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Doodlebug

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I have scoured the internet looking for the answer to this question and nowhere have I found the answer. My last post tried to get the answer but failed so trying a more direct route.

 

If you own one of the above heaters please could you let me know

 

A) which brand?

B ) Does it have a silencer

C) Is it quiet enough that you would be happy to double moor with someone whilst it is on

 

I dont care about internal noise, or ticking of fuel pumps. I don't care which brand (although i'd rather avoid wallac since they are twice the price (although do guarantee your neighbour wont hear it)

 

I just want someone to say to me 'Go and buy this heater from this seller with this silencer and you will be able to run it 24 hours a day in mid winter'

 

Lets hope I get an answer because honestly, the entire internet has been searched for as many combinations of the key words as possible and nowhere do I get a conclusive answer.

 

Thanks so much!

 

Doodlebug

 

Edit: when creating lettered lists be aware that B ) changes to B) unless you put a space in the middle :P

Edited by Doodlebug
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I have a Mikuni MX40

It has a silencer

I think someone alongside would hear it

 

Running 24h a day you are likely to wear out the.££blower motor quite quickly

Use quite a lot of 12v - 2amps min all the.time it is on, 25a to start it up so needs well charged batts.

 

Neverspacher and webasto same as Mikuni

do you mean WallaS - don't know

 

Have you looked at natural draught diesel heaters like Refleks, Sigmar, Glembring? Maybe you need radiators.

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Hi ya,

I've got a Webesto 5Kw Blower - Yes it's Silenced, Mine tends to be Noticeable outside from Exhaust Roar if say up to 4mts away, But Hardly noticeable at say 8mts away !.

I've got a Eberspatcher 5Kw Water Heater - Yes it's Silenced, Mine tends to be VERY Noticeable outside from Exhaust roar if say up to 4mts away, But again Hardly noticeable at say 8mts away !.

I often have one or the other running whilst along side other craft, or a sheet piled mooring, and never had a noise complaint 'Yet'.

Taylor Room heater Totally silent, Loved it, Miss it.

Edited by Paul's Nulife4-2
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Another point about double mooring is that the exhaust expels noxious gases and its very hot. I melted a rope with mine once!

 

 

So whoever is beside you should have steel hull with no vents in the side. Or you route exhaust out the back but that might cause fumes to blow into the boat

Bearing in mind double mooring means just fenders so boats are very close together.

Edited by magnetman
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We have an Eberspacher D5WS I believe.

 

When we purchased the boat the heater had not been serviced regularly and kept breaking down. Somewhere around £250 ish for a professional service, had two of these before Carwood's of Coventry did a "proper" job. The other two were done by so called "knowledgeable" boat yards.

 

I also managed on one occasion to short the Ebby body across a battery +ve to the hull of the boat when I knocked a battery cover off when wrestling to unit out of its cradle, result? A new circuit board at £320.

 

Since then it has now run for two years without trouble. It is only used for shortish periods about 3 hours to take the chill off the boat in early spring and late Autumn. It is not efficient enough to heat our boat 24 hours a day nor is it recommended by the manufacturer to run it for that length of time. It runs via the califorier and powers 3 radiators.

 

I do run it at least once a month for 1/2 an hour to keep it "in use".

 

We have a silencer and it is still noisy so it is run within the 8.00 'til 8.00 guidelines.

 

I do not feel qualified to say "Go buy one".

Edited by Ray T
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As mentioned in the previous thread we have an Eber DW5 and I said how noisy it is.

 

Since then I have been doing some 'trials' and it is not as bad as I said.

 

We are in a Marina with about 2 feet seperating us from the 'next boat' - we have not been using the eber (used SF stove) but to answer the 'noise question' I 'lit it up'.

 

Went onto next doors boat to see what it sounded like and its pretty much like someone hoovering in the next room - no way could I live with that in the quiet of the night. Its not as bad as I thought, but no-way could I live with it if it was the 'other way around'.

The inconsistent 'on 10 minutes - off 15 minutes' makes it even worse than a steady 'hum' would be - its like your partner snoring - you lie awake waiting the the next one.

 

I asked if it was causing any problem and was told "no - & its your boat, make a noise if you want to" - Nice Chap !!!

 

I certainly would not run it outside the 8 till 8 hours.

 

Can you not find someone near to you with an Eber etc and get them to let you listen to it and make your own mind up as to how 'unsociable' it is ?

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I have a webasto silencer on my mikuni but have heard of people using moped silencers to make them really quiet. Not sure what BS scheme would say though :unsure:

 

You can also make the air intake quieter by adding 1m of hose apparently

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I just want someone to say to me 'Go and buy this heater from this seller with this silencer and you will be able to run it 24 hours a day in mid winter'

 

Lets hope I get an answer because honestly, the entire internet has been searched for as many combinations of the key words as possible and nowhere do I get a conclusive answer.

