Calorifier pump?

[Janz]

3 hours ago, Rincewind said:

 

 

 

 

Gentlemen, Gentlemen,

Remove those horse blinkers that you are all wearing, (Just where do you all buy them, by the way - or are they cast offs from yesteryear found along the towpath?)

Take the blinkers OFF, you know, the ones that are inscribed "I can only see imperial cos its a British engine"

This debate has been going on for years and years & no-one has got to the bottom of it because of those D**M Imperial Blinkers, with most on here making wild guesses at the "correct size" (and getting it wrong to boot).

 

Put the imperial ruler back in the drawer and take out the metric ruler then try re-measuring the male thread with the said metric ruler and a metric thread gauge!

ITS A METRIC THREAD

I will say it again just in case you are still wearing those blinkers............ Its a METRIC thread!  (Please pass around the Valium to those who need it!)

 

M16 x 1.5mm pitch

 

Be wary though, these are old engines and someone, in years gone by, may have (mistakenly, due to wearing blinkers) 🙂 rethreaded these ports to suit another thread of their choosing.  

My advice is to measure the diameter carefully and buy a set of thread gauges to find the correct pitch

 

To be fair to most, there is only a few hairs breadth difference between 5/8" and 16mm. A mistake easily made.

Have a look at the last thread (mine) on page two Calorifier connection 1.5 BMC where you will find more detail.

 

Janz, from your pictures they suggest that the original blanking plugs are fitted so the thread is most likely to be metric - look on eBay for fittings

 

Good Luck

Rincewind

Thanks mate. I can get metric from Avenue Stores although 16mm is a fairly rare size in plumbing spares emporiums. They like things nice & bog standard, plumbers... Charlie Mullins notwithstanding. 

[Janz]

Well I lost a solar panel to the storm, it was ripped clean off the roof. I took the others off & fed them through the portside window. Anyway I'll have to attempt to fish it out if it didn't go too far...

I tried to get my calorifier online but I tried every combination of hoses to the three free pipes & I didn't get anywhere. None of the fittings seemed to get warm & there was no warm pipework. In fact, the only thing that got remotely warm was the heat exchanger. I don't understand why or what I'm doing wrong.

I have no idea which pipe on the calorifier is an input or an output & I had the engine running for ages. I know where to take the coolant from the head & I know where it returns to the lower hose but everything else is a mystery. I must admit that it's doing my head in...

[Tracy D'arth]

Take the flow into the lower coil connection on the calorifier, return to the top with a vent or an expansion tank so that the air lock vents off.

Avoid dips and peaks in the pipework, they will hold air and you cannot pump water past an air lock.

[Janz]

2 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Take the flow into the lower coil connection on the calorifier, return to the top with a vent or an expansion tank so that the air lock vents off.

Avoid dips and peaks in the pipework, they will hold air and you cannot pump water past an air lock.

Thanks for the reply, Tracy. My problem is that there is no upper or lower connections. The calorifier is mounted horizontally & the two prime suspect connections are on a similar level to each other. I did take some pics but they don't show very much. There are two taps on the unit, one red which clicks once & one black which rotates like a tap.

Clicking the red one causes water to spew out of the heat exchanger overflow. The black one I have left open. Of the three vacant pipes, one is part of the red tap pipework so I have blanked that off for now but I did try connecting it to both the return & the take off the same as the others but nothing got warm.

[LEO]

Lots of right angled bends in the pipework.....and did you run the engine in gear, under load, or leave it ticking over?......

[StephenA]

The black one is, I believe, a mixer valve to make sure you don't send nearly boiling water to the taps - if you close it off you'll get no water to the taps.

The red headed one is the pressure relief value.

[Janz]

22 minutes ago, LEO said:

Lots of right angled bends in the pipework.....and did you run the engine in gear, under load, or leave it ticking over?......

Thanks for replying. I left it ticking over. The pipework is not my doing. It was like that when I bought it. What is the significance of right angles? TBH I don't like the plastic pipework myself, I'd much prefer copper but I"m in London & I don't want it going missing, so the plastic will stay for now. I just wanna get it showing signs of warming up so I know that the plumbing is functional. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just getting it all leak free has been a major mission. The boat has been out of the water since 2012 & aside from getting it here from Hertfordshire, it hasn't been used for years...

[Janz]

35 minutes ago, StephenA said:

The black one is, I believe, a mixer valve to make sure you don't send nearly boiling water to the taps - if you close it off you'll get no water to the taps.

The red headed one is the pressure relief value.

Thanks mate, I did figure that it was something like that. I was gonna fit a valve to stop the flow if necessary but the mixer valve will do for now...

