Heating the boat

I may sound like a total pansy here but having sailed in snow and ice in Norway then having 12v electric blanket to take the edge off a cold bed as you get in can be a real boost to comfort and moral. They don't use much electricity for the 15 minutes that they're on for.

Just don't tell anyone you have one!
 
northcave said:
I may sound like a total pansy here but having sailed in snow and ice in Norway then having 12v electric blanket to take the edge off a cold bed as you get in can be a real boost to comfort and moral. They don't use much electricity for the 15 minutes that they're on for.

Just don't tell anyone you have one!
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I didn't know that they were made!
 
Tranona said:
But nothing to do with marine heaters. It was OE truck heaters.

You are right, though, Russian made heatings of similar design are available and cheaper.
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From what I have read on this forum previously, in essence, the truck heaters and the marine heaters are identical, the only difference being in the spec of the exhaust, so as not to have gas leakages into the boat.
 
northcave said:
I may sound like a total pansy here but having sailed in snow and ice in Norway then having 12v electric blanket to take the edge off a cold bed as you get in can be a real boost to comfort and moral. They don't use much electricity for the 15 minutes that they're on for.

Just don't tell anyone you have one!
Click to expand...

Wow, I want one! Is this the type you have? https://www.amazon.co.uk/ELECTRIC-B...06798&sr=8-8&keywords=12volt+electric+blanket

Www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
lw395 said:
I experimented with a heater matrix from a car.
I quickly discvered that a lightly loaded diesel engine produces remarkably little waste heat.
So unless you motor a lot, forget it.
Car matrices also need a powerful fan to push enough air through them.
...
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My experience has been quite different, and my matrix heater produces oodles of heat when just pottering along.

A diesel engine is about 40% efficient (see wikipedia on diesel engines for instance), so (100 - 40) / 40 = 1.5 times the power you are driving the boat along with ends up as heat. Motoring slowly you use at least 5 HP on a medium sized yacht I'd have thought (bet you've a 35HP or 50HP engine) -> about 4kW, so 6kW of heat is available. This is bigger than the biggest Ebberpacher. There's lots of heat available.

Thus it's how one extracts this heat which counts. I found that the matrix I have, plumbed in parallel with the hot water calorifier, always gets to heat however slowly I motor, so if yours doesn't I'd have a good look at the coolant water circulation or whether your thermostat is malfunctioning. An old car heater may have been partly blocked with crud.

A matrix has a power output rating, albeit a mite approximate due to the cooling water temperature not being the same on all engines. The matrix I fitted, the Mikuni Kalori Silencio 2 http://www.mikuniheating.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=172, has a power output rating of 5.5kW which seems constant with the calculation above and is plenty for my 42' boat.

They do need a fan to blow the air around; at full speed (the model shown has two speeds and I tend to use the slower and less power hungry setting) uses 1.2A at 12V. The Ebberspacher Airtronic D4 (heat output = 3kW) draws 2A while running, and a lot more when starting, so again the matrix heater has the better figures, ie more output for lower electrical power consumption.

In summary my matrix works brilliantly. Just because one installation was poor don't write them off in general.
 
jdc said:
My experience has been quite different, and my matrix heater produces oodles of heat... In summary my matrix works brilliantly. Just because one installation was poor don't write them off in general.
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Mine too. Tonnes of heat. I did ensure i put a V splitter when piping it in parallel to the calorifier as if you put a T then the hot water tends to go to the route of least resistance. Everyone I've known has good things to say about matrix heaters. Also I have a little screw valve at the highest point tonbleed air out. Without doing that the matrix heater will be crap.
 
jdc said:
My experience has been quite different, and my matrix heater produces oodles of heat when just pottering along.....
In summary my matrix works brilliantly. Just because one installation was poor don't write them off in general.
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That's intriguing. The Beta 14 just installed has fittings ready for connection to a calorifier - which I don't expect to install. However, I can see no good reason not to use them with a Mikuni matrix heater such as mentioned above. Dry sox - now that would be a big plus!
 
jdc said:
My experience has been quite different, and my matrix heater produces oodles of heat when just pottering along.

A diesel engine is about 40% efficient (see wikipedia on diesel engines for instance), so (100 - 40) / 40 = 1.5 times the power you are driving the boat along with ends up as heat. Motoring slowly you use at least 5 HP on a medium sized yacht I'd have thought (bet you've a 35HP or 50HP engine) -> about 4kW, so 6kW of heat is available. This is bigger than the biggest Ebberpacher. There's lots of heat available.

