wamcneil

4ga should be good up to 160a if not bundled or in conduit. 90a circuit breaker will protect it just fine Cheers Walter

I was a little uncomfortable taking a chance on a no-name Chinese safety device... so I used this one: Bussmann CB285-90 Surface-Mount... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FWMLZD6?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share cheers Walter

The big fuse between the inverter and the batteries protects the WIRE between the battery and the inverter. That’s why it’s close to the battery and it is sized according to the max current of that wire gauge (and some other factors). Another circuit breaker or fuse needs to be between the inverter and the solar controller. It needs to be on the inverter end of that wire and sized no bigger than the max current of that gauge of wire. So the fuse or circuit breaker should be rated at least as much as your controller can produce, and at most the max current that the wire is rated to carry. Cheers, Walter

Yes, this needs a disconnect, but more importantly the wire needs overcurrent protection. A high-capacity DC circuit breaker on the inverter end of the cable serves both purposes. Cheers Walter

Looks nice!

Thanks! Another update on the acoustic foam. I ordered some 3" thick foam and cut 2 blocks about 6"x3"x1-1/2" and tucked them up on the sides of the duct, directly beneath the evaporator intake. This blocks the path straight down from the evaporator. Subjectively, they cut down quite a bit on the perceived fan noise. The higher-pitched blower whine is gone. Mostly what I hear now is a lower-pitched rushing of air and a little hum from the compressor. My unscientific iPhone dB measurements read 2-3 dB difference with and without the foam blocks, with some visible reduction in volume between about 1000 and 5000 hz. According to the dB meter, the new front unit still isn't any quieter than the old middle unit. But subjectively, I'd say its a big improvement. Cheers, Walter

I'd imagine yours is similar to mine except for the shape. There's nothing about mine that makes it inherently a '2-layer skylight'; it's just a regular outer bubble and a slightly lower inner bubble. Screws go down through both to secure them to the roof. Apparently the outer bubble does a pretty good job of stopping the UV; as far as I know mine were original from 2003 and the inner bubble didn't show any sun damage. The outer bubble was hazed all over and cracking. Couple-years ago when I needed to order a replacement, I had a hard time determining whether the new bubble was a '2-layer' bubble and would have room for the inner bubble. So I measured as best I could and hoped for the best. Ikon's smoked skylight turned out to be almost identical to my old outer bubble. Cheers, Walter

Mine is rectangular and double. I replaced the outer only with tinted Ikon. The inner bubble was in great shape and reused. Cheers Walter

Sorry. I missed the part about new board!

One last easy thing to try... swap circuit boards between two units? If that’s the problem I can supply another good board. I just replaced a rooftop unit. Its not as glamorous as it sounds. It’s a lot of trouble and expense, and then you wind up with a shiny new AC that performs just a little bit better than the old one. Cheers Walter Yeah, that was my take-away from his story. I think that was buried in the thread about Penguin II availability? The only experience I have is replacing a ducted Penguin with a Penguin II. In this case, there are metal tabs welded in the corners of the roof opening for the bolts to pass through. And the bolts pass up pretty close beside the ceiling duct. So there's not much room for the bolt spacing to change before you're cutting up the ductwork. I remember seeing some specs on other units that showed the bolt spacing to be a lot more narrow. If you've got a non-ducted setup with the air distribution box on the ceiling, maybe its a lot more forgiving. But if you have a central duct up in the ceiling, that might make the replacement a lot less clean. Cheers, Walter

That’s nice of them!

