Hydronic diesel heater to yanmar 3gm30f and califor hot water tank?

[NorthCoastJoe]

In My Pearson 30 I have a Yanmar 3GM30F it does not care how cold it is outside, it fires right away all year.

I also have a cheapo hot air heater that I would not trust to run while I sleep. The exhaust gets way too hot for my liking and I used a longer exhaust looped around to get some of the heat off before it goes overboard.

I would plan my exhaust routing very carefully if you do the Cheap Chinese heater.

[shimari]

Originally Posted by Mg451

Does it have a loud ticking fuel pump like the air heaters? I think I'm gonna add radiators and remove my domestic hot water from the engine add it tonthe diesel heater loop with 2 radiators. Ill go back and add the a/b plate exchanger to the diesel heater loop to capture heat from running the motor. to remove any type of room for all the mishaps described.

We have an Ebersbächer hydronic M10 plumbed into our dual coil (separate loops for engine and heater) hot water heater. It is nice on a cold day/night to have hot water without starting the engine/generator or draining the batteries.

Our M10 does have the "ticking" fuel pump.

[Bellinghamster]

Mine has a ticking fuel pump, but it's not very noticeable. Soft-mounting the fuel pump with rubber helps a LOT with the transmitted noise into the boat structure.

[Cpt Mark]

Originally Posted by NorthCoastJoe

In My Pearson 30 I have a Yanmar 3GM30F it does not care how cold it is outside, it fires right away all year.

I also have a cheapo hot air heater that I would not trust to run while I sleep. The exhaust gets way too hot for my liking and I used a longer exhaust looped around to get some of the heat off before it goes overboard.

I would plan my exhaust routing very carefully if you do the Cheap Chinese heater.

I'm on the Columbia river in Portland Oregon and yes. It gets stupid cold here and one of my yanmar's 3GM30F didn't like to start in cold weather. They still don't like it so much but what really made a difference was 1 day I did an Itallian Tune Up. The 1 engine that gave me the most problems does no more. Yay

[Mg451]

Do you know what is the flow rate and pressure of your circulator pump?

[Bellinghamster]

Originally Posted by Mg451

Do you know what is the flow rate and pressure of your circulator pump?

See the bottom of post #7 for my circ pump model and flow. The Eberspacher "Electronically controlled BLDC motor" water pump is rated 600l/hr (about 2.6gpm), "delivery pressure difference" 0.15 bar.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Cpt Mark

... but what really made a difference was 1 day I did an Itallian Tune Up. The 1 engine that gave me the most problems does no more. Yay

An “Italian Tune-Up” consists of accelerating the engine to [near] full rpm, with a heavy load [in gear], to develop maximum heat, thereby burning residual carbon.
The claim is that, it burns out carbon deposits [that build up, from lower speed idling], in the combustion chamber, the injectors, and the exhaust system.
The name comes from Ferrari, whose mechanics took customer cars out onto the racetrack, for a few hot laps, at the end of which, the cars [reportedly] performed better.
Call me a cynic, but this sounds like a great excuse, for a Ferrari mechanic to have some fun, with a customer car [mixed in with a liberal dose of confirmation bias].
A diesel, that is run up to operating temperature [at ANY rpm], doesn't carbon up.

[Mg451]

Just reread your post and noted part #'s thanks. When the motor is running and the diesel heater is off, your using the Johnson Pump to circulate. Does the pump that comes in the heater need to be "messed with" in order for coolant to flow past it properly?

[nick83]

@Bellinghamster, I'm installing a hydronics system on my 39' Privilege catamaran and your post was helpful, thank you.

This is my first post to this forum.

One question I'm wondering about is how many gallons of coolant are needed. Anything you can speak to this would be great. Do you have a buffer tank or expansion tank anywhere to add volume?

Currently my design has 11 gallons plus the coolant would circle through our 6 gallon water heater, so roughly 17 gallons total. I'm concerned about short cycling.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by nick83

@Bellinghamster, I'm installing a hydronics system on my 39' Privilege catamaran and your post was helpful, thank you.

This is my first post to this forum.

One question I'm wondering about is how many gallons of coolant are needed. Anything you can speak to this would be great. Do you have a buffer tank or expansion tank anywhere to add volume?

Currently my design has 11 gallons plus the coolant would circle through our 6 gallon water heater, so roughly 17 gallons total. I'm concerned about short cycling.

That's more than 60 liters, so quite a significant thermal mass. About 70 watt-hours per 1 degree of delta T. Hysteresis in Eber Hydronics is huge; like 30 degrees C. With that much thermal mass and that much hysteresis, short cycling is just about impossible. They have four or five power levels, so just keep dropping the power level down until the temperature stabilizes; they don't usually shut down at all.

The bigger issue with these is long term running at low power settings, which on diesel fuel tends to coke up the combustion chamber. That's not a question of thermal mass, but a question heat use/loss through the system. I wish these units (I have the M12 myself) had an indicator on the control panel of which regime they are in, to see if this is a problem.

In my case, with 12kW of heat in a 54' boat with three fan coils plus calorifier, this doesn't seem to be a problem so long as it's cold enough that I'm using a decent amount of heat.

But previous to my current M12, which I've had since 2018 without any issues, I had the old Hydronic 10, which constantly gave me problems, requiring service or repair practically every year.

It's recommended to use kerosene in these rather than diesel fuel, at least occasionally. This is supposed to keep the burners squeaky clean. I've never gone to the trouble to install the separate tank which would be needed for this, but if I were building a new boat, I would surely have a fairly capacious kerosene tank to feed the heater. You would have to have the fuel delivered separately -- bit of a faff -- but besides working better, kerosene is usually cheaper than diesel, and smells better when you burn it.