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Radiators


katie_hannah

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40 minutes ago, katie_hannah said:

We are getting webasto central heating installed and we need to buy radiators, would these be special narrowboat radiators or can we get domestic ones?

 

Thanks in advance ?

Domestic are fine.  If you have a 5kw Webasto, make sure you have enough radiator output to work it hard and it'll reward you by not coking up and failing early.  There's more on that phenomenon on the site if you search for it, but I mention it here in your planning stage as it should help with your choice of sizes.

Edited by Sea Dog
Autocorrect thought coming would be better than coking...
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Get 22mm pipe runs to the rads and not 15 ... lesson learnt. 

 

 

....and if you get flat front panel radiators you can put a vinyl image on them instead of the awful expanse of white crinkly steel. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Chagall
grammar correct ... I think!
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28 minutes ago, katie_hannah said:

We are getting webasto central heating installed and we need to buy radiators, would these be special narrowboat radiators or can we get domestic ones?

 

Thanks in advance ?

As Sea Dog and Chagall have said, big bore piping and lots of rads, so the we anti doesn’t get just warmed up then switch off, that tends to kill them in depressingly short order. They need to be made to work, so lots of rads, don’t forget the bathroom towel rail, and a big hot water tank.

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26 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Domestic are fine.  If you have a 5kw Webasto, make sure you have enough radiator output to work it hard and it'll reward you by not coming up and failing early.  There's more on that phenomenon on the site if you search for it, but I mention it here in your planning stage as it should help with your choice of sizes.

That's a great help, thank you!

24 minutes ago, Chagall said:

Get 22mm pipe runs to the rads and not 15 ... lesson learnt. 

 

 

....and if you get flat front panel radiators you can put a vinyl image on them instead of the awful expanse of white crinkly steel. 

 

 

 

 

Noted! Thank you

5 minutes ago, Stilllearning said:

As Sea Dog and Chagall have said, big bore piping and lots of rads, so the we anti doesn’t get just warmed up then switch off, that tends to kill them in depressingly short order. They need to be made to work, so lots of rads, don’t forget the bathroom towel rail, and a big hot water tank.

thank you! What counts as a big hot water tank, I'm looking at 55L and 75L? 

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Just now, katie_hannah said:

 

That's a great help, thank you!

Noted! Thank you

thank you! What counts as a big hot water tank, I'm looking at 55L and 75L? 

How many of you are there, and what will you be using hot water for? 

Showers, washing up, washing machine. Probably other things that I, a typical bloke, haven’t even thought of.

Also, what size is your cold water tank? The bigger the better, our last but one boat had about 1000 litres, our last boat only about 250, and was a total pain.

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4 minutes ago, katie_hannah said:

 

 What counts as a big hot water tank, I'm looking at 55L and 75L? 

I reckon that a 75 litre one will be bigger.

55 litres is, after all, only a about 12 gallons in real measures.

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1 minute ago, Stilllearning said:

How many of you are there, and what will you be using hot water for? 

Showers, washing up, washing machine. Probably other things that I, a typical bloke, haven’t even thought of.

Also, what size is your cold water tank? The bigger the better, our last but one boat had about 1000 litres, our last boat only about 250, and was a total pain.

There's 2 of us and it would be for showers and washing up, and maybe for the twin tub washer.  

I'm not quite sure how big our water tank but its an integral tank, so maybe 500L?

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1 hour ago, katie_hannah said:

There's 2 of us and it would be for showers and washing up, and maybe for the twin tub washer.  

I'm not quite sure how big our water tank but its an integral tank, so maybe 500L?

You can estimate the size of your tank by filling a reasonably large vessel of a known size from your supply hose on max whilst timing it. Then, using the same water supply at the same max rate, time how long it takes to full your tank from empty. Now you have some schoolgirl maths to do... ;)

 

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1 hour ago, Sea Dog said:

You can estimate the size of your tank by filling a reasonably large vessel of a known size from your supply hose on max whilst timing it. Then, using the same water supply at the same max rate, time how long it takes to full your tank from empty. Now you have some schoolgirl maths to do... ;)

 

Good idea, I'll do that!

1 hour ago, system 4-50 said:

Use copper pipe as plastic expands too much, and I used flexible joints to the rads. (I used non-demountable Tectite (or is it Tektite?).

Thanks, I'll check that out 

 

 

 

 

 

So I've been looking at radiators, I plan to have 3 plus a towel radiator and the total wattage comes to 5,564w.  There will also be the water tank to add onto that.  

 

Is that too much for the 5Kw system or will that be okay? Or I can do an alternative set up that amounts to about 4,500w plus the water tank?

Edited by katie_hannah
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1 minute ago, Tony Brooks said:

always best to fit slight;y more rads than the boiler output with that type of diesel boiler.

I've been having a look and I'm thinking 2 large radiators, one medium, and towel one and it comes to 5,236 watts, I haven't taken into consideration the water tank. Do you think that sounds like a good amount for a 5Kw system? I'm completely new to this so any advice is much appreciated!

