You can close that balcony door now!

[WVBill]

The sound of waves rolling onto shore is NOT something I would want to hear on a ship at sea!!

[nukesubsailor]

There is another downside to leaving the balcony door open that I can attest to from personal experience. If the balcony door is open and someone opens the hallway door, a very strong breeze will pass through the cabin. Strong enough to remove any papers you may have lying about. Also the hallway door can be blown out of the hand of who opened it and cause damage or injury.

 

Every passenger should be considerate of the other passengers in everything from leaving balcony doors open, to hogging loungers by the pool and to cramming into an already full elevator.

[elycelynne]

Having sailed Princess only once (so far), I can't remember if there are signs posted about leaving balcony doors open. Regardless, I wonder if anyone at Princess ever thought of making a brief announcement about it during the muster drill when there's a captive audience and people are supposedly listening?

[Kinkacruiser]

I took the Ultimate Ship tour on the Regal last week and the Head Engineer of the ship said that on the Regal and Royal each cabin has their own separate AC unit located above the ceiling,

 

 

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Wonderful....too many open doors must affect the AC operation on the ship. It's obvious some passengers choose to sleep this way - with the door open and the aircon running. Choose one or the other, not both.

Cruising the tropics is hell without decent aircon control.

[Wildblue]

And if you leave your cabin door open all night, you get all SORTS of interesting sounds.

[Cuizer2]

Sounds a bit like having a "fire" on your TV screen. Looks nice but...

 

[floridalover5623]

Wonderful....too many open doors must affect the AC operation on the ship. It's obvious some passengers choose to sleep this way - with the door open and the aircon running. Choose one or the other, not both.

Cruising the tropics is hell without decent aircon control.

Since you can't shut off the AC there's no alternative.

They should have a noisy blaring alarm in the room connected to an open door keep people from leaving it open all night. :D

[Times Prince]

Well, while I won't tell this doctor how to diagnose a medical condition, I will disagree with his "prescription" regarding balcony doors. By design, unlike homes or hotel rooms, ship's AC is designed to "flush the stale air out of the cabin" 24 hours a day, every day, for every cabin.

 

To expand on what chpurser posted, and correct it a little, here is how ship's AC works. Fresh outside air is taken in by large fans, and cooled by large coolers to supply fresh air continually to banks of cabins or public spaces (typically all the cabins on one side of the ship, on each deck, within a given fire zone, so maybe 30-40 cabins). These fans supply 20% of the cabin's volume of air every hour, so every 5 hours, you have theoretically exchanged all the air in the cabin. The temperature of this fresh outside air is not controllable from the cabin, it is centrally controlled since it supplies to many cabins.

 

This supply of 20% of the volume is balanced by removing 20% or the "stale" air via the bathroom exhaust fan, or under the cabin door out to the passageway. This air is exhausted to outside the ship, after cooling the incoming fresh air.

 

The temperature control in your cabin controls a small, individual cabin cooler and fan, that merely recirculates the air in the cabin past the cooler. This is sized to recirculate 80% of the cabin volume per hour. On most ships, this is the AC unit that is shut off when the balcony door is opened, but the fresh outside air will still be supplied as when the door is closed.

 

As chpurser said, the fresh outside air is supplied to the cabin at a slight overpressure to cause air flow to be from the cabin to the passageway, to keep smoke out. Now, if the balcony door is opened, this provides a very large opening (when compared to the air duct), and so the pressure in the cabin drops, and the system providing the fresh outside air tries to compensate and rebuild the pressure, thereby taking air volume of fresh air from all the other cabins in the bank.

 

This is why, when you leave the balcony door open, your cabin will have a whistling sound (air flow from under the cabin door into the cabin, and no change in AC (the fresh air system is sending more air there), even if the cabin cooler is shut off. However, everyone else's cabin in the block will have less AC, as the fresh air is sent to your cabin, and the recirculation cooler can't keep up.

 

So, and I believe I have posted this before in regards to (your?) another post where the ship's doctor "prescribed" this practice. He/she obviously doesn't know marine engineering any better than I know medicine.

Interesting grasp of physics. When saying the system cycles 20% of cabin air per hour, there new air is sent into the overall mix (e.g. osmosis) - during the next hour the air that is cycled may be any mix of new and old air, making the concept of 100% cycled every 5 hours meaningless. It is somewhat along the same concept of "restaurant physics" where the non-smoking table adjacent to the smoking section is supposed to have clean air.

 

All we know is when we are having respiratory issues from other person's scents, smoke and/or cleaning fluids or varnish smells, the Doctor's advice of opening the balcony door for 10-15 minutes WORKS and clears the cabin of issues with the air in that amount of time, and we can breathe again.

 

Please note I am not talking about leaving the door open for hours or overnight.

[chengkp75]

Interesting grasp of physics. When saying the system cycles 20% of cabin air per hour, there new air is sent into the overall mix (e.g. osmosis) - during the next hour the air that is cycled may be any mix of new and old air, making the concept of 100% cycled every 5 hours meaningless. It is somewhat along the same concept of "restaurant physics" where the non-smoking table adjacent to the smoking section is supposed to have clean air.

 

All we know is when we are having respiratory issues from other person's scents, smoke and/or cleaning fluids or varnish smells, the Doctor's advice of opening the balcony door for 10-15 minutes WORKS and clears the cabin of issues with the air in that amount of time, and we can breathe again.

 

Please note I am not talking about leaving the door open for hours or overnight.

