Cross connect water heater?

[lhuff35204]

My cat has two water heaters. The cold water lines are cross connected to each hull, but the hot water is not. Recently one water heater failed so no hot water on that side. I plan to cross connect the hot lines as a backup for future issues, or is there a reason the hots are not cross connected?

[ggray]

The water lines to and from each of the two water heaters originally on our cat were connected together (hot to hot and cold to cold only, of course) at one central point . So even if only one engine had been used, hot water was available throughout the boat. It would, of course take longer for hot water to flow to the opposite side.

Water temperature fluctuated if only one engine had operated, so you might want to have a valve at each water heater to isolate it when desired.

If you will allow me to ramble... I later replaced the two water heaters with one larger one that had two heat exchangers, and plumbed coolant from each engine to that one WH. Temperature still fluctuates, but not so much.

[chrisr]

the waterheaters on our cat are plumbed same as for ggray : 2 outputs join into one line which feeds around the boat (duplicated hot & cold)

i think this is the norm

an isolating valve on each HWS is often a good idea...i know of some owners who fit one so that there is always hot water when they get to the shower...stop the kids using it all first

we actually have a confusing problem at the moment on one HWS. cold water goes in...get's heated (both by engine and by AC)...but nothing comes out. think we have a blockage somewhere in the output line, which is going to be an absolute @#$%^ to find.

other HWS works fine...

cheers,