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26 minutes ago, katie_hannah said:

I've been having a look and I'm thinking 2 large radiators, one medium, and towel one and it comes to 5,236 watts, I haven't taken into consideration the water tank. Do you think that sounds like a good amount for a 5Kw system? I'm completely new to this so any advice is much appreciated!

 

To a degree the water tank is not relevant because sometimes its heated by the engine and in any case once it up to temperature it draws no more heat from the system until you run some hot water off. What it may do is prevent the rads getting to the maximum temperature as fast as they would with no hot water tank.

 

I thought that you had been advised at least twice now that you need to run those boilers hard so I think 5.24kW sounds fine.

 

By the way definitely NO thermostatic radiator valves.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

To a degree the water tank is not relevant because sometimes its heated by the engine and in any case once it up to temperature it draws no more heat from the system until you run some hot water off. What it may do is prevent the rads getting to the maximum temperature as fast as they would with no hot water tank.

 

I thought that you had been advised at least twice now that you need to run those boilers hard so I think 5.24kW sounds fine.

 

By the way definitely NO thermostatic radiator valves.

 

 

Thank you for the advice!

I had been advised that but I wasn't sure if hard meant 6/7kw or just over 5kw, including or not including the water tank ?

2 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

Will you want to be able to use the webasto to just generate hot water...? We have an isolation value to switch off the feed to the radiators leaving just the hot water and towel rail to heat up.

That would be handy during the summer, I'll have a look into that

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6 minutes ago, katie_hannah said:

Thank you for the advice!

I had been advised that but I wasn't sure if hard meant 6/7kw or just over 5kw, including or not including the water tank ?

That would be handy during the summer, I'll have a look into that

A good idea and easy to implement but be aware that for longevity you would be well advised to shut the boiler down as soon as the tank was up to temperature. This will help avoid the carbon problems associated with that type of heater when not running hard.

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Just remember, although you've been told to use 22mm pipe, if you are running 5.64 Kw of rads and a 75 lt cauliflower, your pipes also will consume Kw's so 5 kw will likely give you cool radsat he end of the run.. 15mm on that system will be more than sufficient, and neater.

 

I've turned my back for the biickbats.

Edited by Ex Brummie
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9 hours ago, Ex Brummie said:

Just remember, although you've been told to use 22mm pipe, if you are running 5.64 Kw of rads and a 75 lt cauliflower, your pipes also will consume Kw's so 5 kw will likely give you cool radsat he end of the run.. 15mm on that system will be more than sufficient, and neater.

 

I've turned my back for the biickbats.

No brickbat from me. Eberspacher advise against smaller pipework but my boat is a Piper and, as the Eberspacher bloke told me: "They always use small bore pipe, even though we keep telling them not to". So, my pipework is in 10mm plastic, contrary to such advice. It's not an easy retrofit, so I'd be disinclined to change it for anything less than essential reasons. Fortunately, I haven't found such reasons and all my rads get uniformly hot.

 

(For the avoidance of tempting fate, I'm afraid I can't add that my Eber is 12 years old and has never been serviced. I put this down as Reliability Centred Maintenance - no point in risking problems induced by opening it up for a regular decoke if you don't let it get coked up in the first place - my earlier point about making it work hard applies.)

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19 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

Use copper pipe as plastic expands too much, and I used flexible joints to the rads. (I used non-demountable Tectite (or is it Tektite?).

 

However plastic pipe offers a small amount of insulation when compared to copper and just pops at the joints when it freezes, unlike copper, which often splits.

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30 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Forgive my ignorance but why no thermostatic radiator valves? 

Its back to the way these boilers seem to carbon up if left cycling high and low. That is all boilers of this general design. TVRs will  shut the radiators down as the boat comes up to temperature so the heater will run for longer on low setting.

 

Just to check - are you aware that solid fuel stoves are the most practical form of narrowboat heating. Using a diesel boiler 24/7 can put a strain on the batteries and charging system. 

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21 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Its back to the way these boilers seem to carbon up if left cycling high and low. That is all boilers of this general design. TVRs will  shut the radiators down as the boat comes up to temperature so the heater will run for longer on low setting.

 

Just to check - are you aware that solid fuel stoves are the most practical form of narrowboat heating. Using a diesel boiler 24/7 can put a strain on the batteries and charging system. 

That makes sense Tony thank you. I need to get my head around diesel heaters and make better use of my stove as we go into colder months.

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1 minute ago, MrsM said:

That makes sense Tony thank you. I need to get my head around diesel heaters and make better use of my stove as we go into colder months.

So very pleased you have a stove. The boiler is ideal for quick warm ups while you get the stove going and getting hot water when not using the engine but away from a shoreline.

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42 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

So very pleased you have a stove. The boiler is ideal for quick warm ups while you get the stove going and getting hot water when not using the engine but away from a shoreline.

Similarly would it be a bad idea to have a room thermostat on the boat?

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