Hi everybody. Just a followup to this post. The new unit has been installed and running for a couple weeks now. Just a few cosmetic details to complete, like making a plug to fill a big hole where I moved the kitchen fan thermostat over to make room for the CCC2. Installation was pretty straightforward, but here are some notes on my experience. Removal: The old square gasket gets fused to the roof like you wouldn't believe. I mean like 3M 5200 fused to a boat deck. If I were doing it again I'd cut some wedges out of 2x4 scrap to keep upward pressure on the seal, then get in there with a long knife and water lubricant to cut through the middle of the gasket rather than try and get a putty knife under the gasket. Once the unit has been lifted off, it's pretty straightforward to scrape the gasket off with a sharp putty knife and then clean up with solvent. Duct was deformed: The old unit had apparently been retightened over the years, to the point where the drain cups were touching the roof. This caused the ceiling duct to be forced down >1/2". It didn't rebound on its own, so I cut a wood spacer to go between the roof structure and the rear of the transition stub, and screwed the sheetmetal transition duct back into the wood to hold it up and level. In its final position, the AC's bottom pan is less than 1/4" above the duct extension, so there's not much room to further tighten the bolts. Not without shortening the transition duct. Bolt tightness: The regular instructions say to tighten bolts to 40-50 in-lb. I didn't get the bolts anywhere near that tight before the two stacked gaskets had compressed 1/2". So I stopped there. I also ignored the drain pan instructions where they say to put a double-stacked strips of gasket at the back of the unit (which would hold the unit up off the normal 3/4" hard-foam pads and support the back of the pan). So I doubled up the hard-foam pads at the back to make them 1-1/2" thick and tightened the bolts till the 2" thick stacked square gaskets had compressed to 1-1/2". This left the bolts way looser than 40 in-lb. But if I go anywhere near that toque spec it'll pull the unit right down on the deck. I think I'll make some marks on the roof with sharpie so I can tell if is the units moves at all in transit and go from there. Electrical: New units come with a mobile-home electrical connector pre-installed on the power cable. At least mine did... but Dometic only gave me 1 half of the connector pair. The connector is thin/flat and certified as a junction box. This opens up some additional room for airflow around the side of the duct (vs- the old steel junction box), so I bought the other half of the connector pair and used it. There are many variations of this Self-Contained Power Connector (SCPC), and here is the specific part if you need the other half for 12ga romex: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/molex/19045-1000/?qs=c7V%2bsbZfmqvqLYL%2bCrIKLw%3D%3D&countrycode=US&currencycode=USD Noise: I was really hoping to wind up with a quieter unit. It is not, unfortunately 😒. In fact my iphone dB meter says it's about 2dB louder than my old center unit. Almost all of the noise is from the fan though. Pretty much can't hear the compressor at all. So, I'm going to experiment with some blocks of acoustic foam on the duct sides directly beneath the evaporator intake and see if I can trap some of the fan noise rather than let it come straight down through the filter. Initial experiments with wadded up kitchen towels were encouraging. Cheers, Walter

Can you see up into the evaporator? That sounds to me like what the AC would do if the evaporator was frozen up. If it’s not freezing up, maybe something wrong with the freeze sensor? In that case maybe swap the freeze sensor with one of the other units. Cheers Walter

Yep. But you’d also need to add a remote temp sensor for the 3rd unit. If I understand it correctly, Temp on the thermostat is only for Zone1 and all other zones need their own sensor connected to the rooftop unit. Cheers, Walter

T6 and T7 are boxed off on the board and labeled a neutral, so I’m feeling pretty sure they’re just two COM terminals and there’s nothing fancy happening with the reversing valve. As far as I can tell, reversing valves are very standard and are either energized in cool or energized in heat. I’ll watch eBay and see if one comes along. Stop by when you’re by the hill country! We’re right by Garner state park. Cheers Walter

Ok. Yep, I found it. On the new unit the outside sensor is out on the side of the pan, on the old unit it's screwed to the inside of the circuit board housing. The other apparent differences are: Reversing valve neutral is connected to circuit board COM instead of spliced into the dual-capacitor COM. Old unit only uses fan Lo and Hi, Med is not used and has a splice cap on it. So far the major pieces all look identical. The new circuit board looks to be the same size too, so I think it'll pop right onto the old standoffs and be a drop-in replacement. I'd need to verify a few things like 1) that the reversing valve is still energized for heat, 2) similar specs on the thermistors. I might just go ahead and be the guinea pig. Does anybody have a CCC2 circuit board they'll let go for cheep? Cheers, Walter

