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[Music]  a little bit about my  self i'm jeff cote with pacific yacht  systems  a big passion for boating i mean if i  had to describe myself in one word it'd  be a boater  some of you might care to learn more  about this topic  we write two columns every month uh one  in pacific yachting one in northwest  yachting  all those articles are actually  published and available for download on  our website  for free they're all up there there's  you can find any article that we've ever  written  ready for download so you don't need a  subscription  as a boater i'm a big fan here in the  pacific northwest of going a little  further afield  and in the summer that means being in  places that aren't all that warm  as soon as you pass sort of a place  called the discoveries right past  isolation sound  it goes from summer to spring or fall  instantly  within 10 nautical miles five nautical  miles  the water drops in temperature from  mid 70s to low 50s and suddenly the  weather pattern is completely different  even in july or august  and so as a boater here in the pacific  northwest having a heating system  is a way for some of us to go in places  where  it's not warm and it might be the  shoulder season  it might be the winter or it might be  summer further north  or on the outside of vancouver island i  was on the outside of vancouver island  in the summer  most of the weekends i was there in port  alberni it was 28 degrees  and in tofino our eucalypt was about 15  degrees  there's almost a 15 degree difference  between inland temperatures  and outside of vancouver island  temperatures  there's no summer there i mean there is  but it's not it's not insane heat  so we're actually turning on the heat in  july and august  on the outside of vancouver island to  take off a little bit of the cold  in the morning and sometimes even at  night  our business specializes in electrical  electronics and heating systems uh we're  predominantly we do servicing and  installs here in the  british columbia just because of  distances in the border  and we got invited over a thousand boat  projects last year  really proud of that so the team made  that happen  and we also do a lot of design that's  our fastest growing product  or product line is doing design for  international clients  figuring out what they want helping them  make decisions so we did over 200 of  those projects last year  now one other important point  i'm a big believer in sharing and we've  got over a hundred and three  right now today 165 videos on youtube  and we're probably going to have another  50 within a couple months  so we've got about 30 in the backlog so  if you're curious about any sort of  these topics and you want to geek out  and you want to geek out in your own  time and not just add a boat show  all those presentations are on our  website and also on youtube  all available of course and i chose to  do no ads i could have made a little bit  of money with youtube  but i thought it's such an annoyance and  it's not worth it so all the all the  videos are  without ads on youtube  realistically when you're thinking  you've decided and this is a good point  i mean you've decided that  it's going to make sense for you to do  heating on your boat and you're going to  use a  diesel-powered heating  device on your boat you really have two  choices at this point  and i'll show you a slide that helps you  make selection but you're really going  to look at either  hair heating so you're kind of like  using diesel you're warming air and then  you're just pushing that hair directly  from the heater  through ducting big ducting  to a location  you can do that but there's limits in  terms of the boat size and we'll talk  about that  or you're going to do sort of what's  called a hydronic heating where you're  actually warming water  and via pump you're circulating that  warm coolant water throughout the boat  and then you're taking the warm water  and running it through  heat exchangers right with fans on them  that are blowing and converting sort of  like household heating  back in the 1900s there'd be a boiler  downstairs you'd send water throughout  the home  you'd have radiators that would emanate  heat  same idea the only difference is these  heat exchangers throughout the boat  are also going to have fans to help the  air circulate because we're trying to  get a small radiator effectively  maybe this big and so we'll be blowing  air across  these pipes to send dry heat  and then the good news with hydronic is  you can start having  multiple of these heat exchangers far  away  from the heater itself so we've done we  just did a boat  just recently an owner from alaska  brought his boat  from ketchikan brought his boat to  prince rupert flew a team up to prince  rupert  and we installed on a big 55-footer a  big heater  that had actually heat in the flybridge  there's three cabins  two heads the salon we even put heat in  the engine