Heater Question

[seandepagnier]

"In fact, long-term exposure to diesel exhaust particles poses the highest cancer risk of any toxic air contaminant evaluated by OEHHA. ... Diesel exhaust can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and it can cause coughs, headaches, lightheadedness and nausea."


Why would you subject yourself and anyone anchored near you to this?





Humans have evolved alongside wood smoke, not diesel smoke. It is far less dangerous, and wood is also free. It is easy to get plenty of firewood and effortless with an electric chainsaw charged from solar panels using canola oil to lubricate it.

[Chayal]

+1 for forced air diesel heaters.

I have a Dickinson Chesapeake as well as a planar, and we rarely use the Dickinson. We have the controls right above our berth, it’s so nice to turn it on without getting out of bed.

Also gives you options as far as heater ducting routing.

Can’t speak bad about the Dickinson though, It works well when warmed up too.

[Chayal]

Originally Posted by seandepagnier

"In fact, long-term exposure to diesel exhaust particles poses the highest cancer risk of any toxic air contaminant evaluated by OEHHA. ... Diesel exhaust can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and it can cause coughs, headaches, lightheadedness and nausea."


Why would you subject yourself and anyone anchored near you to this?





Humans have evolved alongside wood smoke, not diesel smoke. It is far less dangerous, and wood is also free. It is easy to get plenty of firewood and effortless with an electric chainsaw charged from solar panels using canola oil to lubricate it.

Not necessarily as easy to get depending on location though ^

Come to BC and start falling trees for firewood on crown land..

I just want to make a point that proper ventilation is a MUST when using a diesel heater.

I would strongly suggest a gas alarm

[VanIslandGuy]

We had a Dickenson Diesel Fireplace on our old Bayfield. We loved it. Heated the boat fast, dried out the boat well, and was very quiet. Make sure your boat has a good CO2 and smoke detector installed. We had good dorades on board but would usually leave one window cracked open just to ensure a good inflow of fresh air when using the fireplace.

Ours had an internal fan and fuel feed control. The trick to soot free operation was ensuring to not over fuel and get the fuel/air mixture right. The internal fan made this pretty easy to do. There is a learning curve though and it may be one or two slightly smoking sessions behind the glass of the fireplace until you get your technique dialed in for a clean burn.

The other nice feature of these heaters is that they draw nearly zero amps. Ours was fed by an electric fuel pump that likely drew .5 amps every hour of use as it would really only tick over every 10 seconds or so and deliver an eye dropper level of diesel to the burner cup. I drew fuel off my main tank that fed the engine. If you could fit a separate small day tank, you could mount it so that it could gravity feed and then go with just kerosene for an even cleaner burn.

We now have hydronic (Espar) on our Hunter. It works great but is an expensive investment and uses more battery power, however it is push button convenience and allows for zone heating and to heat your water as well.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by seandepagnier

"In fact, long-term exposure to diesel exhaust particles poses the highest cancer risk of any toxic air contaminant evaluated by OEHHA. ... Diesel exhaust can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and it can cause coughs, headaches, lightheadedness and nausea."

Why would you subject yourself and anyone anchored near you to this?

Humans have evolved alongside wood smoke, not diesel smoke. It is far less dangerous, and wood is also free. It is easy to get plenty of firewood and effortless with an electric chainsaw charged from solar panels using canola oil to lubricate it.

Where do you get that wood smoke is "far less dangerous" than diesel smoke? I don't think that's true:


https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/wood-smoke-and-your-health


And where do you get all this free firewood? Not where I sail.


Wood fires are lovely -- don't get me wrong -- but acquiring and storing the fuel is a major challenge. I've known a few people who had solid fuel stoves on board, and all of them eventually got rid of them because of these issues.

[mvweebles]

Had a Sigmarine bulkhead 17k btu diesel heater. Believe it to be same as Dickenson. I purchase new and lived aboard in San Francisco for several years. I had issues with back-puffing in SFs breezy climate. I extended the flue to about 7-feet (3-feet above deck level) and tried three different styles of Charlie Noble, and added a fan to force into the combustion chamber. The only thing I did not try was to install a second flue pipe to supply the combustion chamber as I did not want a second 4-inch flue in my cabin. I am well aware boats in the PNW use these reliably all winter long so I cannot explain why my experience was so poor except to point out SF Bay is pretty windy.

In the end, I was never comfortable leaving it unattended, and was very leery about using it overnight. For anyone who has seen a Diesel heater such as these back-puff, you will understand my caution. It inundates the boat with smoke, and the super- heated burner is at serious risk of reigniting the vaporized diesel. Which I'm sure would be explosive. I cannot imagine having happen unattended.

Peter

[Annie in WA]

End of story about ABYC standard and using cabin air to the bulkhead mounted diesel furnace. Thank you boatpoker for sending me the standard. It is okay according to ABYC to use cabin air. Safety standards change and ABYC like many underwriters look at case studies on accidents and injuries for their standards. It is a testament to this board that the facts can be brought to light.
Now if we could all agree on anchors...well perhaps in a perfect universe

[Chayal]

Can we confirm this with a page and reference? ^

What if the heater is in an engine room or in a bilge compartment?

I’m fairly confident that in this scenario a 100% fresh air intake is then required.

A confirmation would be great...

[Annie in WA]

ABYC REFERENCE A-7 Liquid and solid boat heating systems
7.5.12,7.5.13 and 7.5.14 deal with non room sealed combustion
requires CO & O2 sensors with tie in on O2 to stop furnace if below 95% of normal and a label posted about adequate ventilation
Hope this helps I am not comfortable posting exact copy as it is proprietary

[nuku34]

Drawing air from outside is pretty easy: just keep a dorade vent faced into the wind and leave the main companionway open a crack. I spent many years with a Reflex diesel heater on my 12m ketch. Many nights the heater was on all the time. Never got carbon monoxide poisioning. Common sense helps.