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Struggling Morso with back boiler


tstore

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Hi all

Now the cold season is here again, started using the Morso again which has a back boiler with 12v pump for 3 rads. Its a 67ft boat. The radiators take about 3 hours to get up to a reasonable temp. Tonight I lit the fire at 5.30pm, radiators still cold and saloon still hovering around 15 degrees. When radiators do get warm, its only the top half. Have bled them again and again. 

Been told not to run the stove too hot as its not good for it. Just taken off the safety catch on ash pan door to allow it to burn quicker and hotter but should I be doing this?

What am I doing wrong or does it just take absolutely ages to warm a boat from cold? I work all day so difficult to leave fire in all day.

Any suggestions would be welcome as I am freezing.....

 

 

 

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If the rads are only getting warm at the top, the bleeding has been done successfully.  To me it sounds like the source of heat is inadequate for the rads it is supplying, or the pump pushing it round the system is too small (not working properly ?), the water is "short circuiting" because the system is not "balanced",  or the flow is being "choked" either by a valve being partially closed or some part of the system being "clogged" (unlikely).  Does one rad get hot and the others not ? Do you know if they are all in "series" or you can turn one off and the others still get warm ? (suggesting it is a two pipe system with each rad paralleled off the "ring").

I am a Webasto user which I think is about 6kW output but heats our 63 footer using Finrads down the length of the boat quite rapidly / adequately. We also have a Lockgate diesel stove up front but rarely have that on as well.  I am not sure of the claimed heat output of your boiler - any idea ?

Nick

Edited by Nickhlx
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I thinks it's rated at 5kw. The rad are on a single loop. You can isolate the first radiator and the towel rail ones but the rear cabin one you cannot isolate.

Perhaps I need to drain whole system. How do clear it of potential blockages? Could coolant have separated from water and be impeding flow?

The saloon is still only at 18 despite fire burning now for 3 hours, shouldn't it be warmer? I have woodburner in my house where I stay on weekends and it heats up a space much larger than this with hardly any fuel.

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1 hour ago, tstore said:

Been told not to run the stove too hot as its not good for it. Just taken off the safety catch on ash pan door to allow it to burn quicker and hotter but should I be doing this?

Maybe not! The wheel thing should be plenty enough.

Might be worth checking the flue and above the backboiler for soot buildup, which could reduce the stove's draft in extreme cases. Also ensure there are two working CO alarms, one with a digital readout.

Stove should fine cope with being run hot, good smokeless fuel should be best. Is this is a recently acquired boat? If so some stove installs can be a right can o worms.

Edited by smileypete
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I just installed a morso, first thing I did was remove the safety catch. The important thing is not to heat up too quickly from cold, as it can crack collars and castings. Once warm,open it up. 15 degrees sounds too cold , especially to get rads hot. Ours is gravity fed, and rads will be hot within half an hour of lighting.

Good luck

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14 minutes ago, tstore said:

I thinks it's rated at 5kw. The rad are on a single loop. You can isolate the first radiator and the towel rail ones but the rear cabin one you cannot isolate.

Perhaps I need to drain whole system. How do clear it of potential blockages? Could coolant have separated from water and be impeding flow?

The saloon is still only at 18 despite fire burning now for 3 hours, shouldn't it be warmer? I have woodburner in my house where I stay on weekends and it heats up a space much larger than this with hardly any fuel.

Check the flue it could be blocked. Don't let fire go out its easy to keep morso in for 24 hours plus.

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Thanks will check the flue and behind back boiler and let u know if any improvement. When I bought in Dec last year as marina to service it and make sure it was in good working order but it's always struggled.

I can keep it going all night but don't have alot of time in morning to get it really blazing again before I leave, any suggestions?

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I personally never left the fire in unattended whilst at work, and would always light in the evening on return.

Cast iron stoves eventually fail as ours did a few weeks back hence the replacement. It was 19 years old though  

Edited by rusty69
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21 minutes ago, smileypete said:

Maybe not! The wheel thing should be plenty enough.

Our new morso had a nice fat washer behind the wheel thing to restrict its opening ability. This, along with the safety catch to prevent the ash pan door opening, although i am sure makes it safer, severely restricted its performance imo,compared to earlier versions. 

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2 hours ago, tstore said:

Hi all

Now the cold season is here again, started using the Morso again which has a back boiler with 12v pump for 3 rads. Its a 67ft boat. The radiators take about 3 hours to get up to a reasonable temp. Tonight I lit the fire at 5.30pm, radiators still cold and saloon still hovering around 15 degrees. When radiators do get warm, its only the top half. Have bled them again and again. 

Been told not to run the stove too hot as its not good for it. Just taken off the safety catch on ash pan door to allow it to burn quicker and hotter but should I be doing this?

What am I doing wrong or does it just take absolutely ages to warm a boat from cold? I work all day so difficult to leave fire in all day.

Any suggestions would be welcome as I am freezing.....

 

 

 

If the return pipe from the radiator is hot and the bottom of the rad is cold it's a good chance it's sludge in the radiator.