[StephenA]

15 minutes ago, Janz said:

Thanks for replying. I left it ticking over. The pipework is not my doing. It was like that when I bought it. What is the significance of right angles? TBH I don't like the plastic pipework myself, I'd much prefer copper but I"m in London & I don't want it going missing, so the plastic will stay for now. I just wanna get it showing signs of warming up so I know that the plumbing is functional. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just getting it all leak free has been a major mission. The boat has been out of the water since 2012 & aside from getting it here from Hertfordshire, it hasn't been used for years...

 

Ticking over just wont cut it - you really need to get the engine under load. On Mintball (where the calorifier is in series with the skin tank and so only starts to warm up once the thermostat opens) it takes a while for the inlet to get warm, and its only after a couple of hours of solid running that the tank starts to get warm from totally cold. With your system I'm not totally sure how much water flows through the calorifier circuit and how long it will take that water to get a temperature that is actually going to do anything.

 

[Tony Brooks]

It looks odd to me. It seem sot be mounted horizontally but what looks like the hot take off seem to be more or less from the center, not close to the to of the cylinder. It also seems to have a T in it that is also connected to the cylinder.

 

I take the rubber hose to be either the inlet or outlet from the engine but I can't see its pair.

 

If the red knob is the PRV then as they typically go in the hot outlet it is in an unusual place - what looks like the cold inlet to me. as long as there is no one way valve in the fitting into the calorifier then the PRV should still work but it looks odd.

 

I am far from sure whoever connected it all up knew what they were doing. I would take all the connections off and probe abut to find the two fitting that connect to pipes inside the cylinder. The two ports that just go into the cylinder. Orientate those two ports top and bottom, cold in the bottom and hot out the top. The ones with pipes will be the coil for engine coolant. be aware that there may be a second par of pipes and if so blow through each to establish which ports are paired on a coil.

[Janz]

3 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

It looks odd to me. It seem sot be mounted horizontally but what looks like the hot take off seem to be more or less from the center, not close to the to of the cylinder. It also seems to have a T in it that is also connected to the cylinder.

 

I take the rubber hose to be either the inlet or outlet from the engine but I can't see its pair.

 

If the red knob is the PRV then as they typically go in the hot outlet it is in an unusual place - what looks like the cold inlet to me. as long as there is no one way valve in the fitting into the calorifier then the PRV should still work but it looks odd.

 

I am far from sure whoever connected it all up knew what they were doing. I would take all the connections off and probe abut to find the two fitting that connect to pipes inside the cylinder. The two ports that just go into the cylinder. Orientate those two ports top and bottom, cold in the bottom and hot out the top. The ones with pipes will be the coil for engine coolant. be aware that there may be a second par of pipes and if so blow through each to establish which ports are paired on a coil.

Bizarre isn't it? Like you I have no clue as to the layout & I will try what you've typed. I want to move the whole plot somewhere else because it's difficult enough to move around in that engine bay. I agree that it looks wrong. It's like someone has fitted it & someone else has refitted it with all new Speedfit parts. I just assumed they got it right but my plumbing knowledge is nonexistent - this is the most plumbing I've ever had to deal with  so I won't know if something is wrong. 

[Janz]

21 minutes ago, StephenA said:

 

Ticking over just wont cut it - you really need to get the engine under load. On Mintball (where the calorifier is in series with the skin tank and so only starts to warm up once the thermostat opens) it takes a while for the inlet to get warm, and its only after a couple of hours of solid running that the tank starts to get warm from totally cold. With your system I'm not totally sure how much water flows through the calorifier circuit and how long it will take that water to get a temperature that is actually going to do anything.

 

Yeah it's true that running under load will cause more heat but I expected it to put out enough heat at tickover so I could get a sense of whether the connections were right. I can't move just now because someone will nick my spot & I still need to locate & retrieve my sunken solar panel. I'll try & do that tomoz & take it for a spin. I'm due to move anyway... the storm stopped me moving at the weekend...

[StephenA]

34 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

It looks odd to me. It seem sot be mounted horizontally but what looks like the hot take off seem to be more or less from the center, not close to the to of the cylinder. It also seems to have a T in it that is also connected to the cylinder.

 

I take the rubber hose to be either the inlet or outlet from the engine but I can't see its pair.

 

If the red knob is the PRV then as they typically go in the hot outlet it is in an unusual place - what looks like the cold inlet to me. as long as there is no one way valve in the fitting into the calorifier then the PRV should still work but it looks odd.

 

I am far from sure whoever connected it all up knew what they were doing. I would take all the connections off and probe abut to find the two fitting that connect to pipes inside the cylinder. The two ports that just go into the cylinder. Orientate those two ports top and bottom, cold in the bottom and hot out the top. The ones with pipes will be the coil for engine coolant. be aware that there may be a second par of pipes and if so blow through each to establish which ports are paired on a coil.