Thus it's how one extracts this heat which counts. I found that the matrix I have, plumbed in parallel with the hot water calorifier, always gets to heat however slowly I motor, so if yours doesn't I'd have a good look at the coolant water circulation or whether your thermostat is malfunctioning. An old car heater may have been partly blocked with crud.

A matrix has a power output rating, albeit a mite approximate due to the cooling water temperature not being the same on all engines. The matrix I fitted, the Mikuni Kalori Silencio 2 http://www.mikuniheating.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=172, has a power output rating of 5.5kW which seems constant with the calculation above and is plenty for my 42' boat.

They do need a fan to blow the air around; at full speed (the model shown has two speeds and I tend to use the slower and less power hungry setting) uses 1.2A at 12V. The Ebberspacher Airtronic D4 (heat output = 3kW) draws 2A while running, and a lot more when starting, so again the matrix heater has the better figures, ie more output for lower electrical power consumption.

In summary my matrix works brilliantly. Just because one installation was poor don't write them off in general.
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Engine was a 3GM30.
There was no fault with the matrix or thermostat, we could see the effect of the matrix in slowing the warm-up of both engine and calorifier, as we had temperature gauges on both.
Yes there is plenty of heat when driving the boat at a reasonable speed, but very little when e.g. fast idling to charge batteries, or motor-sailing.
So it works great if you go places under motor, but our boat was for sailing. Don't expect it to work with the motor idling.
For sure the engine is only say 40% efficient at best, but the waste energy is not all going into the cooling water.
At low loadings, a diesel chucks a lot of its waste heat out of the exhaust.
This is why cars often have heater elements in the water system these days. These might help on a yacht system, as well as heating the water, they put load on the engine via the alternator to speed warm-up.

I think if a car-type matrix heater was a great solution for a sailing yacht, production boats would have them as standard.

We quickly decided to invest in a Hydronic heater and haven't looked back, although these days I think I'd look for Webasto instead of Eber.
 
northcave said:
Colin,

Do you have a Taylors 079D? What do you think of it?
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Yes, i have the Diesel fuelled Taylors heater and think it is great. Preheat with meths only y takes a few minutes and it starts to give out heat withim 10 minutes. Mine is in an open plan 23ft boat and never have it on max. It needs to be mounted low and i have an electric pump so it is fed from the main diesel tank. If you fit the standard gravity tank it has to be 4ft higher than the heater which can be a problem on a small boat. I fitted a "SU" type car fuel pump like this https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/CLASSIC-CA...epid=0&hash=item462796aa59:g:KzIAAOSwVFlUEtEn and found a used one for £10. Electrical consumption is minute, it clicks once per minute. I have no problem leaving it on all night. The flue needs to be at least 4ft long so i have two plug in lengths which i insert on deck and remove while sailing with a rubber cap over the hole.

www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
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lw395 said:
...
We quickly decided to invest in a Hydronic heater and haven't looked back, although these days I think I'd look for Webasto instead of Eber.
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I agree in so far as I too wouldn't entirely recommend a matrix heater from the engine as the sole heater - it doesn't work when at anchor in the evening for instance - so we too have a conventional heater. But actually matrix heaters are pretty standard on those (few I admit) boats which go into the arctic where they really do make a huge difference to life aboard.
 
Matrix heaters using waste heat from the engine don't make sense for a sailing yacht with an open cockpit and outside helm. For motor boats, motor sailers, and indeed any boat where you can motor and be inside, they are great. I am amazed that they are not standard equipment on such boats. Can you imagine buying a car without a heater in this country? (UK).
 
jdc said:
I agree in so far as I too wouldn't entirely recommend a matrix heater from the engine as the sole heater - it doesn't work when at anchor in the evening for instance - so we too have a conventional heater. But actually matrix heaters are pretty standard on those (few I admit) boats which go into the arctic where they really do make a huge difference to life aboard.
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I have some friends who have taken Land Rovers to the Arctic Circle, they fitted eberbastos to boost the heating.
I know people in that world, nutters you might say, but when you're driving to Russia via back roads it's nice to have 'warmth' covered by both an Eber hydronic and a Webasto Airtop. No bugger is going to take the mick when it's -20 outside.
In Land Rover circles it is an accepted fact that idling diesel engines do not put much heat into their coolant circuit.
When I was disappointed with my car heater plumbed in series with the calorifier, it wa explained to me in simple physics why the engine needed to be doing some proper work to heat the water. Diesels pump the same amount of air regardless of load, and that results in a lot of the waste heat going down the exhaust at low loads.
At the time, I'd never owned a diesel car, so I expected it to be like petrol engines.


The few expedition yachts I have had anything to do with have had generators which are worked fairly hard, connected to matrix heaters.
 
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