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22-01-2021, 21:31
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#1
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 5
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How important a water heater installation?
Hi all,
I'm not an engineer, I'd like to know more about water heater installations on ships. Thought you as experienced engineers might help me on this. My questions below:
1. How important a water heater installation on a ship?
2. Have you ever experienced a water heater failure while at sea?
3. Would you recommend Electric Water heater installations on ships?
4. Would you recommend a water heater for use in a cruiser?
Thank you
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22-01-2021, 23:40
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#2
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Melbourne Australia
Boat: Paper Tiger 14 foot, Gemini 105MC 34 foot Catamaran Hull no 825
Posts: 2,912
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
If you like cold showers, No,
If you like hot showers, Yes,
Most water heaters are heated by the motor and have an electric heater as well,
12 volt, 110 Volt and 240 volt, Or Solar,
Any thing man made will eventually, Fail, How soon it fails, ??????????????
Ships are a different story to cruisers, Ships have all the bells and whistles,
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23-01-2021, 01:01
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#3
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Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Somewhere in French Polynesia
Boat: Dean 440 13.4m catamaran
Posts: 2,333
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
can you please clarify if you are really asking about SHIPS ? or are you actually asking about water heaters on small pleasure craft ??
ships use a boiler heated by fuel oil combined with engine waste heat
pleasure craft have more variety. some use gas. some use engine waste heat (usually with an electric element as well). would be a very rare yacht to only have electric HWS
how important your water heater is depends on where you are and how much you enjoy a hot shower. the owner would keel haul me if she couldn't have hot water in winter, but maybe only flog me if it was summer...
we have 2 HWS so as yet we have never had a complete failure...but it is a boat so everything breaksdown sooner or later
cheers,
__________________
"home is where the anchor drops"...living onboard in French Polynesia...maintaining social distancing
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23-01-2021, 01:43
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#4
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 5
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
I must report to a company who are considering to sell electric water heaters for marine industry. I'm trying to understand neccessarity of their product to ships. So i better know usage of electric water heaters on all kind of ships.
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23-01-2021, 04:48
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#5
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Moderator
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Carrabelle, Florida
Boat: Fiberglas shattering 44' steel trawler
Posts: 6,083
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
I get the impression that you are asking the wrong audience. If you want useful data about ships, go ask people who use ships, not cruisers.
Water heating on cruisers are pretty straight-forward, with engine heat plus back-up electricity covering just about every installation. Size is small, way below the traditional 50 gallon home tank type hot water heater. Some boats don't have installations, or rely on solar heating. Boats have very limited energy budgets. That's about it.
Ships are an entirely different situation. Of course they have installations. What sort probably differs with need. Are they covering a crew with a galley, or are they cruise ships with 5,000 guests and a heated swimming pool?
__________________
Never let anything mechanical know that you are in a hurry.
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23-01-2021, 05:27
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#6
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 5
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tkeithlu
I get the impression that you are asking the wrong audience. If you want useful data about ships, go ask people who use ships, not cruisers.
Water heating on cruisers are pretty straight-forward, with engine heat plus back-up electricity covering just about every installation. Size is small, way below the traditional 50 gallon home tank type hot water heater. Some boats don't have installations, or rely on solar heating. Boats have very limited energy budgets. That's about it.
Ships are an entirely different situation. Of course they have installations. What sort probably differs with need. Are they covering a crew with a galley, or are they cruise ships with 5,000 guests and a heated swimming pool?
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Thank you for the answer. I didn't know a ship and a cruiser were different. Forgive my ignorance. They want to manufacture Project specific electric water heaters for naval assault boats, patrol boats, battleships, amphibious ships, coast guard or search & rescue boats. Do you think their products will appeal to this audience, assuming they produce quality products?
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23-01-2021, 05:43
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#7
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Moderator
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Carrabelle, Florida
Boat: Fiberglas shattering 44' steel trawler
Posts: 6,083
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
It would be unlikely that your firm will produce a unit small enough for cruising boat use. The number of people on a cruising boat varies from one (single handed) to two (modal, a couple, usually), to perhaps six at the top. Patrol boats that stay at sea probably start at 15 or so crew, on up to aircraft carriers and cruise ships at perhaps 5,000.
"Cruiser" may be the source of confusion here. A "cruiser" can be a ship one size smaller than a battleship with a crew of over 1,000, a "cruise ship" is a floating resort with 5,000 passengers plus crew, and a "cruiser" is a person who crews a boat or the boat itself used to move about an ocean, with the one to six people mentioned above. That's the use on this forum, with the modal length being about 40 feet.