 

I fully realize that my answer was simplistic, but didn't want to get into the asymptotic aspect of fluid mixtures.

 

Funny thing, but as I stated, there is no cross-communication between cabins in regards to air, and with the overpressure built into the cabin, even when you open your passageway door, the air flows out, not in, so not sure how you are getting other people's scents or smoke into your cabin. And, in fact, opening the balcony door will force more air from the passageways, with the attendant other people's scents into your cabin. But oh, well.

[KYBOB]

That is true. Each cabin can control the temperature of the air flowing into it.

But the flow of air comes from a central air handler that is connected to dozens of cabins in your vertical fire zone.

The system is designed to create an overpressure of air in each cabin. This is a safety feature in case of fire. The overpressure pushes smoke away from your cabin instead of letting it in.

 

If you leave your balcony door open, the overpressure flows outside. The lower pressure in your cabin forces the system to rob the airflow from the other cabins in your area to push the pressure up in your cabin.

The reduced airflow in the other cabins means that their individual air con units have little or no air flow to cool.

Then your neighbors telephone the reception desk to complain about their warm cabins - which never get fixed, until you close your balcony door.

 

I hope you enjoy it.

 

For those doubters out there here is picture from the Royal Princess taken last year where I personally ask gentleman, aka the guy with the tool in his had WORKING on one of the cabin units how it works. He explained exactly as written above and I could tell also just looking at the equipment. Now one may ask how can I tell just looking at the equipment, by profession I am an Architect. Also if you ever wonder what causes the so called ship flu and people to get colds is due to all those people leaving the door open causes moisture to build up in the coils (the grill looking thing just below his head) and filters (below the coils) and grow mould.

 

[Daniel1313]

Until those sound effects are enhanced by the scent of the sea air being piped in from outside, I still like to have the balcony door open!

Agree .....

[FlaParrotHead]

Until those sound effects are enhanced by the scent of the sea air being piped in from outside, I still like to have the balcony door open!

 

 

 

Exactly.. Ditto.. US Too

 

 

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[Wishing on a star]

I can enjoy the sights and sounds and fresh air of the sea while I am out on my balcony!!!

I will close my balcony door at nigh when sleeping.

I have never understood the need to leave a balcony door open, and mess with the air system, let in excessive humidity, etc...

The excess of humidity alone would be uncomfortable for me.

 

Do not many ships and hotels have some kind of system that shuts off the air when the door is open.

Easily circumvented my many, whos preference seems to override the basic greater well-being... : (

 

But such systems do exist.

[floridalover5623]

Do not many ships and hotels have some kind of system that shuts off the air when the door is open.

Easily circumvented my many, whos preference seems to override the basic greater well-being... : (

 

But such systems do exist.

I believe RCI shuts their AC off when the door is opened.

How would you circumvented the door switch or why would you want to? Seems that if you wanted fresh air why have the AC on.

[7leagueboots]

Thanks for taking the time to post this info.

[galfromkazoo]

I stopped leaving my balcony door open when I awoke one morning to a huge, unknown type of bird standing on my balcony. Fortunately we had not left the balcony open that night so it did not get in our room. The bird seemed unable to fly away. Our steward received assistance and they managed to safely get him off the ship. I can only imagine how awful it would have been to wake up to him in my cabin.

 

 

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[Colorado Coasty]

I fully realize that my answer was simplistic, but didn't want to get into the asymptotic aspect of fluid mixtures.

 

Funny thing, but as I stated, there is no cross-communication between cabins in regards to air, and with the overpressure built into the cabin, even when you open your passageway door, the air flows out, not in, so not sure how you are getting other people's scents or smoke into your cabin. And, in fact, opening the balcony door will force more air from the passageways, with the attendant other people's scents into your cabin. But oh, well.

Stop confusing me with the facts, I'll believe what I want to believe.:confused:

[chengkp75]

What kybob has posted is the individual cabin chiller that I've mentioned in previous posts. This is cooled by chilled water (40*F) that is circulated around the ship. This water is chilled by massive AC compressors in the engine room. This is the chiller that is controlled by the cabin thermostat, and I've seen units like this, or ones under the sink vanity for each cabin, and chills the recirculated cabin air. This is the unit that is turned off when the balcony door is open. Typically, the balcony door switch is fooled using a small magnet.

 

The fresh air supply, which is what affects all the surrounding cabins, is not shut off by the balcony door, and only if each cabin was supplied with a motorized damper to close off the supply when the door is opened would shut off this air. And then, shutting off this damper would unbalance the fresh air supply system, so that everywhere else got more fresh air or the pressure would build and create a new wind tunnel effect out of the cabin into the passageway everytime a cabin door is opened. No ship that I am aware of has these motor dampers on the fresh air system, since both the fresh air supply and the exhaust air are balanced, and closing dampers unbalances the entire system.

[Mike45LC]

I have had enough birds visit my balcony that I tend to keep my balcony door closed. I prefer birds on a plate, in the dining room!

 

Princess should combine the wave sounds with the bridge cam video.

[cruzsnooze]

At night I put a bath towel along the bottom of the door to the hallway because of the light that pours in. I sometimes keep my balcony door open at night and frequently keep it open during the afternoon. Until Princess puts out something in writing about cabin doors and if it effects the operation of the system I'll do what Princess assumes I'll do and use my balcony to my enjoyment.

[dad2my3]

I enjoy fresh air from outside—but if leaving my balcony door open negatively impacts others, then I’ll step outside and shut it behind me rather than leave it open and possibly make others uncomfortable in their own rooms.