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Advice on Heating system please


waterdog

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Hi, we are currently on the hunt for a liveaboard NB, we have hired for years and been a share owner for the last six years. Our experience of heating has mainly been solid fuel stoves and alde gas systems.

 

The boat we are considering has no stove fitted  but does have an Eberspaecher which heats the radiators and provides hot water  and also the engine for hot water.

We are leaning towards a diesel stove, possibly a bubble corner or a refleks but are unsure if a wet or dry system would be better. Can you have a wet system and still have the Eberspaecher as back up?

 

The alternative is a solid fuel stove but we quite like the idea of no mess and not having to lug coal around, although having a secondary independent heating system would be good especially if one system fails in the winter.

 

Apologies if this has been asked before, I have lurked for years reading the forum and looked at many heating threads via the search facility but need some help to get my head round this.

 

Any advice welcome, thanks.

 

 

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Welcome Waterdog.

 

A diesel drip stove and diesel central heating work weĺ together. My boat has a Webasto and Kabola Old Dutch stove.

 

In my opinion much better than the solid fuel stoves and Alde gas boiler on my two share boats.

 

Oil drip stoves are quick to light, clean, controllable, give loads of heat and at current diesel prices only marginally more expensive to a run than a solid fuel stove.

 

Assuming you also want to heat the hot water from the engine, then you will need a custom calorifier (hot water cylinder) if you want hot water from the Ebersplutter and the oil drip stove.

 

Most calorifier on boats come with two heating coils, one from the engine and one from the Ebersplutter. To heat it from the oil drip stove as well would need a third coil.

 

I find being able to heat the water just from the engine and Webasto is adequate.

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I think the oil drip stove and Eberspacher would happily share the same heating circuit as long as only one was in use at any one time and even then it probably will not matter. There would be a loss of heat up the unlit stove's chimney but a suitable valve to select either source should suffice.

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Thanks Cuthound, that has pretty much confirmed my own thoughts, a triple coil calorifier sounds way too complex ( I'm a great believer in keeping things simple), its great to hear that what we had in mind works in the real world.

 

Tony, thanks for the reply. This is another option we are considering but thought it would get a bit complicated. Would it need a second pump for the stove or would the current one for the ebersplutter do both, I'm assuming the eber does use a pump to circulate the water around the rads?

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1 hour ago, waterdog said:

Thanks Cuthound, that has pretty much confirmed my own thoughts, a triple coil calorifier sounds way too complex ( I'm a great believer in keeping things simple), its great to hear that what we had in mind works in the real world.

 

Tony, thanks for the reply. This is another option we are considering but thought it would get a bit complicated. Would it need a second pump for the stove or would the current one for the ebersplutter do both, I'm assuming the eber does use a pump to circulate the water around the rads?

Yes the Eber does use a pump and I think some hire fleets removed/disabled the Eber one and u8sed a separate one. For what reason I do not know.  Exactly where any pump is in the circuit will show if you need a second one.

 

Lest assume the Eber has  built in pump or one close to the boiler unit. In hat case simply putting the oil drip feed stove in series with the Eber would cause circulation for either or both sources BUT with the Eber on it would result in some lost heat from the back boiler.

 

If you fed the output of both into a L type three port valve then a pump on the outlet (to radiators & calorifier) side of the valve would circulate for either heat source. If I was doing it then this is what I would probably favour as long as I could get the Eber to control the pup as well as having a separate pump switch and thermostatic switch n the back boiler. It sounds more complicated than it probably will be.

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Good to see that you are thinking of buying your own boat. Sharing a boat is a great way of finding out a great deal about them and helped us when we decided to leave Dasque and buy our own. Hope that you have enjoyed being part of Dasque.

When we bought Tyto it had no stove and we chose to add a solid fuel stove - a Morso 1415 which is aesthetically mor pleaseing than the ubiquitous Squirrel. We burn a combination of wood and smokeless fuel - it is not connected to the radiator circuit. We are happy with the choice of stove that we made but we do not live aboard.

All the best

Richard

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19 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

Yes the Eber does use a pump and I think some hire fleets removed/disabled the Eber one and u8sed a separate one. For what reason I do not know.  Exactly where any pump is in the circuit will show if you need a second one.

 

Lest assume the Eber has  built in pump or one close to the boiler unit. In hat case simply putting the oil drip feed stove in series with the Eber would cause circulation for either or both sources BUT with the Eber on it would result in some lost heat from the back boiler.

 

If you fed the output of both into a L type three port valve then a pump on the outlet (to radiators & calorifier) side of the valve would circulate for either heat source. If I was doing it then this is what I would probably favour as long as I could get the Eber to control the pup as well as having a separate pump switch and thermostatic switch n the back boiler. It sounds more complicated than it probably will be.

Thanks Tony, I'm off to do some research :)

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10 hours ago, Richard T said:

Good to see that you are thinking of buying your own boat. Sharing a boat is a great way of finding out a great deal about them and helped us when we decided to leave Dasque and buy our own. Hope that you have enjoyed being part of Dasque.

When we bought Tyto it had no stove and we chose to add a solid fuel stove - a Morso 1415 which is aesthetically mor pleaseing than the ubiquitous Squirrel. We burn a combination of wood and smokeless fuel - it is not connected to the radiator circuit. We are happy with the choice of stove that we made but we do not live aboard.

All the best

Richard

Hi Richard,

Yes we had a great time on Dasque and learned loads about boats but now its time to move on. Sad in one way but good in another. 

We have passed Tyto several times at Sileby but you weren't aboard. Hope to see you somewhere on the canals at some point.