room  so we actually put all these different  heat exchangers and we couldn't have  done that with a forced air system  so at one point there's an upper limit  to a forced air system and so that might  be  a reason why you're going to consider a  hydronic heating system  so those are sort of two charts to show  you  um how you go  choosing a hydronic system versus a  forced air so the top  section is hydronic the bottom section  is forced air  okay and you can see that generally we  end up doing forced air  probably in the cutting cabin 25 footers  30 footer maybe 35 foot sailboats  right but again the problem is you might  have the air coming out in the salon but  how are you going to have a heater  installed in the af lazarette for  example  and having ducting that's three inches  or four inches  pushing air all the way forward to  a cabin in the v-berth you won't so in  those  situations owners are compromising  they're saying you know what i'm okay  in the cabin we'll have sleeping bags  we'll stay warm we won't get a lot of  heat  and we'll have the heat from the cabin  maybe sort of slowly emanating  towards the cabin but we're not going to  have my own  sort of eating outlet in the cabin up at  the front of the boat  so those are limitations of the forest  air and every time  you sort of put a y or you put a bend  it restricts the flow right because it's  another bend  and that's going to slow down the  airflow so you just have to be realistic  with a hair tronic system  aboard a boat okay  here's a little bit of a picture of what  an airtronic heater forced air  heater looks like i mean at the end of  the day  sort of what are the inputs well one of  them first of all is diesel  fuel right so you need clean diesel fuel  so if your fuel is really  lots of sediment in it right or your  tank hasn't been cleaned in a long time  and you're in really sort of bad seas  that can clog your fuel filter we'll  talk about that but you need diesel fuel  you're also going to need battery power  those heaters need  some battery power to run especially  forced air  the blower right and with hydronic  you're going to need battery power to  run  the coolant pump right that circulates  and then to run all the fans  so there is an element of power  consumption  from running a diesel heater the heat  generation  is from diesel but the circulation of  that heat  throughout the boat is electric okay  you also need a clean air supply input  right so on some installs we're actually  going to take the air outside the boat  so that we're actually and in some  instances we're taking it from inside  the boat  but those are dilemmas that you have to  ask where am i going to get the air to  run that heater  okay both for the combustion chamber and  also  for the source of air that's going to be  especially with the forced air  where that air is going to be blowing  out  the output of that besides warm air  is also the exhaust there's an exhaust  component  so you need to worry we're going to talk  about how the exhaust has to be routed  in a certain way and where that exhaust  you're generally going to want to have  it more at the aft after the boat we'll  talk about that a little bit too  so here's a little bit of a recap of  what we saw so the inputs are clean  diesel fuel  with no sediments even though there's a  filter the filters do get clogged if  you've got really bad diesel fuel  battery power 12 or 24 air supply  and then your outputs are warm air and  which is heat  and an exhaust okay so those are sort of  the inputs outputs  of the force air system here's what an  image of aerotronic system looks like  we've got here on the slide on the top  left you've got the heater itself  and here just beneath it you've got an  exhaust you can see all the different  type of hose clamps  there's even a sort of a little drip  pure drip loop  at the bottom so if ever there's  condensation that builds up in the  exhaust  it can actually drip down you've got a  double wall  exhaust outlet so that  the outlet itself goes through  and doesn't you can see it there's a  little bit more thickness here than  inside  so there's sort of an air gap so that  your fiberglass doesn't get tarnished as  it's leaving the boat  here's the fuel pump itself and the  orientation we're going to talk about  that a little bit later but the  orientation of the pump is very  important there's a there's a filter on  the inline  and then the out of the this is very  important we'll talk about that  and there's also a fuel pickup and  that's the wiring harness  and that's the example of the ducting so  the challenge with a force air eater in  some instances  is where am i going to be able to run  uh air ducting that's maybe three inches  or four inches  from the heater to the few multiple  locations i've decided to have  like maybe i want to run a defroster i  want to have one go in the cabin and  like i've got a cuddy like a 28 foot you  know fishing boat  i want one to go in