 

 

Edited by Jon12345
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How good is your insulation? Do you have big windows? Is it lack of heat from the stove or heat being promptly lost? At this time of year it takes me more than 3 hours to get the boat warm from dead cold but once warm it is not too hard to keep it warm.

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2 hours ago, tstore said:

Hi all

Now the cold season is here again, started using the Morso again which has a back boiler with 12v pump for 3 rads. Its a 67ft boat. The radiators take about 3 hours to get up to a reasonable temp. Tonight I lit the fire at 5.30pm, radiators still cold and saloon still hovering around 15 degrees. When radiators do get warm, its only the top half. Have bled them again and again. 

Been told not to run the stove too hot as its not good for it. Just taken off the safety catch on ash pan door to allow it to burn quicker and hotter but should I be doing this?

What am I doing wrong or does it just take absolutely ages to warm a boat from cold? I work all day so difficult to leave fire in all day.

Any suggestions would be welcome as I am freezing.....

 

 

 

What fuel are you burning? If it is wood, probably it is damp and thus you won't get much heat out of it. We can light the stove (using smokeless nuggets) and easily have it stay lit without adding fuel for more than 12 hours. The boat (59' narrowboat) will be toasty hot. No back boiler though, but if the entire boat is cold the stove isn't producing much heat which suggests you are using the wrong fuel.

Edited by nicknorman
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From the posts above, it would be worth checking how good your insulation is.  Also are the windows single (probably) or double-glazed (ours are single), and is the boat's shell insulated (ours has that spray-on foam between the inner shell and the wooden lining of the walls, which would make a tremendous difference to heat loss, although not retro-fittable if not there. How well-ventilated is the boat ? (i.e. is the heat rapidly disappearing out of the ceiling/roof vents, or through badly leaking fore / aft doors ?)

You could possibly improve some of these things, but don't over-do it as some ventilation is needed for safety and prevention of condensation.

Hope that gives you something to work on

Nick

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Is the back boiler circuit also passing through a calorifier? On mine it is and I find that from cold, most of the heat from the Squirrel is being used to heat up the cauliflower. Only once the water is warm do the rads heat up and the stove itself seem to significantly radiate heat. When at work I'll keep the stove banked up with the vents stopped down low to keep the water warm, otherwise the boat takes hours to heat up with a roaring fire. If you are on a land line another way may be to use an immersion heater in the calorifier to keep the water inside warm with the fire out. You would need to have the circulation pump off, or the radiators will be trying to cool the calorifier and lead to more expensive  electric use of the immersion. Once you are back on board, then turn immersion off, circ pump on and light the fire.

Alternatively, if you can't use an immersion, then just turning the circ pump off with the fire out could help conserve the water temperature in the calorifier and need less energy to heat it up again.

Beware of running the squirrel with the ash pan wide open unattended. It can lead to a runaway condition where the increased draught leads to more combustion which pujlls in more air and so on. I've seen a Morso glowing red hot from this. It is why they started installing the safety catch. Lots of people still run them without ok, but the risk is there and could lead to flammables nearby catching light and a boat burning out. The runaway effect is probaby more of a risk in house installations with the tall flue height available.

In the cold winter 2010 to 11, I changed the blinds on my bus windows for thick curtains. Made a huge difference. Also fitted a floor to ceiling set of curtains between the living room with the fire and the galley. My boat is reverse layout. This shrank the volume to be heated and again helped make it snug. Since then the dividing curtains haven't been needed and are just tied back.

If the top halves of the rads are warm, then they don't have air in and don't need bleeding. A rad with air in will be cold at the top and warm below. Having the top warm and the bottom cooler shows they are working, with what heat there is is being given up to the room. Either low flow rate, from sludge as suggested, or a tired pump, or the water not being very warm in the first place.

Keeping the stove in during the day only takes a couple of minutes if it has been kept in overnight. Riddle the grate, check the ash pan level and a couple of shovels of coal on top. Whatr are you burning?

Jen

Edited by Jen-in-Wellies
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12 hours ago, tstore said:

I thinks it's rated at 5kw. The rad are on a single loop. You can isolate the first radiator and the towel rail ones but the rear cabin one you cannot isolate.

Perhaps I need to drain whole system. How do clear it of potential blockages? Could coolant have separated from water and be impeding flow?

The saloon is still only at 18 despite fire burning now for 3 hours, shouldn't it be warmer? I have woodburner in my house where I stay on weekends and it heats up a space much larger than this with hardly any fuel.

When you say the system is on a single loop, does that mean a single pipe or a two pipe set up? A single pipe providing both flow and return is generally inneficient. Another factor could be pipe size as the run is quite long-you may find the system has never worked correctly and as someone suggested in an earlier post could now be sludged up.

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23 hours ago, tstore said:

I thinks it's rated at 5kw.

 

That 5kw is the maximum possible output with the stove roaring away and jumping hot. 

All the focus on this thread so far seems to revolve around the roads not getting hot but this in my opinion is a red herring. My squirrel without back boiler or rads would get the front half of my 68ft boat toasty hot in about 90 mins from first lighting. So a squirrel has plenty of heating power, you’re stove is just not developing it in my view. 

