water heater advise

[sailor Martin]

hallo
i have an engein with an external cooling sistem so i dont have any fresh water in my engein. can i steel instull a normal water heater and work it with sea water?
what kind of problams could come up?

[Sailmonkey]

Not advisable. One the sea water doesn't really get hot enough to do much good, two the loop in the water heater would die in short order.

[rw58ph]

So why not install a small fresh water tank close to the water heater? Then you could run the engine raw water through it to heeat the fresh water.

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by rw58ph

So why not install a small fresh water tank close to the water heater? Then you could run the engine raw water through it to heeat the fresh water.

What you've just described is an off the shelf water heater with a coolant loop in it. While possible to run saltwater through these, their life will be limited, and raw cooled engines don't run as hot as exchanger cooled engines.

[Neo]

Originally Posted by rw58ph

So why not install a small fresh water tank close to the water heater? Then you could run the engine raw water through it to heeat the fresh water.

Not sure, but I think that was what the original poster was asking, i.e. rune the the hot raw water from the engine into a heat exchange in a fresh water heater.