the cabin want to go  outside beneath the feet of the operator  the driver  i want one to go inside the windows i  just want three outlets  that's reasonable right not too big of a  boat makes sense but the challenge is  how am i gonna get three outlets  from one unit with four-inch ducting  there's not a lot of walls this is not a  house right there's not like double  there's not a lot of places that have  four inches of space between the outside  hall and the inside hole  so you've got to take those  considerations before you do an  aerotronic system  you got to think about how the hell am i  going to route these big air ducts  throughout the boat in some situations  it absolutely works  and some other ones it's just not  possible even though you want to you  just can't do it  okay so we talked about the heater  itself right here  we talked about uh the air ducting the  exhaust which is right in the middle  the fuel pump the harness right  and what we didn't talk about was the  thermostats so there's two choices of  thermostats sort of an analog digital  thermostat pretty straightforward  to use on off and this is sort of the  warmer the further you go the warmer it  gets  or you can actually have this one which  actually  not only gives you dial in exactly the  temperature you want so you can say 72  degrees  but you can also have uh alarms and  codes  helps for diagnosing figuring out what's  going on my heater's not working why is  it not working  this thing is actually outputting error  codes and if you've got one of these  analog  thermostats you won't know that you'll  need to have someone a technician come  on board  with the gear or bring the heater to  them and they'll put it on the bench and  they'll tell you what the issue is  here's sort of the different types of  hydronic  heating you've got basically the d2 d4  look like this the d5 looks like this  you can there's a long formula and i  didn't decide not to share it there's a  there is a formula in deciding how many  ducting you're going to have and what  the path is going to look like  and what your bends are going to look  like when you do an aerotronic system  hope is never sort of  the best approach right in anything so  you want to take the time to make sure  that it's realistic to have that heater  not have too strong of a bend i've heard  recently  that some heaters actually feel so much  back pressure when they're blowing air  that they're thinking that there's a  problem and they'll reduce the heater  output by 50 percent  because there's so many tight vents to  get to the outlet  and there's so much back pressure that  the heater is like i can't output full  capacity  and so the heater runs continuously at  50 percent of capacity  so when you're installing a air  hydraulic heater on board  make sure that you go through the time  of thinking  what are going to be all the bends and  that the airflow can go  unimpeded to the outlets okay  here's some a little bit about the  reality is that  unfortunately over time there's always a  sort of a water layer that accumulates  in our water  heat diesel tanks through condensation  it's just a reality right  the tanks aren't always full you're  going to have condensation inside the  tank the condensation the water  and the fuel where they meet there's  going to be a layer of sort of  microbes that live there and over time  they die and that's that sort of sludge  that comes at the bottom of the tank  i remember years ago my heater would  stop working on a crossing  really bad crossing 30 knots like it was  like a laundry mat  and when we got to the anchorage in the  middle of winter  december 23rd the heater wouldn't work  it worked at the dock before we left but  didn't work  when we got there and i was like well  that doesn't make sense why would the  heater stop working it was working this  morning  last night when we slept on board but  now it's stopped and it starts but it  just sort of  there's an issue and sure enough i was  like oh my god  we were sloshing around all that  sediment in the tank  and i went to the fuel filter and it was  completely clogged up  i felt like such a hero saved the day  and then my partner reminded me why do  we have so much sludge in the diesel  tank weren't you supposed to clean it  before last year i was like  yeah you're not supposed to remember  that  i had a i had a win for a moment there  so that's another  unrelated to diesel heaters but you want  to make sure if your tanks haven't been  cleaned in a long time  and you're thinking about adding a  diesel heater make sure that the fuel  pickup line  doesn't go to the bottom of the tank and  if in your really bad sea state and  you're being bounced around  and you're running the heater you're  gonna probably end up having sediment  going up  clogging the filter and then you're  gonna have to undo the filter  clean it out and let the sediment  go back to the bottom okay or what you  should do is clean your tanks more often  