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

Here are two drawings of the setup. Please excuse my technical drawing skills! I’ve colour coded each pipe which seems to run separately in the second picture. The first is a basic overview of the boiler in the bow and how it runs to two rads on one side of the boat (one in the room pictured) and one rad in the bathroom on the other side. The second picture is a more detailed diagram of the wardrobe plumbing itself. Please ignore the mess at the bottom left I accidentally drew in an extra pipe and crossed it out. The pipes which are there are all shaded. https://imgur.com/a/d4jKE8U edit: to clarify the top red shaded pipe and the middle green shaded pipe go into the boiler. The others disappear out of the wardrobe towards the stern

I just checked that pipe again further up near the boiler and it is warm. Not super hot but definitely warm and it’s quite thick pipe. I’ll include a few pics to show the full setup with the isolator tap for the radiators in the middle. Thanks everyone for your patience and help. I think the next step is to look for the calorifier. What I don’t understand is that we’ve had hot water before but now it’s just lukewarm. I work in IT and my general diagnostic stream of thought would suggest to me that if it works AT ALL that rules a few things out. If the water wasn’t getting hotter at all It would be one thing but it’s just very very slowly warming (although the radiators heat up great).

I mixed it in a 1.5l water bottle and poured it in with a funnel at the top. The circulation pump which is usually in the expansion tank has been removed and replaced with this one so it was fairly easy to get it in That pump has been removed on ours and replaced with the new circulation pump (a Johnson pump).

I actually felt it earlier when I had the boiler fired up and no it didn’t seem to be hot. I just assumed the pipe was very well insulated though. What I don’t understand is that the boiler heats the radiators just fine. I also dont understand how if the boiler is full of water and antifreeze that would provide any hot water that wasn’t toxic unless the boiler has a second tank that heats drinkable water and passes it through. when we first got the boat in June we never seemed to have trouble getting hot water for a shower in the morning but maybe that was because we were travelling and running the engine more and now we’re in a marina. Even so when we run the engine on tickover for two hours the water is only lukewarm. I was hoping to fix it myself as I’ve been able to get the boiler running again but i might just need to get a plumber to take a look at the whole system as I have a suspicion there may be air in the calorifier or something and I’m not sure where the calorifier is on this boat. thanks for your help

Nope! Nothing but super glue I think. No wonder it came apart a few months after we bought the boat. I’m hoping the sealant I used will be better but it seems heater hose should be the long term solution from yours and others suggestions here. As someone else mentioned I definitely got better advice here than from most plumbers!

Thanks for your help everyone! I think the heater hose and jubilee clips is the long term solution but as we are completely skint at the moment we had to just use the sealant and some gorilla tape to hold it in place so we can get hot water for a few weeks at least. Unfortunately while the pump now works fine and is circulating water we’re not getting any hot water through the taps. Even with the engine running it only heats the water to lukewarm. I’ve closed the isolation valve to the radiators but even with that closed and running the boiler and engine together for almost an hour we have just lukewarm water coming through the taps. there are two switches on the wall marked ‘water pump’ and they are both on. One is for the domestic water pump and I think the other one is for the circulation pump. as someone pointed out the pump isn’t broken, the pipe was just disconnected from it in that photo. if anyone has any experience with this boiler (also comfort 2928) and how to get hot water out of it i’d Very much appreciate input! thanks in advance

Hi all! we recently had a problem with our Alde boiler where we felt a leak (although we didn’t think it was from the boiler at first) and then it started making gurgling noises. Eventually we heard a pop and fluid gushing out into our wardrobe. Looking at the boiler we saw that the expansion tank was empty and the circulation pump at the back had worked its way free of the copper pipe leading into the boiler. We were told by a plumber we called that the thermostat probably failed causing the problem. we’re looking to fix this ourselves as we have very little money at the moment and I was told that what we need to get the pipe back into the pump and for it to stay is CT1 sealant. Does anyone know if this sounds right and if once this is done we can just fill the system back up from the top and run it again? attached is a picture of the pump and the copper pipe it has come free from