Wallas Nautic 40d heater?

[Sy-Revolution]

Hi Folks,
I've been offered a Nautic 40d at a very reasonable price (new) and I'm tempted to go for it, however, after a search I found a couple of posts that were none too flattering of Wallas heaters.

One of the things I like the sound of regarding these heaters is their comparitive simplicity, that coupled with the many negative posts regarding Ebers. So if you own/have owned a Wallas heater, what were your impressions? Should I walk way and buy a Mikuni instead?

 

[seamaster30]

Ha... - I recently chose a Mikuni - fantasic bit of engineering compared to my old Eber, but getting recommendations was hard - every one knocks the heaters - eber especially, but Mikuni seemed the least trouble (probably until this post gets read) /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
Happy with mine even at the cost.

 

[pmyatt]

On our previous boat we had 2 Wallas heaters - they were brilliant and very economical in both fuel and battery power - but they were paraffin, maybe the 40D is different.

 

[jerryat]

We've had our Wallas bulkhead-mounted unit since the boat was new in 1984 and it's worked faultlessly ever since. OK, it's a single hot air output (the boat's only 32 long) but we lived aboard for several years and it was excellent in that situation.

I don't know about Wallas's 'Eber' type, ducted warm air equivalents, but the engineering on ours is absolutely superb. The only spare part we have bought in the 20+ years we've owned our boat was a new 'flame gauze' kit (I think it was called) which cost a staggering £11.75, and we only replaced that as part of our major refit prior to going off cruising again.

From our experience, the problems most people have had stem from them not allowing the heater to go through it's proper shut-down sequence - which takes up to 5 minutes and cools everything down to avoid damage to the electronics.

They switch the power supply off at the circiut breaker so the heater stays very hot and fries the crcuit boards.

If your Wallas has been properly installed and looked after, you're very lucky - stay with it!!

 

[Sy-Revolution]

Thanks for the replies, I think the 40d can run on both diesel and paraffin. It also has two outlets so that I can split fore and aft. 4kw too.