 

I think the cold feed into the mixer is teed off into the tank - which sort of makes sense, but if so what is going on round the PVR which seems to be on a connector with two pipes and a connection to the tank.

 

I assume one of the two bottom connections is the drain line

 

[TheBiscuits]

2 hours ago, Janz said:

I tried to get my calorifier online but I tried every combination of hoses to the three free pipes & I didn't get anywhere

 

Looks like a surecal.

 

Does this help?

 

 

 

 

https://www.surejust.co.uk/surecal-horizontal-calorifier-connection-instructions

[StephenA]

3 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Looks like a surecal.

 

Does this help?

 

 

 

 

https://www.surejust.co.uk/surecal-horizontal-calorifier-connection-instructions

 

Ahhh - that makes a lot of sense.  Top two holes being for a CH feed to the second coil?

[MtB]

21 minutes ago, Janz said:

Yeah it's true that running under load will cause more heat but I expected it to put out enough heat at tickover so I could get a sense of whether the connections were right. I can't move just now because someone will nick my spot & I still need to locate & retrieve my sunken solar panel. I'll try & do that tomoz & take it for a spin. I'm due to move anyway... the storm stopped me moving at the weekend...

 

Yes a load will cause more heat to be generated but the only advantage of this is the engine gets up to temp quicker, so saves time testing. The real reason is the pressure generated by the centrifugal water pump is broadly proportional to the speed it is going round. So running the engine at say 2,000rpm will perhaps generate enough water pressure difference to clear the air from the calorifier circuit than 750rpm tickover. 

 

 

[Tracy D'arth]

I cannot see where the coil connections can vent any air. If the coil  is not full of water with no air trapped you will not get circulation. Try gently opening the joints and see if any air comes out.

[Janz]

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

Yes a load will cause more heat to be generated but the only advantage of this is the engine gets up to temp quicker, so saves time testing. The real reason is the pressure generated by the centrifugal water pump is broadly proportional to the speed it is going round. So running the engine at say 2,000rpm will perhaps generate enough water pressure difference to clear the air from the calorifier circuit than 750rpm tickover. 

 

 

Well in my defence, or not... I was running a fast tickover. My throttle is crap. It's an on/off switch. The bit of rusty metal that holds the cable to the block is bent & badly placed. The cable is on its last legs & last adjustment, so the only way I can slow the revs is by bending or spacing the rusty bit of metal 😬 I had fun with that. I fancy screwing a motorbike grip throttle & cable somewhere on the tiller 'cos I hate using the clunky lever, it's painful! Everything that moves or is made from rubber on this tub needs some sort of work. So does that which doesn't move TBF

[Janz]

5 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I cannot see where the coil connections can vent any air. If the coil  is not full of water with no air trapped you will not get circulation. Try gently opening the joints and see if any air comes out.

This is getting worse..! Loool..! I'm a dunce with plumbing & a dunce with carpentry & these are my current & next two jobs 😂

So one pipe should be a breather?

2 minutes ago, Janz said:

This is getting worse..! Loool..! I'm a dunce with plumbing & a dunce with carpentry & these are my current & next two jobs 😂

So one pipe should be a breather?

No wait, I see what you're saying. Crack the joints & bleed it 'til water flows...

[Tracy D'arth]

7 minutes ago, Janz said:

This is getting worse..! Loool..! I'm a dunce with plumbing & a dunce with carpentry & these are my current & next two jobs 😂

So one pipe should be a breather?

No wait, I see what you're saying. Crack the joints & bleed it 'til water flows...

YES !

[Janz]

6 minutes ago, Janz said:

This is getting worse..! Loool..! I'm a dunce with plumbing & a dunce with carpentry & these are my current & next two jobs 😂

So one pipe should be a breather?

No wait, I see what you're saying. Crack the joints & bleed it 'til water flows...

Cool, I kind of get it a bit now. 👍

[Tracy D'arth]

Just now, Janz said:

Cool, I kind of get it a bit now. 👍

[Janz]

1 minute ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Yay..! I'm putting out the whole five watts. Beaming, lool.

[Janz]

1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Looks like a surecal.

 

Does this help?

 

 

 

 

https://www.surejust.co.uk/surecal-horizontal-calorifier-connection-instructions

Thanks for that. Let me look at this... for a while... 😂 it needs punching in.

1 minute ago, Janz said:

Thanks for that. Let me look at this... for a while... 😂 it needs punching in.

Yes, that's it..! Cool! 👍

[Janz]

1 hour ago, StephenA said:

 

I think the cold feed into the mixer is teed off into the tank - which sort of makes sense, but if so what is going on round the PVR which seems to be on a connector with two pipes and a connection to the tank.

 

I assume one of the two bottom connections is the drain line

 

Drain line to the bilge?