Jump to content

Alde comfort 2920 Problem


Bjarki06

Featured Posts

27 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

If then pump is air locked I think loosening the four screws that hold the pump chamber to the pump body (the silver ones with heads downwards) a couple of turns may eb enough to let any air i there out without risking flooding the boat again. If mine I would give it a try.

 

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?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

I wonder if the engine cooling system and central heating system are linked using the same coolant. If so the engine may be well down on coolant and simply topping it up may still lave an airlock in the skin tank. Did you have  the engine up after the pipe came out and if so did you bleed the skin tank. There could also be an airlock in the engine calorifier circuit as well as the central heating. if they are linked. If the engine overheated the thermostat may have clipped itself open (being an older boat).

 

We still need to see the plumbing for the calorifier and a full diagram.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you tried turning the radiators off, there is usually a separate stop cock to stop the flow to them or valves on each rad to turn them off, On a single pipe system just turn one rad off should do to halt the hot water flow, to see if the colorifier heats up more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, bizzard said:

Have you tried turning the radiators off, there is usually a separate stop cock to stop the flow to them or valves on each rad to turn them off, On a single pipe system just turn one rad off should do to halt the hot water flow, to see if the colorifier heats up more.

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

2 hours ago, bizzard said:

If its only the engine heating the calorifier and the waters only luke warm, is the engine getting up to normal temp, is the there a temp gauge for the engine, is there a thermostat in the engine?

Engine gets up to about 50c on tickover

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Bjarki06 said:

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

Luke warm or looks warm, cos Lancashire folk pronounce look as luke.   Lukes warm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, bizzard said:

Luke warm or looks warm, cos Lancashire folk pronounce look as luke.   Lukes warm.

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.

Edited by Bjarki06
  • Happy 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

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.

Or Cool hand Luke, Paul Newman.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

1. The pump is definitely running and seems to be able to pump lukewarm water through to the showers.

 

 

The pump on the Alde (whether the original fitment or your external pump) does not send water to the showers. It circulates water from the boiler to the radiators and the coil of the calorifier. "Calorifier" is just the boaty name for the equivalent of a hot water tank/cylinder in a domestic central heating system. Cold water from your main water tank is fed into the bottom of the calorifier, is heated by one or more coils which carry hot water from the boiler and/or engine, with the hot water then being piped from the top of the calorifier to the hot taps.

 

Have you located your calorifier? It is a cylindrical tank, usually with sprayed on foam insulation (normally coloured blue, although mine is beige) with various pipe connections. It may be a vertical or horizontal cylinder and is probably located in the bottom of a cupboard, under a bed or in the engine bay. If you can find this, and post some photos of the pipe connections, and trace where those pipes go we can better help you determine whether your water is heated by the Alde, the engine or both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

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?

As long as the Alde header tank is up to level then yes, the head should force the air out. If just liquid comes out you will know it's not an air locked pump. If air and then liquid comes out you may well have solved the problem.

 

I  will now try to explain how   the central heating system is normally set up but first an image that may help explain it. Ignore the stove and bits around it, I drew it for a different purpose and your Alde is at the front of the boat.

 

 

image.png.627aad581f15d15ac6f2c0ed060091f9.png

In your case the boiler is at the front of the boat and the red pipe passes forwards under the front radiator that will be connected like the second one and then both the blue and red pipes attach to the Alde and pump. I know your pipes seem to go down either side of the boat so each radiator probably has both connections on one pipe but as I said earlier this is not ideal because successive radiators receive cooler and cooler water.

 

Your header tank (the grey thing above the stove in the diagram) is in your Alde as you know. 

 

Rub out the header tank, thin pipe, stove, safety valve, pump & pipe thermostat and continue the red and blue pipes to the calorifier.  That will give you an idea how your system is probably piped but there are more flexible ways of doing it but not with the Alde at the front.

 

The red and blue pipe on the calorifier (the buff thing at the back) connect to a coil of copper pipe inside the calorifier tank so hot water from the Alde flows through the could and heats your domestic water.

 

There is normally another similar coil but this time connected to the engine cooling system so hot engine coolant can also heat the domestic water. The Alde circuit and engien cooling circuits are normally totally separate but in your case and without an image of the calorifier they might both be linked to one coil.

 

Most boats with the boiler close to the calorifier connect the calorifier coil in a similar way to the radiators in this diagram but with a valve where the calorifier part splits from the main system so you can have hot water without heat into the cabin but so far I doubt yours is like this.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

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

Why are you running on tickover. For both heating domestic water and charging the batteries you should run at 1200 RPM at least if you have no ammeter. This loads the engine so it gets hotter and and minimises engine wear. 50C after an  hour and a half suggest a faulty thermostat to em. I would expect at least 80C unless your engien ahas, for some reason an abnormally low temperature thermostat fitted- what engine? have you told us?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, David Mack said:

 

The pump on the Alde (whether the original fitment or your external pump) does not send water to the showers. It circulates water from the boiler to the radiators and the coil of the calorifier. "Calorifier" is just the boaty name for the equivalent of a hot water tank/cylinder in a domestic central heating system. Cold water from your main water tank is fed into the bottom of the calorifier, is heated by one or more coils which carry hot water from the boiler and/or engine, with the hot water then being piped from the top of the calorifier to the hot taps.