than we like to do  it's expensive to do that right but  there are services that do that i've  done  my boat i've done my road for 14 years  now and i've had my tanks cleaned twice  and i always keep my tanks as full as  possible but  it's just a reality there's always going  to be some sort of water in your diesel  tank  and water with diesel fuel causes these  microbes to live and then  they die create a sludge and then  they're in the bottom of your tank  so the rule is when you're installing a  fuel pickup  the distance between the fuel pump and  the heater is it can pull for six can  push for 20 and it can rise three feet  the other thing too that i've heard from  service technicians  is that people will end up buying a  bigger heater  looking at the pump they look the same  leave the pump there  thinking don't need to change it this  becomes a spare  but what they don't realize is every  single pump is tailored for a specific  flow it's a metering pump it's the exact  flow rate that the heater needs so when  you  change the heater change the pump  okay  here's another big takeaway especially  for heaters as well  a heater is one of those things that  breaks the rules for electrical systems  meaning it's an always-on battery  connection  on a boat there's not too many things  that should always be on meaning  that when you turn the battery switch  off things are still working  bilge pumps would be an exception to  that right bilge pump should be on  even with the battery switch off your  carbon dioxide if you have one on board  on board would be unswitched meaning  even with the battery switch off that's  still going to be powered  stereo memory unswitched otherwise every  time you turn the battery switch off you  lose all your settings  in your stereo another one of those  devices that is  unswitched as well is and that's really  important  is your heater your heater can never  ever ever black and white be  disconnected from power  suddenly without cooling down it needs  to go through a cool down process  so all heaters should bypass the switch  and go directly to the battery via an  inline circuit breaker  so even if you are having your heater  you're on for your boat you're running  your heater you're doing maintenance  you decide to shut off the battery  switch your heater cannot be powered  from the switch  side of the battery switch if you do  that the heater is not going to go  through a cool down process  and you're probably going to permanently  damage your heater okay  honestly most techs that install heaters  know that i'd say 99  so it's not an issue but if you're ever  rewiring your boat and you're like well  that's stupid why is my heater on the  unswitched side  let me put it on the switch side of the  circuit and you accidentally one day  turn off the switch while the heater is  running  your heater's not going to go through  the cool down process and then you're  probably going to damage your heater  the other thing too a big takeaway and i  see this all the time it's not so much  related to heater but it's related to  magical heaters what's a magical heater  a magical heater is a heater that does  not draw power  and i get this all the time people say  to me jeff look at my battery monitor my  battery monitor  i don't draw any power when my heater's  on i'm like  listen i i i want you to have what you  want  but there is no such thing as a magical  heater your fans  aren't powered by diesel you know the  thermostat  is not powered by diesel there are  electrical components  on your heater what you mean to say is  that the person that installed your  battery monitor  didn't understand that the negative from  the heater should not bypass the battery  monitor shut  generally i get called on those boats  and the batteries are dying prematurely  and they're like i don't understand my  batteries are dying prematurely but  luckily they tell me  my heater doesn't draw power i'm like  it's actually related  your heater draws power you don't count  it in your battery monitor your  batteries are dying because you're  drawing them down  but you don't know that because your  batter your heater bypasses the shunt  so it's very important to have the  positive connection go directly to the  battery  but the negative connection has to go on  the load side of the battery monitor  shunt  and i cannot tell you if you have a  battery monitor and a heater on your  boat  eighty percent of you have the shunt not  properly wired  because people just are following the  directions from the heater manufacturer  and the heater manufacturer doesn't now  know you have a battery monitor and so  they're like well they're both doing  what they're being told to do  but they're not understanding that both  products are working together  okay so make sure if you have a battery  monitor on board or you have a heater  installed on your boat make sure that  it draws power when you're running your  heater if it doesn't it tells you right  away  