George brings up an interesting point in post number eight.
Is the blower trying to remove air from the lazarette or blow air into it?
If it is removing hot air there is no need to run it while the generator is running. The generator is pumping huge amounts of air out the exhaust already. When you shut the gen down is when you need the fan to exhaust hot air while the gen cools down.
It it’s to blow air into the lazarette, you probably don’t need it at all. The gen will pull all the air it needs in through the hole without the help of the fan. In fact the fan may be restricting the flow of air into the lazarette.
Thanks for all of the above suggestions, George and HopCar make some good points as to whether I even need to proceed with the blower.
What started me down this path:
Genset is in the lazaret along with a 50 amp double pole breaker on the bulkhead by the genset.
In hot months, that breaker will trip and when I go into the lazaret to deal with it, it's really hot in there.
The breaker is a double pole Home Depot type breaker made by Square D.
It's rated for 104° F.
When taking it out on those occasions, the breaker itself was hot and on the most recent change out with a new breaker I noticed that it seemed a little loose on its clip-on attachment. I'm thinking the loose contact is probably causing some if not all of these issues including the breaker generating some of its own heat.
So, I'm replacing the breaker with a proper Blue Seas double pole marine breaker that's rated for 185° F.
My boat mechanic/electrician tells me that I should also be able to safely increase the breaker to 70amps. The genset runs at 120V and it's hot and neutral go to this 2 pole breaker. He's saying this setup could put out 66 Amps.
The breaker I ordered from Blue Seas is a 60 amp (they go from 50 to 80 with no 70).
The previous owner says they never used the blower in the lazaret or had issues with the breaker. So HopCar's point that the current nonoperative fan is only restricting flow is a good one and I have removed it as well.
In addition to that opening, this compartment has 2 others for the genset to draw from, one on each side of the boat.
So I'll see where I get when I install the proper marine breaker.
When running 3 air conditioning units, battery charger, and AC refrigerator I measured 40 amps with my clamp meter.
Any support or disagreement with the above mentioned breaker size recommendation?