Is it essential to have calorifier

[touchstone]

On a small canal boat is it necessary to have a calorifier fitted? The boat has an Aldi heating unit. The engine is a single cylinder unit.

 

Thanks

[Athy]

I think you'll find that many boat engines do not have a calorifier. I'm not a technical sort of person, but my understanding is that only water-cooled engines can heat a calorifier. A single-cylinder engine may well be air-cooled; what make is it?

Edited November 2, 2015 by Athy

[Paul C]

Its not necessary, indeed its practically impossible to achieve with an aircooled engine. But with watercooled engine, the heat is effectively "free" because its waste heat.

[Caprifool]

It's just a large thermos flask to store hot water for the kitchen and bathroom. If my future boat has one, I'd keep it and install a gas on demand boiler as well. If I'm cruising, free hot water is good. But if I'm standing still I'd rather hear the homely *poff* of my boiler than run the engine for 30-45 minutes to wash up. Unless I go old school and keep a kettle on the stove :-)

[nicknorman]

No, there are quite a few boats that don't have calorifiers. Typically as said, they have air cooled engines. You mention an Aldi (presumably Alde) heating unti. If this is a central heating unit (powering radiators etc) then I won't be able to heat hot water for the taps without a calorifier. However it may be an instant gas water heater which just heats tap water (not radiators), but more likely it's the former.

[Naughty Cal]

No, there are quite a few boats that don't have calorifiers. Typically as said, they have air cooled engines. You mention an Aldi (presumably Alde) heating unti. If this is a central heating unit (powering radiators etc) then I won't be able to heat hot water for the taps without a calorifier. However it may be an instant gas water heater which just heats tap water (not radiators), but more likely it's the former.

Not always though.

 

A friend of ours had a Bayliner with the same engine as we have in Cal, a VP KAD32. It has the capacity to provide hot water and is connected to the calorifier on our boat but wasn't on theirs. The daft thing was the calorifier that Bayliner fitted was capable of being heated by the engine as well but Bayliner didn't see fit to connect the two together

[alan_fincher]

If you mean an Alde boiler, then these are an LPG gas driven boiler, and in a typical installation would heat at least two things, radiators to heat the boat, and the "hot water cylinder", (also known as "calorifier").

 

It would seem odd to have an Alde connected to radiators but not heating domestic water, but it is not of course impossible.

If you don't have a calorifier to provide hot water, on all but the most rudimentary of boats you would normally expect another source such as an instantaneous water heater, such as a Morco or a Paloma. (They are called "instantaneous" because they don't store hot water but heat it as you are actually using it).

 

Do you have any source of hot water on the boat other than maybe boiling a kettle?