I wish we knew this six months ago! Thanks for the tip, do you leave the wrapping on your windows year-round or redo it each winter? Both sides of the window, or just the interior?
Good question. Install on the inside, not the outside. This is our first PNWwinter so for now we plan to leave the film on the windshield and salon windows that don't open, and remove for all the hatches and opening ports.
As I write this it is spring and the mornings are cold and the afternoons relatively warm (55-60 outside, up to 80 inside the salon when the sun it out). We removed the film from the salon hatches and opening windows for ventilation during the warm afternoons and the forward and aft staterooms are still covered for the insulation value.
The stuff is cheap and easy to apply, so it looks to be a good seasonal activity to add to the chores for when the weather starts turning cold.
I've seen feedback from other boaters in this forum that cleaning the tape off is a PIA, but I don't plan to remove it! It's clear so you can't really see it, and it provides a good adhesion surface for re-application (getting the tape to adhere to the older aluminum frames below 65 degrees was a pain, I had to use a blow dryer to warm the aluminum) so we'll see what happens!
Thanks to all users of Diesel Fired Hydronic Heaters for great input and the general consensus seems to be that ITR is the most reliable system with a plus for me that they are in the PNW area. So, I will focus on ITR product and solutions.
ITR Maintenance and Repair Manual:
Marcello, who is VP of sales and Marketing, is monitoring this thread and I hope he takes in the need to improve in this area.
In the meantime, any other tips or “fixes” of ITR components that you have needed to do when cruising, is worth sharing here. What SPARES do you carry?
Hurricane 2 @ 35000BTU or Hurricane Chinook @ 50,0000 BTU
Those are my two choices and from SeaEagle’s own Alaska winter experience, I would be fine with the smaller H2, but the newer Chinook may have some other advantages to consider in installation and access.
PRICE Hurricane 2 @Cdn$5k vs Chinook @Cdn$6.7k: I don’t know what else needs to be added to the H2 to compare with the Chinook but I will clarify with ITR
ITR Checklist:
I first asked Marcello from ITR for a history of the units. Age of Design
The Chinook replaced our previous Hurricane Combi. We launched it in the Class A motor homes 2 years ago. ! year in marine market.
The H2L is about 10 years old. We recently revised it and added a second element.
Units Sold
We have been selling our heaters since the mid 90s. so we have many thousands out there especially in the motor home market. Marine market is smaller so maybe 2 to 3 thousand
Not sure what you mean. We are not as large as Webasto and Espar. Where will you be living with your boat long term ?
Ease of Maintenance
Very easy as our system is modular and user friendly. Just look on the website under the Support tab and training videos.
Pros and Cons
We are the only true marine heater out there. high temperature 310 stainless burner tube, stainless tank and shell. No corrosion means you should not have to change the fluid for many years. Only heaters with electric elements and built in engine and domestic water SS plate heat exchangers. Very detailed diagnostics and wi-fi touch screenremote and phone app.
Recommendation
I would go for the Chinook as it is better value and will save on some installation costs. You could keep your waterheater but it is redundant and you will have to watch the hot out temperature.
It will save you space. You will only get 3 to 5 minutes of hot water as you do not store any water just coolant. The burner will have to run for continuous hot water.
You can purchase the H2L if you have the space and want to run special plumbing as the Chinook is really meant for a series loop NOT manifold. You can add another pump outside the units on the return side depending on the number of fans and feet of hose. 5 to 6 fans and 150 feet of hose will be fine for the Chinook as is.
Can you clarify Comparison of “real” BTU with Webasto or Espar claims?
We take the true output which is direct into the fluid. Not just input BTU.
If you google Webasto 2010 it will state 45000 BTU it is actually 35000 BTU this is why it is a 2010 10 KW which is just over 34000 BTU
Some Espar and Webastos offer a turbo mode to give you more BTU but they burn out quicker.
Also the main difference is out burner we are a low pressure burner. That is we use an air compressor to atomize our fuel not a high pressure fuel pump
Our nozzles last a long time they only have about 10 psi versus high pressure systems like Webasto and Espar 100+ PSI depending on models and BTU.
Only Con is you get what you pay for and the Hurricane is more money. I dont even think Webasto and Espar, truck heaters, recommend use for live aboards. I would get a home boiler first and use AC power to power the burner.
Noise:
Please note the Chinook is a very quiet heater compared to our others and our dealers and customers have confirmed that. The photo attached also uses an air intake silencer as well as a muffler . It is a photo of the heater running and you can see the flame through the sight glass.
I also attached an article of our Zephyr the smaller version of our combination hot water and space heatingdiesel heaters.
Regards Marcello Velenosi.