that someone bypassed the shunt okay  here's what the exhaust and i wanted to  show you see how it's double walled  you have sort of that's the exhaust  that's going to get really hot but the  hall is never going to see that because  there's actually an air gap  between the really hot exhaust and  actually what's going to be touching or  near touching the fiberglass  in the past they weren't doing that and  the exhaust you would actually see  tarnishing on my boat that's what  happened my heater was probably  installed in the 1990s  and you had actually yellow tarnishing  of the fiberglass  you couldn't see it but as soon as you  remove the haul fitting you actually saw  that the the fiberglass got  really smoking hot nowadays what they're  doing is they're putting these double  walled  outlets now here's another thing too  you'll notice there's sort of an angle  there  especially if you're a sailboater the  exhaust should actually go  up and have a goose neck and come down  again right  you never want water sometimes waves  come even on a power boat  you know waves are not always sort of  below the water line  waves do hit our boats and when they hit  our boats we hear them and sometimes  it's scary  well that force of water coming in if  you've got your outlet  the highest point of your hall right but  not the superstructure but  and it's this high and you simply have  it going down you could literally flood  your heater so you have to have it go up  and down again so you need a goose neck  on your exhaust and that's why  this exhaust has already sort of that  bend to it because it's already coming  in you face that going up  and then you have it going down again  okay  and then you're probably wondering well  how do i have make sure that exhaust  doesn't move around you have offsets  that you install throughout the boat to  make sure that the  even though it's pretty rigid you never  want a warm exhaust even though it's  wrapped  touched fiberglass right because they  got pretty they get pretty smoking hot  especially the hydronic ones  um i was trying to get i couldn't get a  really high rest picture but it gives it  a drift of you see sort of a y  right so that's sort of how you get one  heater outputting one outlet because a  hyetronic only has one outlet  pretty big three inch four inch you get  it and then you start separating it out  right to two outlets three outlets  but again remember hard bends are a big  problem  right it's like anything it's like a  river this moment a river hits a 90  degree  i mean there's huge amount of erosion on  that side of the river  right hard bends are hard for everything  so generally you want to have a soft  event as possible now that's easy to say  but on a boat hard to do i mean we have  all these physical constraints on our  boats and so it's a challenge again with  those ducting right of getting these  soft bends  to not limit the rate of airflow coming  out  troubleshooting tips if you've got lots  of grey smoke coming out of the exhaust  then it's probably a sign that you have  actually a combustion problem which is  generally a sign that you probably have  the fuel filter flog  which is generally a sign that you had  too much sediments in your tank  check the fuel filter fuel filter is  actually right here  little screen now here's a really  important thing  never ever ever ever black and white  especially on the espar ones  loosen this at the top if you loosen the  outlet of the pump you're actually gonna  need to have it brought back to the shop  they'll need to change it  it's actually done at the factory and  that's what decides  precisely the flow that's coming out so  when you loosen  the bottom never loosen the top if you  do loosen the top  then the metering the exact metering  that you need for your pump won't happen  okay another thing too that happens a  lot of times is people  remember our battery voltage is not  perfectly steady right  and over time it drifts and it goes  lower and lower and lower the longer red  anchor or if it's a bad battery it goes  there quickly quickly what that means  for you  as a boater is a way to troubleshoot is  if your heater runs no problem when  you're connected to shore power which  means you're connected  have a battery charger on that's  generally a problem of  your battery's becoming weaker right and  the heater dies  it's not that the heater's problematic  is that your batteries are being drained  and if your battery monitors onboard and  it's being bypassed  because it wasn't installed properly  it's sort of like making decisions in  the dark  right so it does happen where people are  blaming the heater  but what it comes down to is that the  battery that's powering part of the  heater  is getting weak and if you have bad  connections  long lines then it makes it worse and  worse because the voltage drop  so try it at the dock if everything runs  well at the dock with the battery  charger on and you're  at 13 5 13 6 volts on a 12 