Engine room heating & cooling

[leechy]

Hi folks

Still going through ideas for my engine room refurb. Firstly my new engine(Beta 43 Greenline) has calorifier take offs flow and return,at present i am not putting in a calorifier and wondered what to do with these take offs (15mm).Would it be possible to fit a single or double rad in the engine room from these pipes to serve as heating for winter cruising and drying wet clothes?If i can fit a rad would i need any sort of non return valves or gate valves.Now to cooling.Ive looked through previous threads and found the general opinion when sound proofing an engine to maintain good ventilation, so i wondered if i could ventilate the engine compartment with cool air from the bilge by means of some tidy 4 inch ducting and a 12 v bilge fan(about £23) switched to come on and off with the engine.If my plan works i,ll have cool air from the bilge flowing over the engine plus i'll be circulating the static air under the floors ,what do you think folks good ideas or not?

 

Cheers Leechy.

[Cafnod]

Hi

A radiator or even radiators to other parts of your boat from the calorifier take off should not be a problem. Being a thorough type of person I would always valve any non essential hoses so that should an appliance fail (ie radiator split) it can then be isolated.

One thought I do have is that you could use a bus/coach type heater with a built in blower motor to pass warm air around the engine room, you could even trunk an outlet from it to elsewhere in the cabin. It would also give cool air in the summer.

These units are of industrial quality and relatively inexpensive second hand, the last one I bought was about £25. Available in both 12/24v.

Hope this is of some use.

 

Richard

[John Orentas]

Hi Leechy.

 

I have problems getting my head around your 'engine room', what do you want to use it for, it sounds very posh. Assuming you will have an engine in there somewhere you will not need any additional heating. The best advice is to keep it simple, simply vent the enclosure low down to let cool air in and smaller vents above to let it out, if your engine is old and smelly you may want to direct the upper vent outside somehow.

 

Don't mess about with fans and ducting, the idea of drawing air from below the cabin floor is a good one put not very practical, all new boats should be fitted with a liquid-proof coaming, or partial bulkhead 12 inches or so high measured from the bottom plate to give a separation between engine area and cabin space though many builders wrongly omit this feature.

[David Schweizer]

Can't think why you want a radiator in the engine room, most "ingine oles" I have been in are very warm even in the winter, and the engine will continue to give out heat long after the radiator has cooled down. As for ventilation why not start with side doors and a pigeon box, and see whether that provides enough air circulation before venturing into expensive ducting and fans.

Edited March 13, 2006 by David Schweizer

[DHutch]

Also, if you want a 12v fan, you can get a whole range of brush-less fans from PC shops.

- Any thing from 40*40mm upto 120*120mm, they draw very little, and some of them can half shift a fair bit of air about runnin at full chatt!

 

 

Daniel

[Amicus]

Remember a fan blowing into the engine space, with the engine running, will need to dispace more air than the engine is consuming. A 1.5 litre engine turning over at 1500RPM is sucking about.........oooooo........hell of a lot of air

Edited March 13, 2006 by Amicus