Air Conditioning Replacement

[BJFlittner]

There's a fairly recent addition to marine air manufactures--MarinAir (NOT Marine Aire by Dometic). It looks like a quality product & even has built in guages to check the Hi & Lo pressures to keep a visual on performance. Webastco units are highly rated--but do not even have service ports to check or add freon. Has anyone had experience with any MarinAir products? I have to replace two 16,000 BTU Westerbeke reverse cycle Rotary air units.

 

[boatcomfort]

Price probably! quality? Building materials almost every make uses the same components. Not a bad presentation. Warranty? Service centers? You can get a good units from Dometic probably a few bucks more. I deal with Dometic for over 25 years. I'm happy with them.

 

[BJFlittner]

MarinAire (misspelled on original post), offers a 1 year warranty, and factory states their units can be serviced by ANY AC service company technician, not limited to marine tech services and prices. Quality appears state of art. They've been very responsive to my questions on replacement & switching over. Just hope it's as good after the 'marriage'. Priced under $1600 (under $0.10/BTU)-very competitive.

 

[JVM225]

Although you my not need a Marine AC tech to service it you will likely pay close to the same for any tech to come to a boat and service the unit.
Having ports to add freon is nice but if you need to add freon it often means you have another problem that needs to be addressed. A port to add freon can always be tapped in to an otherwise closed system.
Considering all of that IMHO it really comes down to pricing. How big of a price difference and what, if anything, are you sacrificing by going with the lower priced lesser known unit are things to be considered.
Just doing a google search for Dometic 16000 BTU revealed a Webastco that is comparably priced.

 

[george smith]

MarinAir like the Wabasto FCF units are made in China. Both have no service ports Marinair has built in gauges but if they have a problem...... in order to install service ports the unit will have to be removed from the boat a temporary discharge port installed, discharged, ports installed then recharged then checked out. These units are cheap throw away junk. There are several U.S. companies that build good units that are repairable. This is a personal opinion.