volt system  then that tells you that the problem is  a battery problem  it's not a heater problem it means that  your batteries are either weak  or there's too much voltage drop on the  line okay  and a big warning never disconnect power  on a heater when it's operating so even  if you have you'll see a little circuit  breaker  generally close to the battery never  press that on or off  or disconnect the heater when it's  running ever  because i said it's going to cause  there's no cool down process if there's  no cooldown process  the heater is going to be permanently  damaged  so next what we're talking about is  hydronic this is the d5  you can see the 17 000 btus british  thermal units  up to three heat exchangers five heat  exchangers well i'll show you examples  of that here's an example of  uh an m2 d10  here's a you see that's the coolant pump  at the bottom  i'll show you a little bit this is a  breakout of what it looks like  so you got this water pump right some of  them can be external  so with a hydronic system what you're  doing is you're saying okay  i'm realizing the constraints of having  airflow on my boat  i've got a bigger boat and i need to  have my  all these different places on my boat  warmed up at different temperatures  maybe you on the salon warmer than your  i know you're the vip cabin or  another cabin on the boat or the galley  or the fly bridge  so with a hydronic system you can start  having multiple thermostats  multiple zones like i've ensemble we  have four zones  five zones and what you're doing is  you're circulating all that heat  throughout the boat via coolant via  these sort of  pipes about this big in diameter and  it's a loop  right goes one in one out one end one  out  and uh again same sort of fuel fuel  coming in  air coming in exhaust  now this sort of i'll show you what the  exhaust looks like in the marine it's a  little bit  you can't really put those in they're  about this big in diameter  so you'll have a silencer and again  going it's very important that those  outlets for exhaust are at the aft of  the boat ideally  facing half so that there's wind coming  but again be careful here in the pacific  northwest a lot of us end up stir tying  right  we stir and tie so you stern tie but  sometimes the wind's not always coming  from the front when you're stern tying  you could have the wind coming from the  aft if you've got an exhaust coming  from the back of your boat and the  wind's coming from behind you  it's very likely that that one's going  to go through the companion way through  the door  and you're really going to have carbon  monoxide points sitting inside your boat  i never ever like i am super paranoid  like i will never run my heater on my  boat at night  when i'm stern tight i'll control it in  the daytime because i know where the  wind's coming from but sometimes there's  wind shift changes your stern tide and  now suddenly in the middle of the night  it wasn't supposed to happen  the wind's coming from being behind  and now the wind's blowing in your boat  from your cockpit and that's blowing  literally exhaust fumes inside of your  boat and it's a silent killer  so as a rule of thumb i never am stern  tied  and running my heater at night and as  much as possible if i'm running my  heater i want to be swinging an anchor  so the wind's always coming from the bow  the wind comes and it's blown away from  the boat  sort of a little hydronic you've got an  exhaust  simplified a little bit here you got a  header tank  and there's also missing here there's  also an expansion tank  these fan matrix have different names  we'll talk about that too  these hydronic fan heaters right  and this is how coolant is plumbed in  and out and then you have  some heat exchangers or fan heaters have  one outlet two outlets three outlets and  they're all made for different sizes  some of them have crazy btus  like for example on my boat you know  i've got a bigger heat exchanger for my  cabin  like my main salon and galley than i do  for  the place where we sleep in our sleeping  cabins right  i only need a small heat exchanger for  there because i don't need it that warm  but in my main cabin i've got a big  spookum heat exchanger when i turn it up  i can warm up my cabin very quickly  right so i have a catalina 36 i have  four heat exchangers on my boat  right i have some that i have only  sometimes i only use to warm up the boat  really quickly  and then after that they're just during  so much heat i actually put them  i put them to sleep i turn them off  coolant's still going through them but  i'm not drawing heat from them  because sometimes i want to warm up the  boat quickly i don't want it to take two  three four hours to warm up the boat i  want the boat to be warmed up as  fast as possible all these fans can be  controlled obviously via thermostat and  also individual fan controls  like high off low right so there's a  little bit to control  some of the the heat coming off