My checklist continues with other details which I'll discuss in another post:
Hot Water Tank decisions
Augmented engine heat when motorsailing in PNW Fuel Pump
Pelagic, this is great information that others should find useful, thanks. I learned a few new things as well!
Marcello is a great guy who is passionate about his product and very conscientious in helping his customers. He gave me his cell number and I'm grateful for all the time and effort he's put into supporting me over the past 3 years when I have a question or problem. When I need a part they always send it right out to wherever I am in the world at the time and I have it within a few days.
For anyone considering an ITR unit, the product is great, but the personal service is exceptional.
Now I imagine while sailing and keeping a lookout for logs, we are upstairs all dressed for weather and heater shut off.
When we arrive, Heater is turned on and you want insides to heat up quickly....this is where you really appreciate the extra BTU's
Is my thinking right on this?
I hope SteelEagle and other liveaboard travelling in winter, chimes in on this
The extra BTU's will be felt immediately at the outlets throughout the cabin. I have a summer time loop for my boat, that removes two of the fan units immediately and limits it to the aft cabin and one mid cabin heater as well as the hot water tank. All the fluid lines forward of the mid point of the boat are cut off from circulation when I close this valve.
When I close the summer time loop valve, the outlet temperature in the remaining heaters rises faster as there is 50% less fluid circulating through the Espar boiler. It only makes sense that having a higher BTU unit will get the fluid to temperature faster resulting in a higher temperature outlet airflow, and getting your cabin warmed up even faster.
In our boat which we sized for PNW March-Nov use. With outside temperatures 5-10'C/40-50'F and a cold soaked boat, we're at room temperature in around 30 minutes or so. In a cold soaked boat and temperatures around -5'C to -10'C (15-25'F) which is much colder than we designed for, it takes around 90-120 minutes. Part of this is due to the cold soaking of the boat. The metal compression post, bulkheads, floors, metal appliances all take time to come up to temperature. Until they do they are radiating cold back to the boat. Once the boat is no longer cold soaked, maintaining temperature is much easier, and the fans can be kept on low with the heater cycling normally like ones furnace does at home. Our Hunter has insulation in the hull but it is not very thick. If our boat was better insulated I expect the warm up times would be halved.
If I were in your shoes based on the size of your vessel and the year round demands I would probably go with the higher BTU output ITR unit unless the folks at ITR recommend differently. If going with a smaller unit I would look to add a diesel bulkhead heater in either the pilot house or salon to boost heat output when the demands are high.
I would think if our boat was 7-10' longer it would still be plenty of heat, but it really comes down to how well your boat is insulated. Our hull is insulated well, but our windows are not and we lose most of our heat there. On a very cold day (0-5F) if we cover our windows, the heater runs about half of what it would otherwise.
Please keep us posted on how you mount your exhaust or any other solutions you come up with, we would love to be able to run it all the time. Our heater is mounted in a similar location to where you are proposing.
You could probably get away with either the H2 or the Chinook and be fine, having said that I would probably get the Chinook in your case. Beautiful boat by the way!
Hi SeaEagle,
Thanks for the real life insight on using the system
Our boats are very similar with Pilothouse and big windows as well as being Steel built.
My boat was built in Holland completely out of Corten Steel, Hull, Deck, House so is a very good conduit of cold.
From what I can see, the Headliner and Accommodation Sides down to the waterline or floor level has about 2” of that Yellow fiberglass insulation faced
with Alloy Foil and it seems to do a good job for Tropical heat.
Below the waterline in all the bilges, there is only open frames as you can see in those ER refit photo.
Green Paint is original steel, behind insulation and peg board
White paint is a cleanup of same original primer, that has never had any insulation.
In the engine room, I replaced the Fiberglass insulation with Soundown noise and vibration materials, and did not worry about R factor
For cold waters, I am considering insulating those accessible bilges in the
accommodation.
Does your boat have hull shell insulation below the waterline and if yes, what did they use?
I am contacting the Owner of a large 180ft Steam Yacht that I used to Captain. He is a good engineer, so may be able to help us with a Shut-Off exhaust valve that can take the heat
Ignitor, flame sensor, fuel filters, air filter, fuel nozzle, hose. We are contemplating carrying a spare fuel pump and circulation pump next winter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelagic
Does your boat have hull shell insulation below the waterline and if yes, what did they use?
I am contacting the Owner of a large 180ft Steam Yacht that I used to Captain. He is a good engineer, so may be able to help us with a Shut-Off exhaust valve that can take the heat
We have spray foam insulation on the entire inside of the hull about 2-4" thick depending on location, except the engine room floor and a foot-wide race down the bilge for water to run (it's dry).
When a large temperature differential exists, our uninsulated engine room floor does condensate a little bit, which is annoying. I only see this in water temps around 32F/0C and it seems to go away once the water warms up to about 41F/5C, our engine room runs about 85F/29C with the heater running. We run a dehumidifier in the winter, maybe more fans would help? I would insulate what you can.
