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Not much hot water from the calorifier...


Daniel76

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Hi, i'm new to the forum, fitting out my own boat currently! My horizontal calorifier is fitted and fed by a webasto and the engine take off hoses for heat, twin coil, and  connected to accumulator and expansion tank just after the hot water out pipe from the calorifier. 

I only get 2 litres or so of hot water before it becomes cold, checked and bled the coolant side of the circuit, all fine, adjusted the thermostatic mixer valve to make sure it's not all cold mixing in. 

Water does come through from the hot tank, just a very small amount, so unlikely to be a blockage as water is flowing from the tank...im at a loss, any ideas??

 

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Could you have fitted the calorifier the wrong way up? The cold needs to go in at the bottom, hot out at the top. If you reverse this, any cold coming in will sink to the bottom and then be extracted, bypassing all the hot. Although the pipes may well both exit near the middle, the pipes continue inside and go to top and bottom respectively.

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And just to clarify, Nick is referring to the domestic cold water in and hot water out pipes. It shouldn't matter too much if you have plumbed the webasto or engine pipes the wrong way round (and there has peviously been some debate on the forum which is the right way round for these anyway).

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59 minutes ago, Daniel76 said:

Ah ok..these all make sense...I'm assuming I'd have to actually disconnect pipes and rotate whole calorifier in order to get the pipework running correctly I its interior, or is it just a matter of switching the feeds?

 

Best to post a photo or answers might be misleading.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Daniel76 said:

Ah ok..these all make sense...I'm assuming I'd have to actually disconnect pipes and rotate whole calorifier in order to get the pipework running correctly I its interior, or is it just a matter of switching the feeds?

I think it depends on the exact details of internal calorifier construction, but best to have a look at the installation instructions for it. It might just be a matter of swapping the pipes around, and at the least that will help a lot, but I think some calorifier are optimised for one way up (not sure).

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1 minute ago, nicknorman said:

I think some calorifier are optimised for one way up (not sure).

I don’t know for sure either but I can’t think that it could be any other. The coils need to be at the bottom of the tank in order to heat all of the water, surely?

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15 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Some cauliflowers are built to be used 'lying down' (horizontal) and some 'standing up' (vertical) have you installed the one you have in the correct orientation ?

Good point. A vertical cauliflower laid on its side isn’t going to be very efficient. 

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I think it's seated the correct way up - it's got a sort of flat bottom on the insulation foam from its previous fitting on another boat..I'm trying the cold and hot pipes switched over as I've got no manual or diagrams that came with it (Second hand, not a surecal) and see if that somehow makes a difference...

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11 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Any chance the domestic water has been piped through one of the coils? A 1" coil full might be about 2 litres.

 

Intersetingly I would expect it to still work piped up backwards. That's how a thermal store works!

 

 

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Just because it was fitted horizontal in another boat does not mean it is a horizontal cylinder.

Pictures will tell us a lot. I've seen many vertical cylinders fitted horizontal and they will work reasonably if the cylinder is fed through the normal outlet at the top, and the flow out is from the normal feed at the bottom, as long as the outlet is at the high point of the installation.

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1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Intersetingly I would expect it to still work piped up backwards. That's how a thermal store works!

 

 

But if you only heat a coil full once that water has been drawn off you are relying on heat transfer through the pipe into the flowing water and I suspect it won't be that great. may get luke warm but the OP might be taking that as cold.I bet a thermal store has something more that a plain pipe to transfer the heat into the hoy water - possibly finned, plates or a very long "coil".

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4 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Intersetingly I would expect it to still work piped up backwards. That's how a thermal store works!

 

 

Yes, but doesn't the 'coil' in a thermal store consist of a multi cored coil so that the surface area is greatly enhanced?

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1 minute ago, Ex Brummie said:

Just because it was fitted horizontal in another boat does not mean it is a horizontal cylinder.

Pictures will tell us a lot. I've seen many vertical cylinders fitted horizontal and they will work reasonably if the cylinder is fed through the normal outlet at the top, and the flow out is from the normal feed at the bottom, as long as the outlet is at the high point of the installation.

Sorry yes I should post pictures, just need to search how to do so. I think it's horizontal as it has attachments for 2 different coils at different ends I.e it couldn't 'stand ' .

2 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

But if you only heat a coil full once that water has been drawn off you are relying on heat transfer through the pipe into the flowing water and I suspect it won't be that great. may get luke warm but the OP might be taking that as cold.I bet a thermal store has something more that a plain pipe to transfer the heat into the hoy water - possibly finned, plates or a very long "coil".

I flushed each coil when I got it, to work out each 'set ' so I'm pretty sure I've got them right, also, I'd have 55l of coolant in there and the system for the heating is primed up with around 56l and working great.

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13 hours ago, Daniel76 said:

Sorry yes I should post pictures, just need to search how to do so.

 

Assuming you have a smartphone or tablet, to embed a photo you:

 

  • Take the photo(s)
  • Create or answer a post
  • Press the paperclip symbol, marked "Click to choose files"
  • Navigate to where the photos are stored, (Gallery on an Android device)
  • Select the photos you want to embed.
  • Submit the post

 

Edited by cuthound
Spillung
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Hi All, thanks so much for all the replies - I had made a massive balls-up and connected the coolant into the main water part of the tank...(luckily just a few litres).After MUCH flushing out and refilling I've got piping hot water! Thanks for all your help!

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3 hours ago, Daniel76 said:

Hi All, thanks so much for all the replies - I had made a massive balls-up and connected the coolant into the main water part of the tank...(luckily just a few litres).After MUCH flushing out and refilling I've got piping hot water! Thanks for all your help!

Looks like Tony B was bang on the money again...

 

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