 

Thanks so much!

 

My recommendation would be a correctly sized and properly installed Webasto narrowboat kit with the large silencer mentioned in the other thread.

 

Going for a cheap kit and skimping in any way on proper installation may well store up problems for the future, so I would strongly recommend the job is done by a Webasto certified technician like NMEA which will give the most reliable install, plus a warranty.

 

ETA: This may not quite be the advice you had in mind! :unsure:

 

cheers, Pete.

~smpt~

Edited by smileypete
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I used to have a Eberspacher D5W but changed it this year to a Webasto Thermotop C. They were both silenced but the Webasto is so much quieter then the Eber ever was and it lights in the morning again something the Eber never did even after it was serviced

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Ok thanks everyone, I have arranged to go and listen to someones webasto running. Although I just listened to someones mikuni and it was absolutely totally silent. Not a peep. Which still confuses me when people on here say they are still noisy.

 

We need the boat temperature not to fluctuate, so maybe in order to save on gas I could get a noisy eberspacher or similar, and program it to run at 8am, 11am, 2pm, 7pm and 7.45pm. Meanwhile the gas boiler could be on and fill in the gaps. That way I save money, have a back up heater and since it is being run on full it would not coke up as quickly.

 

Our gas boiler has been on now for a while, over the last few days it has hardly kicked in off the pilot light. Which can only be a few watts. So this makes me wonder what would be happening if we had a diesel heater.

 

Thanks for the comments.

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The daytime temperatures have been unusually high the last week being up to 24o on Thursday.

 

Without heating the lowest temperature we have seen inside the boat (at Gunwhale height) is 19o at 3am

 

Apparently the human body gives off approximately 100 watts so a useful heat source to back-up a heat source.

So 10 people on a boat is the same as having a 1kw electric fire on continuously

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A. Eberspacher

B. Yes

C. Sometimes

D. I do! (Pump ticking)

E. Not me! (Tell me to go buy this)

 

I have an Eberspacher D4W. At one point last winter we shared a pontoon with a another boat by the same builder, built to the same (or a very similar) spec. As it also sounded identical to mine, I presume he has the the same Eberspacher fitted. Never did meet the owner, but his heating was left on a timer and flashed up regularly morning and night. Outside the boat it was easily noticeable, but when I was inside mine, it wasn't intrusive at all. That said, I wouldn't use mine at even mildly unsociable hours if I was very close to someone else, be they in a boat or a canalside house/flat, but that goes for my (pretty quiet) engine too.

 

The Eber sounds like a small jet engine inside the engine space, even with a silencer, but its a constant background noise in the bedroom and not really noticeable further forward. By far the most intrusive sound is the rythmic metalic 'clonking' of the pump, which you say you're not bothered about - this is the one thing I certainly would like to quieten! Another poster said that the '10 mins on, 15 mins off ' cycle of his 5kw model was the disruptive thing. I don't have this issue with the 4kw mode, which has to work harder to supply my CH/HW system, .

 

I don't have the knowledge to recommend one system over another, but it appears to me that the myriad of Eberspacher (maybe also Webasto?) tales of woe here and elsewhere originate from poor installs and unsuitable fuel, but also from having a heater which doesn't have to work as hard as these things need to if they are to avoid coking up. A good install, low sulphur fuel and a heater working at the higher end of it's capacity, which is what I appear to have, seems to be lots less troublesome and mine's never missed a beat - but I hope that doesn't tempt fate!

 

I use it at max chat (room thermostat set to Max to keep it under demand) mainly using the 1 hour demand button so it times out before it has much of a cycling issue, or else I turn it off manually once the boat is warm, thus avoiiding short cycling, but I always leave it long enough to have reached full temperature and perfomed it's run-downcycle.. Any other use it gets is in similar short duration / high demand bursts. In practice, by the time it's done an hour first thing on a winter's morning we have hot water, the boat's toasty and the solid fuel stove is back up to speed and glowing. Used in this way, the Eber does the job well enough and I'd suspect other manufacturers' models would too.

 

My point is: make sure that what you do chose is properly matched to your actual needs. By that I mean don't over-specify in terms of output whichever brand of this kind of wet heater you fit, and reconsider whether 24 hour operation is really what you need. I doubt there's too many experienced narrowboaters who would recommend a diesel boiler running 24 hours a day as the optimum boat heating solution, although I'd be happy to learn differently and the choice is yours anyway.

 

Sorry not to have been able to give you the 'go here, buy this' answer you seek - I doubt you'll get that, but maybe someone really brave will be along soon!

 

Best wishes!