__________________
Never let anything mechanical know that you are in a hurry.
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23-01-2021, 06:13
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#8
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Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2019
Location: Rochester, NY
Boat: Chris Craft 381 Catalina
Posts: 6,190
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
To give an example of the size heaters tkeithlu is talking about, my boat has a 12 gallon water heater with a 1200w electric element (120v). No engine heat exchanger in my setup, but many do have them. So we're not exactly talking about large water heaters on most of the boats on this site.
If you're looking at building electric heaters, they'd be a similar concept, just bigger and more powerful depending on the application.
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23-01-2021, 06:29
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#9
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S/V rubber ducky
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: heading "south"
Boat: Hunter 410
Posts: 20,362
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nozturk
Hi all,
I'm not an engineer, I'd like to know more about water heater installations on ships. Thought you as experienced engineers might help me on this. My questions below:
1. How important a water heater installation on a ship? depends on if you want hot/warm water, I do
2. Have you ever experienced a water heater failure while at sea? my water heater has never failed, current one is 20 years old
3. Would you recommend Electric Water heater installations on ships? if you water hot water
4. Would you recommend a water heater for use in a cruiser? see 1&3
Thank you
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you are welcome
__________________
Don't ask a bunch of unknown forum people if it is OK to do something on YOUR boat. It is your boat, do what you want!
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23-01-2021, 07:03
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#10
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Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Galapagos
Boat: Nauticat 43
Posts: 400
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
Hot water is required for health reasons on boats and ships. It is possible to wash dishes and get them clean without hot water, but it is much more difficult and requires something like diluting bleach in water for sanitation. Bleach has chlorine and chlorine breaks chemical bonds (such as hold objects like boats together), so it must be used carefully. And, then there's hot showers. In these applications, it's possible to heat a pot of water and use that. But, a hot water heater is much more convenient.
Someone put out a statistic that cruisers spend 10% of their time on the go, but 90% of the time in some place (e.g. at anchor, on a mooring ball, in a slip). Because of that, we disconnected the hose from the engine circulating the seawater heated by engine operation and rely only on the electrical hookup. This is a simpler, and hopefully more reliable, setup. Our water heater has 6 gallons capacity. It requires 120V AC for the 1500W heating element. AC is supplied either by shore power, by the diesel generator, or by the inverter (drawing from the house battery bank).
__________________
"If you don't know where you're going, you might wind up somewhere else." Yogi Berra
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23-01-2021, 08:35
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#11
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 5
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tkeithlu
It would be unlikely that your firm will produce a unit small enough for cruising boat use. The number of people on a cruising boat varies from one (single handed) to two (modal, a couple, usually), to perhaps six at the top. Patrol boats that stay at sea probably start at 15 or so crew, on up to aircraft carriers and cruise ships at perhaps 5,000.
"Cruiser" may be the source of confusion here. A "cruiser" can be a ship one size smaller than a battleship with a crew of over 1,000, a "cruise ship" is a floating resort with 5,000 passengers plus crew, and a "cruiser" is a person who crews a boat or the boat itself used to move about an ocean, with the one to six people mentioned above. That's the use on this forum, with the modal length being about 40 feet.
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I understand better now. They're definitely interested in larger projects. So i guess their intent is to built water heaters or boilers for ships. Thanks for the answers though. It really helped. I'm very grateful to have joined in this forum and met valuable people like you. I guess i should find people who use ships now.
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23-01-2021, 18:14
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#12
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Senior Cruiser
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Oregon to Alaska
Boat: Wheeler Shipyard 83' ex USCG
Posts: 3,494
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
Electric water heaters are used on some ships, depending the builder and designer. Most ships use some form of main engine waste heat to heat the water when running and use electric in port when the main is shut down and a generator is running. Boilers for hot water and heating are becoming less common.
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25-01-2021, 07:03
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#13
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 5
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Re: How important a water heater installation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lepke
Electric water heaters are used on some ships, depending the builder and designer. Most ships use some form of main engine waste heat to heat the water when running and use electric in port when the main is shut down and a generator is running. Boilers for hot water and heating are becoming less common.
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Do you mean its depending on the way that ship was built or designed?
or can it be said that it depends on type of the ship. I think it may heavily used on Passenger ships due to it's need for showers and other areas in the accommodation spaces. is it correct?
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