Water heater recommendation

[Agprice272]

Hi. I am replacing a water heater. What brand do you recommend? Also, the current water heater has a heat exchanger. Do you find this feature useful?

Thanks.

[River Cruiser]

Last year I replaced a32 year old Attwood with another Attwood. I live aboard 8-9 months of the year on the upper Mississippi so it in use 24-7

[Dennis.G]

If you mostly use hot water in marina, or run generator normally when at anchor you can skip the heat exchanger. On our boat we likely heat our water about 50% of time from engine heat via heat exchanger and we are glad we have it. We have our heat exchanger piped only to main engine. If running generator we heat water by way of the electric element.

[Agprice272]

Thanks. I installed a new water heater last weekend. I opted for the heat exchanger. It works nicely.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by Agprice272

Hi. I am replacing a water heater. What brand do you recommend? Also, the current water heater has a heat exchanger. Do you find this feature useful?

Thanks.

If you list the various manufacturers, you'd see.


Let's see:


Kuuma - bottom of the line, maybe 6 years
Seaward - Kuuma is a lookalike, 10-12 years
Raritan
Attwood
Isotherm - top of the line, best insulation, comes with as thermostativc mixing valve - very long life



The life expediencies are based on our Catalina 34 skippers' experiences over the past three decades.


Unless you don't ever use your engine, it makes little sense to NOT have the HX. Why? ' Cuz it could be considered free heat. Otherwise, you'd have to run yet another engine to make hot water.