Kabola E5 boiler

[debandpaul]

HI all,

We have just joined the forum and we are looking to buy a narrowboat and considering one we have just viewed.

This is hopefully where all your experience will be helpful, so we will thank you all in advance.

The boat we viewed has a Kabola E5 boiler installed and as far as we have found out this is not a bad thing but the querie we have is that it appears  to be tapped into the engine cooling system, this he tells us is so he can also use the engine to heat the rads, but it means that the coolant reservoir cap on the engine is now redundant and he has installed a high point header tank that tops up the radiators as well as the engine coolant. 

We should probably also mention that he installed it himself and although he is not a heating engineer he does however appear to be very competent. He did work in a boatyard for a number of years, which does check out and the boatyard owner did also say that he was very conscientious.

Is this OK it just seems to us to be unconventional and we just need some reassurance!

Thank you

Paul and Debbie

[Robbo]

I would be tempted to change it as running the Kabola would heat the engine which is kinda wasteful!    Ideally they would be a heat exchanger between the two systems so you would still benefit from the engine heating the radiators.    As most boats have large coolant systems the engine header tank is sometimes not big enough to take the expansion, so having a external header tank, especially one you can easily see the water level is often used and a good idea.

[debandpaul]

Thanks Robbo for your quick reply, I hadn't thought about the engine being heated (although seems obvious when you say it).  Adding a heat exchanger seems a good idea to have the systems separate.  Would the engine still be heated?

 

[cuthound]

2 hours ago, debandpaul said:

Thanks Robbo for your quick reply, I hadn't thought about the engine being heated (although seems obvious when you say it).  Adding a heat exchanger seems a good idea to have the systems separate.  Would the engine still be heated?

 

 

With a heat exchanger between engine and central heating systems,  you put a pump on the central heating side. This heats the radiators from the engine, but doesn't allow much heat transfer from the central heating to the engine.

[debandpaul]

Thank you, that is a good point.

 

[Robbo]

3 hours ago, debandpaul said:

Thanks Robbo for your quick reply, I hadn't thought about the engine being heated (although seems obvious when you say it).  Adding a heat exchanger seems a good idea to have the systems separate.  Would the engine still be heated?

 

If you have the heat exchanger higher than the engine or the hoses leading up to the engine so it doesn’t heat via convection.    However you can also add a pump to the engine side so in winter you can pre heat the engine before starting it.