Birchwood 33 Hot water system

[Mark M]

At present I have a gas water heater on my boat, but for safety I would like to change it and fit a Insulated hot water tank and use one of the engines to heat the domestic hot water.
The Boat is a Birchwood 33 and the engines are Ford 2400 series 80HP deisels.
Has anyone ever fitted a hot water system with these engines?

I have tried to find pipework on the engine which is hot when the engine is running but couldnt, so I`m thinking there may be a couple of tap of points on the engine block,to fit flow and return pipework nto the Hot Water Tank

Any help or information would be much appreciated

Thanks Mark

 

[oldgit]

Any help or information would be much appreciated

Someone is bound to be along with info sooner or later,just out of interest my water take off which heats the water via a calorifier is on top of the engine and is tapped from the chamber holding the engine temp thermostats.

 

[ms1]

I assume your engine is not raw water cooled and operates with its own closed coolant circuit.

supplied from the factory the take offs would normally be blanked off. If you have an oil cooler or water cooled gearbox (or both) these takes offs may already have been used.

On some marinisations the oil cooler and gearbox are cooled directly by raw water and not by engine coolant.

This is quite a common engine in Birchwoods so another owner may be able to assist alternatively I would be inclined to talk to Mike Bellamy or Mark Dooley at Lancing Marine, Portslade who I have no doubt would know .. and be able to supply you with parts to assist you establish a take off for the calorifier.
Once you establish the appropriate feed and return points it should be a fairly straighforward job .. for copper fittings you can also talk to ASAP Supplies who offer a very fast mail order service.

 

[TrueBlue]

Is keel cooling used on Birchwoods, the thought of hot water next composite materials seems strange to me - but it's not my area.

However, I've had some success in adding a keel cooler to my domestic calorifier (the supplied raw water cooling system was not sufficient for my needs), and it's been too successful - even though the tappings are auxiliary to the main circuit.

I'm trying to say that if you have the secondary circuit piped to cool the gearbox or whatever, then it is possible to run the calorifier in series with that.

 

[Ramage]

I have e-mailed Mark pdf copies of the Ford Lehman owners manual, which shows (on Page 30) the connections for galley water heating.

If anyone else wants them (zipped pdf files) please PM me with your e-mail address.