Hot water in multihulls

[Trevor_Richards]

We are re furbing an old cat. At the moment she has no hot water system aboard, because of the age of the engines installing a calorifier is out of the question, so a gas water heater will be used. We have decided to treat this as a new installation, discount anything that is there. So my question is, does anyone out there know anywhere, on line or in a book where there is "how to" manual, you can discount Nigel Calder 'cause I have looked. I mentioned she was a cat because we have two water tanks so we have to how to balance the use of water from both tanks. Look forward to any suggestions.

 

[simonfraser]

keep the water supply seperate for each side, this way you won't suddenly run out.

the weight on each side is unlikley to be a major issue.

 

[vyv_cox]

What does the age of the engines have to do with not installing a calorifier? Any engine can be fitted with one, very effectively. There are thousands of raw-water cooled engines that run calorifiers. Bukh engines, and some others, come with the tappings in place with removable screwed plugs. PM me if you want info.

 

[oldsaltoz]

We have a cat and hot water, we recently changed the whole system. Looked at installing a calorifier in same side as the shower but decided the engines do not run long enough. We had a gas heater but I was never happy with the thru' deck flu, potential leak and hazard if laying around up front.

We still have a solar bladder, black on one side clear on the other, sits on the saloon roof about the midway so never gets in the way, holds almost 40 litres and water is pumped in when the shower tap is turned on. Works well here in Oz but might be limited in the UK.

We looked at instant electric heating, both 12 and 240 volt systems, but with a few guests on board heating from our all be large 6 battery excluding starter batteries system, we would have to run the engine/s to maintain a good charge. This has the advantage of easy install and no thru' deck flu.

In the end we installed 12vDC / 240vAC combined unit because this gave us the widest range. We have 240 volt generator we take when we have several guests aboard to the extra refrigeration, 2 very large fridge-freezers, used for ice making, storing food drinks and the fish we manage to bring home.

We are now looking at fitting an extra solar water heater.

If you have a think about what your needs will be over the next few years and the frequency, deciding what to install will be easy.

Installing the electric heater was very very simple, in fact it took to remove the old gas job than to install the new one.

Avagoodweekend......

 

[chwarae]

Hi,
I have a second hand Rinnai gas water heater for sale. Pm. if you are interested. To big for my boat.
Harry.

 

[rivonia]

We live on board our CAT and have instant Hot Water. Our heater is a gas one Make is PALOMA works great. We also have two water tanks and both are seperate. We have also fitted a watermaker 30lts ph

 

[grumpy_o_g]

I know nothing about this so it's more of a question than a suggestion but why not use one of the little Eberspacher or Mikuni diesel water heaters to heat a calorifier? I've been on a couple of boats that use this system for heating via fan matrices and hot water and I've been really impressed.