tampering with the circuit to the blower unit. The one check I made on it showed the voltage at one of the motors (there are two motors on the blower fan) to be 8.2v, and I suspect that the supply voltage might vary as controlled by the circuit board electronics to change the fan speed. (That's why I was planning to use a solid state relay. It will work with a signal input of 3 to 32 vdc.)

So, if the stove gets worked over, the blower fan will be repaired or upgraded while it's there. Then I will probably just use the existing blower to push the air into the planned collector and ducting. I still think that would be a cool (or warm!) feature to have. I could even put a shuttle valve in the duct to direct the air into the v-berth for a quick warm up.

The ducting run will be completely concealed, and it will be short enough that I don't foresee the need to insulate it beyond the capabilities of the hose itself. Any heat that does escape will be inside the cabin, anyhow.

Chances are, I won't add the defrost feature at all. The stove will eventually dry the interior enough to keep the windows clear by itself. I just figured that it would be handy on cold, damp mornings to get me away from the dock and out on the river sooner.

Sometimes I come up with weird ideas, you see.
 
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