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With the diesel stove near the front of the boat and the Eversplutter or better Webasto at the rear, put them on the same circuit of radiators with the calorifier piped as though it was just another radiator, all you need is a bypass valve across the stove to reduce the lost heat up the flue when on Webasto.

Then you only need a 2 coil calorimeter and should not need another pump.

 

I much prefer a solid fuel gravity heating system though, saves all that battery charging, you could still have an Eversplutterer on the system.

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On the subject of mixing heating sources on one radiator system, we do this on our boat. Provided both sources (in our case, a mikuni diesel heater and a heat exchanger from the engine coolant) are separately pumped, you can just use low opening pressure one way valves to ensure that when one heating device is in use, the heat doesn’t back-flow through the other device. That way, there is no human intervention required, it “just works”.

 

I used these valves, and cut the spring down so the opening pressure was very low. Or you could use flap valves.

 

http://shop.solarproject.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=17&osCsid=fe700e7bd1c23b52004d9a6e004c917e

 

 

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31 minutes ago, waterdog said:

Hi Sam,

The boat is reverse layout so stove will be just inside rear doors, hopefully this will simplify things as all the equipment will be close to each other.

 So the stove will be heating the great outdoors? Better towards the middle a bit.

 

Locations of heat sources relative to one another is not a consideration if its designed properly.

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The Webasto certainly does have its own pump - built into the heater itself so not sure how you would disable it and how good flow would be through it without the internal pump running. 

Yes, avoid having the stove right at one end of the boat if you can.

In reality, you will prolly want to work with whatever you end up with, when you purchase the boat that you like the best. That is fairly likely to be a Webasto and solid fuel stove on a newer (ish) boat but possibly an Alde gas on older boats. Both of which are ok combinations I think.

Others will disagree but I think the Webasto takes a lot of power from the batteries - at least it's considerable if you don't have a good battery bank and its usually after sun down (no solar power) when you really want it.

Always good to have two separate heat sources, even better if they use different fuels.

Edited by Johny London
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4 hours ago, Boater Sam said:

 So the stove will be heating the great outdoors? Better towards the middle a bit.

 

Locations of heat sources relative to one another is not a consideration if its designed properly.

unfortunately that can't be helped. Just inside of the rear doors is the only suitable position for a stove on this particular boat.

4 hours ago, nicknorman said:

On the subject of mixing heating sources on one radiator system, we do this on our boat. Provided both sources (in our case, a mikuni diesel heater and a heat exchanger from the engine coolant) are separately pumped, you can just use low opening pressure one way valves to ensure that when one heating device is in use, the heat doesn’t back-flow through the other device. That way, there is no human intervention required, it “just works”.

 

I used these valves, and cut the spring down so the opening pressure was very low. Or you could use flap valves.

 

http://shop.solarproject.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=17&osCsid=fe700e7bd1c23b52004d9a6e004c917e

 

 

Thanks Nick, that makes sense and a nice simple solution too.

Edited by waterdog
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15 minutes ago, waterdog said:

unfortunately that can't be helped. Just inside of the rear doors is the only suitable position for a stove on this particular boat.

Otherwise you don't get to enjoy the fumes when at the helm? ;)

 

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Possibly a stupid question but...…….

 

If we have a webasto type system and a diesel heater with a back boiler both connected to rads would it be ok to run the diesel stove without circulating the water through the rads (i.e. just have the stove on to heat the cabin) or would this just boil the static water in the back boiler section?

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3 hours ago, waterdog said:

Possibly a stupid question but...…….

 

If we have a webasto type system and a diesel heater with a back boiler both connected to rads would it be ok to run the diesel stove without circulating the water through the rads (i.e. just have the stove on to heat the cabin) or would this just boil the static water in the back boiler section?

The diesel stove MAY have a thermostatic flow control valve that shuts the oil flow down at a certain temperature (check the specs) and if so then it will not boil but the stove may stay cool for long periods or the valve may trip out.. In general it is a very bad idea to run any wet stove without the   water circulating.

 

PS The only stupid question is the one you do not ask - how else are you supposed to learn.

Edited by Tony Brooks
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8 hours ago, Johny London said:

The Webasto certainly does have its own pump - built into the heater itself so not sure how you would disable it and how good flow would be through it without the internal pump running. 

 

Others will disagree but I think the Webasto takes a lot of power from the batteries - at least it's considerable if you don't have a good battery bank and its usually after sun down (no solar power) when you really want it.

 

Webasto takes about 10 amps on start up for about 1 minute and then the fans and pump use about 2.7 amps whilst running. The pump itself uses 2 amps (I have a webasto pump on my heat exchanger system) and I doubt if you will find one with the flow rate under that. It is fussy on start up voltage though wilst it will run on 11.8 volts it needs 12.1 (at the controller board) on start up and the supplied loom is very long and not that thick.. My boat was installed with about 20 foot of loom folded up in trunking, shortening it to the correct length made a big difference to voltdrop on starting, from about 0.2 volts drop originally now less than 0.1

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54 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

The diesel stove MAY have a thermostatic flow control valve that shuts the oil flow down at a certain temperature (check the specs) and if so then it will not boil but the stove may stay cool for long periods or the valve may trip out.. In general it is a very bad idea to run any wet stove without the   water circulating.

 

PS The only stupid question is the one you do not ask - how else are you supposed to learn.

Thanks Tony,

 

Now I've had time to think about it, if it's cold enough in the main cabin to warrant lighting the stove then it makes sense to heat the whole boat via the rads too.

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