The Water Heater, Part 2: The Insertion

Ah, the day has finally arrived. After a month or so with no hot water, the new water heater is here. It shines and gleams on the galley counter awaiting insertion into its hidey-hole in the engine room. And the weight of the newly acquired 11 gallon, West Marine (made in Taiwan) unit is great. It took two people to get the old heater off the boat. This one I can carry myself with no problem. (Probably because it’s made of tin… very thin stainless steel actually.) To be sure, this unit is on the cheaper end of water heaters but reviews were adequate enough online to reassure. The higher end models were up to a couple of thousand dollars, so the decision was made to go cheaper this time. Watch this space for our own review next year and whether or not you can actually pay less and succeed.

The new, 11 gal. water heater ready to go

Getting the unit up and running will require the following steps:

• Secure the unit into place between the starboard engine and the hull. (This gives some concern as the unit has two mounts protruding from underneath that can’t be removed and replaced; one of which arrived out of the box bent.)
• Prepare new water pipe and attach same to the unit. (We will be replacing the old ‘tap’ style shutoff valve at the same time, so we will have to go through the usual difficulties when replacing plumbing in this Singapore-built boat with its whacky fittings sizes.
• Attach the electrics.
• Remove the old heater-hose from beneath the stringers and replace it with new, modern hose to run coolant from the engine to the unit’s heat exchanger for heating water while underway.
• Test the results.

The first part of the mission went well as the lighter weight made manipulating the thing much easier. The mounts didn’t turn out to be a problem but I still had to remove two of the 6-volt batteries from the house bank again. It didn’t take long to get it in its space from that point, with Brooke jostling it for position as I held it up. It sure looked nice and shiny in there. (Compared to the rusting bulk of the already forgotten tub that it was replacing…)

The unit in place

Unfortunately, because of space restrictions, the rest of the installation basically fell on the Bosun with me standing by to hand tools and wires and cutting pipe as required. After some discussion about to where to run all the new white PEX pipes, Brooke attached them with Sharkbite connectors and elbows. 

Tiny Brooke in a tiny place

The electrics were a bit of a puzzle as all three wires that extruded from the running tube were black with stranded copper wire. We had marked these as they had been on the old unit but now we were finding it hard to determine which the negative was and which the ground wire. The three wires were labelled 34, 01 and 02. It seemed fairly obvious that the 34 wire was the power and that was confirmed at the panel with the multi-meter. I found that there were several other 01 and 02 wires coming up in other places, servicing other appliances and lights and such. Best possible guess was that 01 was the negative and 02 was the ground. This proved to be the case. 

Attaching the electrics

With all the attachments in place and tools out of the hold, testing began. First we tested the plumbing by filling the tank, turning on the new valve and letting trapped air out of the lines. Success… No leaks. Or so it seemed at the time.

Having tested this we made the final commitment to turn on the hot water heater at the AC panel and after an impatient 20 minutes or so turned on the hot water tap and, lo, hot water came splashing out.

When we went back down to do one last inspection, Brooke found, disturbingly, that there was a water leak coming from under the unit; in exactly the same position that the leak had occurred in the old heater. Was there a gremlin down there poking holes in our heaters? Well, of course, this turned out to be co-incidence in the end and not, in fact, a gremlin. (I later found out that gremlins are entirely mythical. Which would explain the absolute failure of my homemade gremlin traps.)

This gremlin trap (upon which I based my own version) turned out to be a hoax.

There was a leak though. The hot water out connection was sending a steady stream of water down through the housing and through the electric panel! The unit was quickly turned off and the leaking connector fixed by undoing it, replacing the pipe thread sealant and replacing it with a robust turning of the wrench. No more leak.

Brooke's fine connecting job

Brooke was the first to experiment with the wonders of the new heater by having a shower. The ooh’s and ah’s emanating from the stateroom gave signal that the job had been completed successfully.

Next we turned our attention to the heat exchanger connection. We had made the decision to use new heater-hose instead of the continuing to rely on the now 35 year-old rigid pipes that came with the boat. Although the old pipe didn’t seem to be compromised too much, it seemed like the best idea. This we did with two, 6-foot lengths of pre-cut Goodyear heater-hose. Because the engine had half-inch outlets for these hoses and the new heater had 5/8” outlet/inlets, we had to use two different size hoses and join them up. I suspect that this wouldn’t be recommended but there was little choice really. At any rate all of our joints seem to be holding well; barb connectors with clamps. Then we connected the hoses to the engine with a jug standing by for spillage and a quick turn-over system that involved quickly removing the hose and covering the exposed outlet with a finger while sticking the hose into the spill jug. This we accomplished with a minimum of mess. After connecting the new hoses to the engine we topped off the coolant and, using the relief valve, bled the system of air.

Next we had to test the validity of our coolant hose connections. We started the starboard engine with fingers-crossed (the resulting mess from a faulty hose would be very ugly). It seemed to be holding well. We let the engine reach running temperature to be sure of the integrity of the hose and it passed off well. Later, after our next short journey, we found that the heat-exchanger was working well, too.

This was another case of finding that by using our knowledge of the boat and our experience (which is always increasing), that we could save a lot of money and get great satisfaction out of doing jobs like this ourselves; especially when the results are so palpable.

Happy 'cause we're clean... now let's go wash the cat!