 

Have you located your calorifier? It is a cylindrical tank, usually with sprayed on foam insulation (normally coloured blue, although mine is beige) with various pipe connections. It may be a vertical or horizontal cylinder and is probably located in the bottom of a cupboard, under a bed or in the engine bay. If you can find this, and post some photos of the pipe connections, and trace where those pipes go we can better help you determine whether your water is heated by the Alde, the engine or both.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Most boats with the boiler close to the calorifier connect the calorifier coil in a similar way to the radiators in this diagram but with a valve where the calorifier part splits from the main system so you can have hot water without heat into the cabin but so far I doubt yours is like this.

 

 

 

 

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

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

 

No the coils are inside the hot water tank, just like he systems most of us had at home before combi-boilers.

 

here is a typical domestic water system diagram, the shower is just like a pair of taps connection wise. Again things are likely to be in different places. The coils are shown better in  this one.

 

image.png.4e5855abdd39b42ae8bb7c84d1388cb9.png

 

 

 

You may do well to study the notes on my website - lots of diagrams. www.tb-training.co.uk

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bjarki06

Can I ask where in the country you are? It may be that you are near to one the posters in this thread who may be willing to come to you to help sort out the problem.

 

Can I also suggest we have a go at looking at the problem from a different point of view.

I assume that your engine is at the stern of the boat either in its own room or under the rear deck.

Is the bed in the next space going forward?

Is there what looks like a large lagged tank in the engine bay? If so this is your calorifier.

If not are there two pipes going from the engine into the next space going forward? They could be plastic or copper. If so where do they go? They should lead to the calorifier. It may have its long axis horizontal or if in a cupboard vertically. It should have 6 pipes going to it as per Tony's diagram in the post above.

The one at the bottom of it is the cold water going in and the one at the top hot water going out. Calorifiers work because cold water is heavier than hot water so the hot is always at the top of it.

The other two sets of pipes are the ones from the engine and the boiler. These are linked to internal coils of copper or stainless steel pipes and act as heat exchangers.

Somewhere on the calorifier there will be a red knob which is a pressure relief valve and  is there to release pressure if the water in the tank gets too hot etc.

When you have traced the pipes from the engine do the same with those from the boiler and draw a diagram of what you find for us.

 

Is there a room thermostat anywhere on the boat?

 

The skin tank referred to elsewhere in the thread is part of the cooling system for the engine. It is welded to the hull side and should have large diameter pipes connected to it at the top and bottom which go from the engine. There should also be a bleed valve on it. It will be about 25mm thick and about 1200mm long and 500mm deep

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For information:

 

Some boats have an "under engine" horizontal skin tank(s) between or either side of the engien bed but whatever sort you have the sure fire way of finding it is to look for the two large pipes running from engine to tank and from tank to engine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re the low water temperature. You are setting the knob on the Alde to around 3 or 4. If its lower the boiler thermostat will keep the water temperature down but I would expect hotter than luke warm.

 

I also don't understand the phrase you used regarding boiling and  a thermostat fault. The Alde definitely has its own boiler thermostat that you set with the numbered knob so it it was a room stat fault it shouldn'tt have boiled. I think it also has a small "button like" bi-metalic overheat switch that will still shut the boiler down if it overheats regardless of the boiler stat. Maybe you were talking about the engine boiling and if so that may well have caused the engine thermostat to clip open (being an older boat).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Tony Brooks said:

(being an older boat).

 

Which it almost certainly is. That dark brown coloured Hep20 pipe in the photos is the colour it was first manufactured in, back in the early 80s. They changed to light grey by about 1988 IIRC. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

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

Nope - no Calorifier there.

 

 

 

It should look like a 'hot water tank' as you get in a house - it may be covered in yellow (or blue) high density foam, or it may have insulation blankets around it,

 

It may be time to call in 'a man' to sort out the whole system.

 

Here are pics of the main two types 

 

Image result for boat calorifier

 

Image result for boat calorifier

 

 

CAM00321.jpg

Edited by Alan de Enfield
Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Bjarki06 said:

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

 

There is however, a fairly hefty accumulator just in view on the RHS. And two domestic water pumps so there ought to be a second accumulator for the second pump. 

 

 

image.png.e1732ce84f120bddbd93d04035fc1d22.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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?

4 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

There is however, a fairly hefty accumulator just in view on the RHS. And two domestic water pumps so there ought to be a second accumulator for the second pump. 

 

 

image.png.e1732ce84f120bddbd93d04035fc1d22.png

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.