The big unanswered question is what fuel are you using? Smokeless solid fuel has about five times the heat output of wood. If you’re already on coal then you need to get it drawing faster and all the coal inside glowing bright red or orange, really brightly. If it won’t do this with the bottom wide open, then the flueway is partially blocked. I bet there is an accumulation of crap that dropped down the chimney on the baffle plate or on top of the heat exchanger.  Let it go out then have a good look with a torch. 

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
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It's doesn't have a baffle plate as have the back boiler in. I burn smokeless but with the safety catch on ash door it was taking an age to get hot. Now with it off it roars away but was told to run it too hot. How hot, is too hot? You seem to have answered my questions. Get coals glowing all over. The rads even when roaring still struggle and never remain warm for long. Bottom half of first ones stays cold, towel rail hardly heats up, small rad in rear of boat is the only which gets reasonable hot. Rads are on one loop which travels the entire circumference of the boat even though rads are only down the one same side.

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Is the flue and area below where the flue leaves the stove completely clear of soot buildup?

Can you post any pictures of the stove and backboiler pipework, flue, radiators and connecting pipework, header tank and pipework?

Any details, model number, description of the circulation pump?

(I take it this is a newly recently acquired second hand boat and the first time the stove has been used this winter, yes?)

It does sound like the radiators are on a single pipe system, which is not promising. The DIY installs from previous owners can sometimes be a can of worms frankly.

Situations like this almost warrant a 'stove problem poster' survey V1 :), as the better the description of the problem, the lower the likelihood of 'expert hell' :unsure:

 

Edited by smileypete
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2 hours ago, tstore said:

It's doesn't have a baffle plate as have the back boiler in. I burn smokeless but with the safety catch on ash door it was taking an age to get hot. Now with it off it roars away but was told to run it too hot. How hot, is too hot? You seem to have answered my questions. Get coals glowing all over. The rads even when roaring still struggle and never remain warm for long. Bottom half of first ones stays cold, towel rail hardly heats up, small rad in rear of boat is the only which gets reasonable hot. Rads are on one loop which travels the entire circumference of the boat even though rads are only down the one same side.

"Rads are on one loop which travels the entire circumference of the boat even though rads are only down the one same side."

This sounds wrong, and it won't be cured by increasing the heat at the stove - if the flow away from the back boiler is particularly poor, it may try to boil the water within it.

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32 minutes ago, BWM said:

"Rads are on one loop which travels the entire circumference of the boat even though rads are only down the one same side."

This sounds wrong, and it won't be cured by increasing the heat at the stove - if the flow away from the back boiler is particularly poor, it may try to boil the water within it.

couldnt agree more but very hard to visualise ... are the rads conected top to bottom or top to top ? ... not that thats going to make a world of difference, if you had a feed and return to each rad you could get the stove hot and "introduce " one rad at a time, but in your system obviously if you close a rad it stops the entire flow with the risk of the backboiler overheating, which is obviously also a risk if you have any kind of blockage .... 

Might be worth trying different fuels, last winter i used taybrite and it wouldnt heat the entire length of my boat (60' reverse layout) so i relied on my eberspacher as well, this year after trying a few i am using supertherm and the boat is like a sauna even the kitchen is comfortably warm and once its up to temperature i can fill it damp it down and get a good 12 hours out of it and it maintains the heat perfectly.... that is just the stove alone no backboiler or rads running.

Rick

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4 hours ago, smileypete said:

Is the flue and area below where the flue leaves the stove completely clear of soot buildup?

(snip)

The Squirrel with back boiler is particularly prone to getting crap from the flue lying on top of the boiler, partially blocking the flue, especially if the top flue outlet is used.

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6 hours ago, tstore said:

It's doesn't have a baffle plate as have the back boiler in. I burn smokeless but with the safety catch on ash door it was taking an age to get hot. Now with it off it roars away but was told to run it too hot. How hot, is too hot? You seem to have answered my questions. Get coals glowing all over. The rads even when roaring still struggle and never remain warm for long. Bottom half of first ones stays cold, towel rail hardly heats up, small rad in rear of boat is the only which gets reasonable hot. Rads are on one loop which travels the entire circumference of the boat even though rads are only down the one same side.

 

Two more points occur to me. 

Firstly, with poor circulation failing to carry away the heat, a stove running well will boil the water in the back boiler quite furiously after a couple of hours alight. You don't mention boiling happening so either you are being way too timid still and not getting it roaring away hard enough, OR.... there is no water in the system. Have you checked it is full of water?

Secondly, a one pipe system as you describe rarely works very well anyway unless you have 'swept tees' connecting each rad to the loop. Swept tees are rarely sold these days so I suspect the system never worked properly. Might this person who warned you about not getting the stove too hot, be the person you bought the boat from? If so, I think he knows the heating doesn't work and running the stove harder just boils the heat exchanger. 

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Wonder if there's an bit of an airlock somewhere with a tendancy to boil the backboiler, and so the 'remedy' and advice from the previous owner is to not run it too hard.

All speculation though without more details. Bit worrying that there's been no mention yet of a header tank with proper vent pipe.

 

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