We are looking forward to a solution for the heater exhaust...
The extra BTU's will be felt immediately at the outlets throughout the cabin. I have a summer time loop for my boat, that removes two of the fan units immediately and limits it to the aft cabin and one mid cabin heater as well as the hot water tank. All the fluid lines forward of the mid point of the boat are cut off from circulation when I close this valve.
When I close the summer time loop valve, the outlet temperature in the remaining heaters rises faster as there is 50% less fluid circulating through the Espar boiler. It only makes sense that having a higher BTU unit will get the fluid to temperature faster resulting in a higher temperature outlet airflow, and getting your cabin warmed up even faster.
In our boat which we sized for PNW March-Nov use. With outside temperatures 5-10'C/40-50'F and a cold soaked boat, we're at room temperature in around 30 minutes or so. In a cold soaked boat and temperatures around -5'C to -10'C (15-25'F) which is much colder than we designed for, it takes around 90-120 minutes. Part of this is due to the cold soaking of the boat. The metal compression post, bulkheads, floors, metal appliances all take time to come up to temperature. Until they do they are radiating cold back to the boat. Once the boat is no longer cold soaked, maintaining temperature is much easier, and the fans can be kept on low with the heater cycling normally like ones furnace does at home. Our Hunter has insulation in the hull but it is not very thick. If our boat was better insulated I expect the warm up times would be halved.
If I were in your shoes based on the size of your vessel and the year round demands I would probably go with the higher BTU output ITR unit unless the folks at ITR recommend differently. If going with a smaller unit I would look to add a diesel bulkhead heater in either the pilot house or salon to boost heat output when the demands are high.
Thanks, VanIslandguy,
You illustrated some important notes about managing not only a “Cold Soaked Steel Boat” in wintertime but also best way to plumb heating fluid for summer uses
Series vs Manifold Plumbing”
Your ability to isolate the fwd. cabin heaters in summertime is a good idea.
However, I think that means more plumbing is involved as I would need to branch off to each Fan unit then come back to the main loop using the more complicated Manifold system.
Marcello from ITR was suggesting a simple Series System of plumbing retrofit as I show here from their Manual.
For Summertime, do you think simply turning the Thermostat way down so that Fan does not turn on will accomplish almost the same?
The one thing that bothers me is that I don’t see any isolating valves shown to take one Fan Heater out of series for maintenance. My thought was 2 shut off valves at each fan unit to isolate, remove fan then install a bypass hose, bleed system and restart.
Maybe I’m overthinking and it is not that hard to remove hose and plug with joining pipe without losing too much fluid?
How are the other ITR Users units plumbed in this respect?
Sea Temp and Cold Soak:
After 30 years cruising only in the tropic, I’d never thought about cold soak now looking at these attached Sea Temps the question of whether I should insulate the bilges outside the ER is important.
The other aspect is plumbing for Engine Waste Heat Management so that I can use the heat produced by the main engine to provide space heat and hot water, without firing up the diesel heater.
Chinook provides for that feature and as I would motor sail a lot in the Inside passage, that should help prevent cold soak when underway
This is something I need to understand better as to how I plumb to my 6-cylinder Perkins? Are other ITR Users units plumbed to use Engine Heat?
How was it done?
Do you use it much?
Sticking with a Series Type Plumbing this Inboard sketch shows me running the ¾ inch ID Heater Fluid Hoses.
Primarily using Heavy Duty Rubber Hoses in the bilge ceiling clamped to the Fixed floorboard sections.
The return goes to Zones 5 and 4 via an internal pipe section in my integral Diesel Tanks, which may need to be Pex pipe for space
Where the hoses go up into the individual heater, I may need to use bits of silicone hose for better flexibility.
My thinking is that this piping under the floor will take some of the chill out of the bilges Is that right?
Yes it most certainly will. In our case we insulated the lines with inexpensive foam pipe insulation from Home Depot in areas where we didn't want or need to lose heat. In our case we didn't see the need to lose waste heat under a settee or berth when the bus heater fans were already drawing a lot of air out from these areas. Where it was nice for the lines to radiate a little heat, (under the galley sole for example), I skipped adding the insulation.
Yes it most certainly will. In our case we insulated the lines with inexpensive foam pipe insulation from Home Depot in areas where we didn't want or need to lose heat. In our case we didn't see the need to lose waste heat under a settee or berth when the bus heater fans were already drawing a lot of air out from these areas. Where it was nice for the lines to radiate a little heat, (under the galley sole for example), I skipped adding the insulation.
