Bjarki06

Not sure where to post this but looking out my window the last few days every now and then a sort of resonance pattern of increasing amplitude happens on the canal like when you make waves in a bath and they get higher and higher. Then it just seems to dissipate gradually even though it had been building and building. Does anyone with a science background know how canals deal with this problem or if it even would be a problem? There’s a little outlet hole opposite us so I can get a good idea of the amplitude of these waves. I’ve found a couple of scientific papers on researchgate but they’re either beyond my capability to understand as a layman or too hyper specific to the canals they’re looking at.

Just a quick update to everyone who has helped. We now have hot water relatively quickly after running the boiler for 45 minutes or so on high. i think that it’s a combination of air having worked out of the calofier over the last few weeks and the system being plumbed in oddly. The valve which turns off hot water to the radiators also seems to turn off hot water to the taps. I think this is because the calorifier is at the opposite end of the boat to the boiler so the line which takes fluid to the calorifier is the same one which runs through the radiators so when we turn off the radiators nothing goes through to the calorifier. We had been running it with the radiators turned off assuming that would allow more hot water to the calorifier and allow it to heat up faster although I’m sure we tried it both ways at one point. Now it has got colder and we’re running the radiators more we’ve found we’re getting hot water within 40 minutes or so of turning on the heating. Thanks very much to everyone for their help, I now feel as though I understand heating systems on boats a lot more!

Aaah sorry I did it that way because it often says it’s too big for the forum sometimes, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Hopefully this does... Very sorry! I just copied and pasted the link that it gave me when I uploaded the album of 3 pictures. Not sure why it would say that. I’ve uploaded them to the forum this time, the only reason I did it with imgur was because the other day the forum wasn’t letting me upload (I think because the pictures were above 2mb)

I think I found it in the engine bay https://imgur.com/a/MqQy2S0 now just need to know how to bleed it. Will I need any special tools? I think there was another big blue tank to the left of the other pump it just looked different and I think out of shot.

I still haven’t found the Calorifier I don’t think, it wasn’t under the bed, but i had a look under the steps next to the boiler at the bow and found this behind a panel underneath the steps: https://imgur.com/a/d7gZrOR Not sure how helpful it is but one of those pumps or pipes might lead to the calorifier although I had a good look about and didn’t see it

Is that the one where he eats a load of eggs to stick it to the man?

This is what is confusing me. I can get hot water to the radiators and I can isolate them with a valve successfully so they don’t get hot. If hot water is flowing successfully to the radiators then why can’t that same hot water also flow to the calorifier? anyway I understand at this point we’ve reached the limit of what we can do until I get home and find where the calorifier is so I’ll take a look when I finish work. Thank you for the diagram, it was very helpful. as for the engine I’ll try running it under load again, and I think it’s a beta marine, I’ll get that info too. The engine is relatively new and was replaced just a few years ago I believe. We don’t use it to charge the batteries as we only have one working domestic battery and are plugged into shore power.

So the water in the hot water tank is heated by coils of hot water wrapping around the tank? That seems like an insanely inefficient way to heat water. Like trying to heat a hot water bottle by putting hot cups of coffee next to it. I assumed the cold water was carried through the coils and passed over a heating element or something in the middle. i doubt it would be in the engine bay because that’s right at the other end of the boat away from the boiler, unless there are two separate calorifiers. I’ll have a look under the bed and in the engine bay when I get home

I thought Luke was a bloke who works in the department of weights and measures whose body temperature they use as a benchmark? edit: I hope they put the thermometer in his mouth when they update their readings and not...elsewhere. Poor luke.

Yep tried that. Didn’t seem to make a difference strangely. An hour and a half later of running the boiler and the water coming out of the taps was still just lukewarm. Not even hot enough to do washing up with just slightly warmer than room temp Engine gets up to about 50c on tickover

That could well be it. I’ll need to google what a skin tank looks like and try to find it along with the calorifier when I get home. The engine is at the complete opposite end of the boat to the boiler which confuses me as to how the calorifier could be shared for both. On the initial diagram the two pipes leading off out of the diagram just lead to one radiator on either side, one in the bathroom one in the living room. Once I find the calorifier I’ll try and get a more full diagram drawn

Thanks I’ll try this when I get home. Will the pressure just force the air out like bleeding a radiator? Speaking of which the radiators feel plenty hot enough, no need to bleed them but presumably they’re on a different system to the other hot water and use the antifreeze water mix I filled the boiler up with?

1. The pump is definitely running and seems to be able to pump lukewarm water through to the showers. 2. I filled the boiler and the level is between min and max on the expansion tank. 3. The boiler heats up well although a failure with the thermostat caused it to boil over previously (on the same day the circulation pump came free of the pipe. Most likely one caused the other) that has now been fixed. It pushes hot water through to the radiators which get nice and hot still. 4. It might be that we only need one or the other and my approach to isolating the problem has been messed up by frustration and thinking “fine I’ll just run both because I don’t want to be running one for two hours and still have no hot water. Having said that after trips running the engine for a few hours under load with no boiler we’ve had more warm water, almost hot enough but lately running it for 2 hours on tickover produces just lukewarm water and we’re in a marina where we can’t run our engine under load for very long. Surely if we have a boiler we should be able to get hot water from that? 5. Apologies for any confusion, I’ve had a lot of other problems I’m trying to sort out recently and have been going back and forth with it over the last few weeks so might not have expressed things as clearly as I could. I appreciate everyone’s patience and help here. Will work on getting a more full diagram but I don’t know where the calorifier is yet.

I’m not sure if it’s the engine or the boiler because we’ve tried both and each one individually and seem to get different results but last night I was running the boiler for an hour and the water didn’t feel warm at all from the hot taps

Hi, sorry I was in the middle of drawing a diagram this morning when I had a call from a customer and had to rush out. I’ve drawn a rough diagram in the above post now. It’s not anyone here’s responsibility to fix obviously and I can get by with lukewarm water so it’s not an emergency, if anything I’m just trying to learn a bit about how this system works in case I can fix it myself before I call out a plumber and I appreciate the help. i think you’re right actually the waterpuppy is to drain the shower and the domestic pump is somewhere buried in the wall behind a chest of drawers. This whole boat has a very non standard setup with the inverter running off the batteries without any input from the mains power so when it’s plugged in all the mains power does is keep the batteries charged. Very strange setup but we were desperate to get out of a dangerous living situation when we bought it and just wanted a boat we could sail away and live in that wasn’t going to need blacking overplating and engine work any time soon