WaterMao

@MtB Thanks for the clarification. Two outlets? Holes? lol I get what you mean though. @Tracy D'arth Nope 🤣. I've got until mid May to work this out (when my boat arrives to where my mooring is). @Tony Brooks That's really helpful, thanks. I've drawn this one out, I know it won't be perfect but hopefully along right lines now :). Cheers.

Thanks for the help guys! @ditchcrawler That diagram is really helpful, I 'get it' a lot better now. @Tony Brooks I understand where the confusion lies, when you said "no pumped hot water" I thought you meant its inadvisable to use a backboiler as a calorifier heat source all together. Thanks for clarifying One question I do have is, on most of the backboiler units I've seen there's only two valves for pipework, one hot out and one cold return, the diagram looks as though it'd require 3. I was thinking, could the calorifier go at the back of the chain of rads and work "like a radiator" (in terms of its placement in the circuit), instead of being at the front end, therefore avoiding the need for 3 outlets on the backboiler? Then, if I wanted to just heat the calorifier as priority, I could isolate the rads to ensure the heat travels to the calorifier at the back, and open them again once hot to dump the excess heat. Only issue I can see with this is that (I imagine) the pump would be working pretty hard to get the water to the back of the boat, up the pipework, through the calorifier and back into the hot taps, or are narrowboat pumps 'ard enough to hack it? The idea about the pipe going straight through the heat source is interesting and probably would be cheaper, but I have concerns about trying to drill through a cast iron stove, I've heard they don't like it as their quite brittle, could be wrong though. Overall though, hope restored! Thanks again!

Hi Tony sorry for any offence caused. I can confirm I'm not a plumber, I'll take your advice and move to a separate system for pumped hot water, it's a real shame it's unsafe to do anything else tbh. I've seen other people on the forums who get pumped hot water from heat from a backboiler -> calorifier including someone else in this thread by the sounds of it, which is why I didn't think it'd be an issue. The radiator would just be something I install to excess dump heat anyway and I wouldn't install the backboiler if I couldn't get pumped hot water out of it. I've not lived on a boat but I'd assume the 42"er would be well supplied by the stove alone in any regard. Thanks again for the assistance I will look to pursue another solution!

Thanks guys, I've defo got a lot to learn 😅 I think I was overthinking this a bit, how's this revised version doing? I wanna stick to just having stove as the heating source for water heating for now. I really like @LadyG idea about looping the pipework in the bedroom. I'm feeling this updated version, give me your worst!! (famous last words 🤣) Thanks.

I'm sure I'm about to get ripped to shreds and I'm READY for it. Background; buying a 42ft trad with no plumbing, leccy or gas fit out. I've made the major decisions regarding solar, batteries etc (on order). I'm wanting to install a back boiler on the puffin villager that's installed and have this as my main source of heating for a calorifier. For safety purposes, I'd have a thermostatically controlled pump going to a small radiator in the bedroom (behind where I'm installing the bathroom, trad layout) and then the header tank at the end of the circuit potentially in the engine room (?). I'm not really arsed about the rad in all honesty so if there's any other way of dumping the excess heat without this going back into the recycled cool water let me know. I'm planning on doing this as gravity fed, at least in terms of transferring the heat from the stove to the calorifier. I'd probably mount the calorifier somewhere in the kitchen. My main queries are: - Would a flue mitigate the need for the rad dump, is that doable on gravity fed systems? - Am I right in my pump placement? - Am I missing anything major? - Shall I give up and get a gas boiler? BTW, I'm happy only using hot water when the stove is on, I like cold showers and have a mooring with showers, I also like the simplicity of having the heating system fed by the burner and not too dependent on leccy or gas. I must admit I'm also drawn in by a certain romanticism about the solid fuel stove truly being the "heart of the boat" lol. Please see my awful diagram below (ignore the "cold water in" and "heat pump" I'm very tired and still trying to understand this properly). Thanks!!