Yes, I get lots of heat from my pex running under my deck boards, I don’t think of it as lost heat but as part of the heating system, the main cabin heater is under a settee beside the foul weather locker, which has the pex running through it on the way to the heater fan, I even put an extra loop in the locker to add more heat to dry out gear.....
Ignitor, flame sensor, fuel filters, air filter, fuel nozzle, hose. We are contemplating carrying a spare fuel pump and circulation pump next winter.
For me, the question of what spares to carry depends upon the location of your cruising grounds.
My experience of ITR is they have always shipped the parts I needed faster than I expected and usually get them in a couple of days, so being in the U.S. or Canada it doesn't seem necessary to carry a lot of spares for something that is not critical to operating the boat.
Outside of North America, you could just carry spares for the parts that most frequently need replacing, or the system is simple enough to carry all replaceable parts.
Most frequent parts to replace, in my humble opinion-
Nozzle (plus replacement o rings)
Ignitor
Flame sensor
Circulation pump Compressor air filter (looks like a thimble)
If I was cruising far away from NA I would also want-
Compressor
Fuel pump
Fuel regulator
Aquastat (optional, they don't fail often)
Combustion fan (optional, they don't fail often)
In 3 years of use I've replaced all the above except for the combustion fan. Replacing the aquastat was to decrease cycling at Marcello's recommendation, not because the old one failed.
Lastly, I'd like to note that I replaced the in-line fuel filter with a racor bulkhead mounted spin on fuel/water filter/separator and change the element annually with all my other racors.
The other aspect is plumbing for [B]Engine Waste Heat Management so that I can use the heat produced by the main engine to provide space heat and hot water, without firing up the diesel heater.
Chinook provides for that feature and as I would motor sail a lot in the Inside passage, that should help prevent cold soak when underway
This is something I need to understand better as to how I plumb to my 6-cylinder Perkins? Are other ITR Users units plumbed to use Engine Heat?
How was it done?
Do you use it much?
Hi Pelagic, I decided not to plumb my unit to my engine because while underway, whether for a few hours or an overnight passage for our coastal cruising, we don't use heat or hot water. I like to keep things simple if I can, and this is one area that seemed a no-brainer not to complicate things.
If your cruising regularly involves crossing oceans under power for long periods of time, it may be worth it.
The coolant in the unit and the coolant in the engine are different, so I would check with the manufacturer specs of both to see if they can use the same type of coolant.
Hi Pelagic, I decided not to plumb my unit to my engine because while underway, whether for a few hours or an overnight passage for our coastal cruising, we don't use heat or hot water. I like to keep things simple if I can, and this is one area that seemed a no-brainer not to complicate things.
If your cruising regularly involves crossing oceans under power for long periods of time, it may be worth it.
The coolant in the unit and the coolant in the engine are different, so I would check with the manufacturer specs of both to see if they can use the same type of coolant.
Hi SV Grace.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you are saying but my limited understanding on the Chinook is that this is a separate heat exchanger ... so does not mix???
I will clarify with Marcello if I’m wrong and a different coolant is an issue? I do believe the Heating fluid has different properties than an engine coolant/antifreeze
Understand the KISS principal but in this case, it has real benefits in the way I travel with my boat.
I call Stargazer an "efficient motor sailor in that with her 40 tons and long keel she needs about 12-15 knots of wind to sail above 5-6 knots.
With any useable wind and Perkins ticking around 1,000 rpm, I trip average 7.3 knots .
I will travel during winter months in Alaska and BC, so any scavenged energy to take the chill out down below is welcome and more preferable to using the diesel boiler.
As a sailboat, reaching she comes into her own about 18 to 25 knots
Thanks for the input and of the spares list along with SeaEagle... I will confirm how it works.
Ignitor, flame sensor, fuel filters, air filter, fuel nozzle, hose. We are contemplating carrying a spare fuel pump and circulation pump next winter.
We have spray foam insulation on the entire inside of the hull about 2-4" thick depending on location, except the engine room floor and a foot-wide race down the bilge for water to run (it's dry).
When a large temperature differential exists, our uninsulated engine room floor does condensate a little bit, which is annoying. I only see this in water temps around 32F/0C and it seems to go away once the water warms up to about 41F/5C, our engine room runs about 85F/29C with the heater running. We run a dehumidifier in the winter, maybe more fans would help? I would insulate what you can.
We are looking forward to a solution for the heater exhaust...
Thanks for that, where I am docked in Subic is at a friends Superyacht conversion shipyard and he has lots of 2" 2 sided Fiberglass Insulation. I will wrap all sides and pack between frames in the bilges.
[B]Also curious if you are plumbed to use your main engine heat to warm up the boat?[/B
Sent email to Steamship owner, who's boat is a liveaboard dive boat in Truk Lagoon, about shutoff solution.... I imagine he is in restricted lockdown as we are here in the Philippines
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions