When I had my Bukh I replaced the original calorifier and pump when we sailed in The Netherlands. At Hellevoetsluis we would leave the berth, motor slowly a few hundred metres to await bridge opening, tickover for a short time, then motor through and down the channel to the Haringvliet, about a further 200 metres. Once outside the hot water was too hot to hold my hand in.
It was with a 3rd party indirect cooling head that also fed the calorifier.
Fair enough if you are prepared to do that. I believe those black bladder things with a shower attachment can work pretty well too.
Even when cruising the west coast of Scotland we found a solar shower was good enough. But you have to cheat and put a kettle of hot water in alongside a couple of litres of cold.
Ah, the expert agrees with me! Fr Hackett says it has worked for him, so I guess a check on the OP's particulsr engine is needed
It's a pretty standard solution.
The problem there is that the engine may run cool, causing high wear rates and higher fuel consumption.
Not sure I follow. The route of the cooling would be the same in the block.
I originally installed mine as I wasn't sure if I could take raw water from my Bukh. However I now have that option once I install a pump, however the Bobil is great although their website is a little cluttered. They do have decent demo videos on utube.
How does a hot air heater help warm the water?
@vyv_cox has details of how it works on a seawater cooled Volvo 2003 engine, and I can vouch for it working well, as it's my engine that is pictured on his website! But the cooling circuit on that engine is far from intuitive.
We had a Webasto Thermotop C on our Ovni which heated the calorifier and a set of water to air heater matrices around the boat to provide central heating. It was very efficient and effective and a very small unit to install somewhere.
