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Pastida@1

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Morning.

We are planning to have a multi fuel stove on our sailaway.  We are also going to fit central heating and was wondering what is best between eberspacher or webasto. 

The Eberspacher is a bit more expensive than the Webasto but is it any better. 

Regards

John 

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I have no experience of the Webasto, but have had an Eberspacher in our boat for eleven years. It's great when it works, heating water and radiators quickly and effectively. It's not so great if the batteries are not well charged, as it then won't start at all. As central heating and hot water are often required in the morning, when batteries tend to be at their lowest ebb, this can be an irritation. Starting the engine cures it, though, but that entails getting out of bed!

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Can only speak from our experience of both in blown air format and the Webasto is in our opinion far more reliable.

ETA: Even when our batteries have been on their way out and the voltage not great in the morning it has never failed to start up!

Edited by Naughty Cal
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34 minutes ago, Pastida@1 said:

Morning.

We are planning to have a multi fuel stove on our sailaway.  We are also going to fit central heating and was wondering what is best between eberspacher or webasto. 

The Eberspacher is a bit more expensive than the Webasto but is it any better. 

Regards

John 

Both those type of heaters are not designed for liveaboards with 24hour use and will fail when you need it.   You need a Pressure Jet type heater like from Hurricane, Kabola, Bubble PJ and others.

Edited by Robbo
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27 minutes ago, Pastida@1 said:

Good info there.  

Cheers

John 

I have had the hurricane its by far the best BUT it costs upwards of 18 million pounds to install and is noisey. I have had mikuni and webasto a few times and prefer webasto. Having sid that the hire fleet here are ebers and very little problems. As already said you can use the Hurricane 24/7 but he others are better served for up to a couple of hours useage.

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Good info mate.  We won't be running it for more than 4 hrs a day in the winter. It's just to warm up and air the boat in a morning and evening.  As I'm doing the fit out myself I can spend a few more quid on a good system.  I'm enjoying planning the boat and finding answers to my questions on here

Cheers

John 

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8 minutes ago, Pastida@1 said:

Good info mate.  We won't be running it for more than 4 hrs a day in the winter. It's just to warm up and air the boat in a morning and evening.  As I'm doing the fit out myself I can spend a few more quid on a good system.  I'm enjoying planning the boat and finding answers to my questions on here

Cheers

John 

Me personally I'm looking at the Bubble PJ, it is however a 240v unit.  I think it comes in at around £1400-1600.   Pressure Jet systems can be cycled where the pre-heater types like the Ebersplutters really don't like to be cycled.   If you go for one of the non-PJ heaters, don't use on a thermostat and don't get one larger than you need as it's best for them to be worked hard and not cycled.

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When I bought my boat, fitted with a Webasto, I was advised never to run it longer than 1 hour if the calorifier was warm  or 2 hours if the calorifier was cold, to prevent it sooting up. (They like to be run hard, as do Eberspachers).

I have followed this advice religiously,  and have never had any issues with it in over 3 years.

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Just had a look at the hurricane.  Looks a good unit and would fit in the engine bay. It's a bit more expensive but looks a good unit.  Might be worth considering when I get to that part of the fit out.  Be asking about inverters next lol 

Cheers

John 

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1 hour ago, Pastida@1 said:

Just had a look at the hurricane.  Looks a good unit and would fit in the engine bay. It's a bit more expensive but looks a good unit.  Might be worth considering when I get to that part of the fit out.  Be asking about inverters next lol 

Cheers

John 

Mastervolt first, or Victron as a second best. DO NOT try to save a few quid in this department :cheers:

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1 hour ago, NB Lola said:

Webasto works fine without our 4 radiators.  Abused it to hell, never had it serviced in 4 years and it works.  I will have it repaired/serviced if it breaks but do have multi fuel stove as heat back up.

Our Webasto was fitted when the boat was new so 14 years ago now. The winter just gone was the fist time we have had to pay it any attention. We had to dismantle it, decoke it, replace the glow plug, replace the burner cartridge and the fan unit. Whilst we were at it we replaced the ducting and lagged it. 

Cost to do the work was £200 in parts. No labour as Liam repaired it.

It now works a treat, in fact far better then it ever has in our ownership!

The trick with all of these units is not to over size them and to run them hard when using them in the winter.

Some of them seem a bit fussy with fuel quality, ours doesn't seem to mind what it gets. In fact our engine is more fussy then the heating unit.

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I have used both webasto and eberspacher, had a blown air webasto in my cruiser that was years old ... abused it to death and it never once failed to fire up, i fitted a brand new ebby hydronic  2 years ago with 4 large  rads and a coil to the calorifier , it was serviced last year as i made the mistake of putting a room thermostat in causing it to cycle and coke up ... since i removed that and so long as its never run less than 2 hours its been totally reliable, i am going to give it a full 2 year service before winter as a matter of course as the service kit is only 35 quid off ebay .... over last winter i figure it used between 1/3 and 1/2 a litre of diesel an hour to run.

On the inverter front i have all sterling equipment 

3kw pure sine inverter

60amp ultra battery charger

PDAR W  Alternator controller with remote also have a 1600/60 sterling inverter charger in my motorhome and never had a problem with any of it although a lot of people knock it also found the after sales service to be excellent.

Rick

 

 

Edited by dccruiser
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I installed a Webasto ‘Airtop 2000’ in our small (35ft) cruising narrow boat about 15 years ago; I’m please to say we’ve never had any problems with it; except it did fail to fire up one morning due to low battery (my own fault). It’s a little noisy on first start up, but soon settles down to a low background hum. We typically cruise about 90 ish nights a year, including early and late season, but not winter as we only have single glazed windows and condensation can be an issue. If you are going to use warm air heating ensure the air intake is from outside the boat and you have good ventilation to reduce condensation. When needed (which is more often than I would like with our weather) it’s typically run for a couple of hours in the morning and 4-5 hours in the evening; on occasions it has run continually for 24 hours with no problems.

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