Pulse widths? I'm not sure there's anything nearly that sophisticated going on here. The compressor is on or off. The fan is standard 3-speed AC motor. The reversing valve is on or off. Amp draws of each component have got to be pretty similar to the old components. Take a look at the two attached wiring diagrams. Pretty dang similar, right??? Except for the new Outdoor Temp Sensor P3 (which appears to be screwed to the edge of the base pan). I think that's the only new component (edit- nope, I just noticed 'ambient sensor' on the old diagram). Hopefully the reversing valve is the same normally-on or normally-off design as the old penguin. In the new design, the reversing valve has two connections to the circuit board, in the old design it has one connection to the board, and the other to neutral. I'm sure Dometic wouldn't encourage anyone to do this rather than buy a new unit, but as far as I can tell, the new penguin is just another very low-tech window-unit heat pump that's been reconfigured to fit inside the rooftop shell. If anybody has access to a junk'd penguin II and can give me a board and thermistors, I'll try it! Cheers, Walter

And please keep us posted! I am keenly interested to see how this works out for you. Thanks Walter

I certainly agree on reverse engineering the communication protocols, but swapping the board is different. I’m not sure it would involve any of that! The old control board has some logic on it and then it engages some relays to actuate one compressor, one fan and a standard reversing valve The new board has exactly the same OUTPUTS to one compressor, one fan and a similar reversing valve. I’d bet money it’d transplant real easy. The control board doesn’t know what it’s relays are connected to and would be happy turning on lightbulbs instead of compressor and fan . The new unit looks like it has two thermistors that the old unit didn’t have, so those parts would be required . Years ago I put a 3rd party control box and thermostat on a boat heat pump. The control board don’t care what brand of compressor it’s hooked up to. I can’t think of any reason the penguin II control board would care if it’s hooked up to an old compressor, or transplanted into a window unit for that matter, as long as the components are similar. Cheers Walter

I like that indicator light. Is that a panel-mount LED that you installed in a switch blank, or was it supplied that way with terminals on the back like a switch? Thanks, Walter

Yeah, I'm sure it would be a ton of work and recabling to try and adapt a residential thermostat. I don't think the CCC is a thermostat in the conventional sense anyway. It seems more like a remote display for the rooftop unit's circuit board. If you're wanting to adapt something... I think the easiest approach would be to transplant a Penguin II circuit board into the older unit. At the end of the day, they are both just straightforward heat pumps, right? Both have one compressor, one fan and a reversing valve. Maybe need to also transplant some additional small parts like evap temperature probe. Cheers, Walter

The aquahot is actually controlled by the rooftop units. I think the CCC is more of a remote display and temperature sensor than it is a conventional thermostat. In my setup, each of the three aquahot zones is connected to its respective rooftop unit. So when a rooftop unit's control board calls for Furnace, it actuates one of the aquahot zones. It doesn't matter how the CCCs are connected to the rooftop units, they will still control the aquahot in the same manner. Does that make sense? Check out the attached diagram from the Penguin installation manual. This shows the "4 conductor communication cable" (phone cable) from the CCC to the front unit, and then daisy-chained to the back unit. In our case the two furnaces are really two zones on the aquahot, and they are each connected to a rooftop unit, not the CCC. Since my middle unit is already Zone2 on the old CCC, it's got an 'internal temperature sensor' and is ready to be Zone2 on the new CCC2. So the only change needed to run the middle Penguin II from the forward CCC2 is a 4 conductor communication cable from my front unit to my middle unit. All of the other wiring will be the same.

No, I am not suggesting that CCC2 will run older units. I'm saying that when I replace my middle unit, my plan is to connect that new Penguin II to the new CCC2 that now controls my forward Penguin II. The easytouch sure sounds nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYXV927O6_M Remote control by wifi would certainly be a nice perk. And it's not a whopping 6" wide. I had to move my kitchen fan thermostat over to make room for the CCC2, which leaves a big hole I still need to fashion a plug for. Cheers, Walter

Hopefully it'll be a while! (unless I can find somebody to buy my old working units...) I'm pretty confidant that hanging a new Penguin II on the forward CCC2 would strictly be a matter of running one phone cable from the front unit to the mid unit! This would allow replacing just the middle unit with no need for the CCC compatibility board. Cheers, Walter

Huh. Interesting that the coaches were done differently. In my system, there are also three aqua hot zones. But they are controlled through the CCCs, not independent thermostats Cheers Walter