 

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A few comments: Water heaters are so often noisy as even the narrowboat kit only contains a vehicle silencer if one is used at all and not the marine silencer that really shuts them up, this is what I install as a default now unless fighting against a price driven rather than quality driven situation, using a 22mm to 24mm adapter on the heater exhaust also slows down the gas speed. Also the proper marine skin fitting helps in two ways, it directs the sound downward at 45 deg, also sends the heat downward, I am not talking about the one with a pipe on the outside which would not be appropriate on a canal but the flush stainless one. I can guarantee that any heater I fitted would be almost inaudible to neighbors even alongside, I can guarantee it, but most narrow boat owners will not pay for it, those who do are always delighted. Blown air heaters are intrinsically quieter than water heaters, Wallas are the quietest but only come in forced air variety, contrary to popular belief they are nowhere near twice the cost of a comparable MARINE kit from trhe other vendors. Webaso TTC & E are certainly the quietest of the evaporator water heaters, this is not from a sample of one but from using a meter, I am sometimes called to silence heaters in a marina where the owner has been basically told to sort it or find somewhere else to park and have always had the right result. We often hear that these heaters suffer from poor installs in many ways, this is yet anther example.

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Hi,

Is there a "marine" silencer for a Webasto 90ST?

Ray

The T90 certainly likes to make it's presence known, oddly enough the T90 was the last one I had to shut up due to complaints from other berth holders and the answer is yes, however you can't just throw it on as it creates back pressure enough to upset the burn rate, no biggie on a new install as one would adjust that when commissioning but a retro fit needs to be checked and adjusted as necessary.

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Would retro fitting a marine silencer to a Eber D5W cause the same potential back pressure issue??

Dan

Its not an issue, its just how it is, an exhaust gas analysis should be done after any service work or alteration, it may well need adjusting to bring it within spec and give the longest periods between decoke service.

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Not sure which mikuni it was, it was already fitted on the boat when they bought it and it didn't even have a silencer on the intake. Only the exhaust. It was a water model and must have been a good few kw.

 

We are after an air heating model if that helps. Not sure why it would be quieter though! But glad we are going for the right thing.

 

It needs to be a constant temperature because of our pet. Otherwise your right it could just be heated morning and evenings.

 

The main reason for wanting one is that now I am working 5 days a week, if our boiler (alde compact) breaks down on the monday we need to last 5 days before I get a chance to look at it, and in mid winter the boat would be frozen in two. Plus getting parts etc is going to be complicated. Hence if we had a back up I would feel safer.

 

And if the back up costs less to run then I would use the back up and have the alde as the real back up.

 

Although it sounds like its best to run both at the same time and get them complementing each other.

 

The wallas (sorry about the initial spelling mistake it wont let me change it back) costs about 1600 and they guarantee that the boat nextdoor wont be able to hear you.

 

Cheapest eberspacher I can find is 1020 including all the marine fixings and the proper marine silencer.

 

Maybe I should save up a bit longer and get the wallas.

 

So I suppose the only question now is this. Do I buy a cheap but noisy 2kw heater and run it twice a day, with the alde filling in the gaps OR do I get a wallas and have it running all day, although it sounds like it might coke up and not be able to run at a low enough setting for our boat.

 

Why is nothing simple.

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I have a Mikuni MX40

It has a silencer

I think someone alongside would hear it

 

Running 24h a day you are likely to wear out the.££blower motor quite quickly

Use quite a lot of 12v - 2amps min all the.time it is on, 25a to start it up so needs well charged batts.

 

Neverspacher and webasto same as Mikuni

do you mean WallaS - don't know

 

Have you looked at natural draught diesel heaters like Refleks, Sigmar, Glembring? Maybe you need radiators.

I have and MX40 and would wholly concur.

 

24hrs per day would surely mean that the boat would thoroughly overheat.

 

N

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Ohh and the other reason is that if we run out of gas in the middle of nowhere I can always walk to a petrol station for diesel. Not as easy for gas. Thats a big factor actually.

 

I cannot think of a petrol sation I have visited in the last few years that does not sell gas - maybe thats because we are in the 'rural North' and its different in your area.

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I cannot think of a petrol sation I have visited in the last few years that does not sell gas - maybe thats because we are in the 'rural North' and its different in your area.

 

Yeap must be down south - very rare to find one that sells gas and when they do the chances are they have none in stock. Its a right pain.

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How about a 2kW Airtop/Wallas for cold weather, the Alde for mild weather and low heating demand which the Airtop/Wallas is less suited to, and possibly both for exceptionally cold weather.

 

Airtop uses 0.12l/hr at low output of 900W, Wallas 22t uses 0.1l/hr at 1000w, so a few L of diesel should go a reasonable way.

 

This doesn't look too bad a price, needs duct etc

 

http://www.elyboatchandlers.com/wallas-diesel-heating/wallas-22dt-marine-diesel-heater-22kw-single-outlet

 

cheers, Pete.

~smpt~

Edited by smileypete
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