of there  the other big  important thing to notice and why a lot  of people end up doing these hydronic  systems  is that you can actually integrate them  directly into your existing hot water  tank  marine hot water tanks can be powered by  ac right with an ac circuit breaker  meaning the generator or shore power is  available or you can actually there's  actually an in and  out for coolant you can have those  plumbed to your engine  right via the auxiliary so you can  actually have a coolant loop  so when your engine is running for  propulsion you're also warming  water in a marine hot water tank not via  ac  but via coolant or you can run them  through a hydronic heating system  meaning you could be in anchorage  and literally have your hydronic system  on the engine hasn't been on for three  days  and you're literally having the coolant  that's coming from there  go through your basically hot water tank  so you have hot water pretty much in the  winter i've got hot water all the time  because my heater's running all the time  and so there's always cooling going  through the heater  okay and you don't need to have the main  engine  to be connected to the hot water tank if  you want both you'll need valves  because you can't have two things  connected to one thing so you'll need to  have y  valves decide am i going to run hot am i  going to warm  my ace my marine hot water tank via my  engine  propulsion engine or via my hydronic  heating  so these hydronic fan eaters you're  going to choose them based on btu size  physical size means remember this is a  boat you don't do what you want you do  what you can  right there's a lot of places you can't  fit that heat exchanger you want to fit  a heat exchanger  this big in your head it's not where are  you going to mount it  right you end up doing what you can so  there's sort of the wishlist and then  there's reality  right and you can get creative but you  can only get creative so much it's a  physical space that has  tons of constraints on some boats we can  only fit a  heat exchanger fan heater like this big  that's it some other places we can get a  big one like that it depends on where  it's going to be mounted  sometimes you don't mount it where you  want it you mount it where you can  okay and the number of vents that you  have also a big takeaway there is  because power is limited on a boat  especially battery power  you also have to remember that you'll  want to make sure you get  fans that are efficient with power  consumption  on my boat if i have all my fans on high  and i'm running everything at the same  time my heater can draw up to 15 amps at  12 volts  that's a lot my fridge only takes like  four  that's four times the power consumption  in my fridge to heat my boat now my  heater doesn't run  24 7 it comes on and off and then  sometimes i might  make my fans in low if i'm really sort  of being draconian i might turn off some  heat exchangers  like if we're out in anchorage for three  four or five days i might not warm a  cabin that we're not gonna spend time in  you know like for example we sleep in  the aft cabin  my ford cabin has a heat exchanger i'm  gonna turn that off  i'm not there there most of the time i  close the door i'm not going to heat a  room i don't need and have a fan  turned on drawing power because i have  maybe i have a lot of diesel  i'm not too worried about diesel but i  don't have enough battery power  so that's what basically a single fan  heater looks like right and you can buy  them in  single double triples  here's one another one two here surface  mount i have one like that in my boat  literally there's i've got a cutout it's  about this big  and the heat exchanger is right behind  it and it's blowing fan there's not a  small outlet the outlet is literally  i'm almost that size right in the in the  main salon  here's a dual fan heater  right so you could for example very  commonly like we did that on another  boat  we'll install one in between let's say a  cabin and a head and one outlet is going  to go in the head  and the outlet is going to go in the  cabin on my boat i have one  beneath the aft cabin one goes in the  galley one goes in the  in the aft cabin right because you can't  put  i mean ideally you'd want to have a heat  exchanger for every single room but  again  it's not money it's where you're going  to put all this stuff like even if you  have endless money  if you have a normal sized boat you're  like and even a 70-foot boat it's still  hard to put extra  where are you going to put them there's  not these cavities everywhere that are  just  oh here you go there's an empty cavity  that nobody ever thought about using  on a boat that doesn't happen it's like  empty cavity there's a drawer empty  cavity there's storage  people are thinking about using space  all the time  so remember in the other slide this is  an essential part of a hydronic heating  system  and you've got this expansion tank you  can buy them either vertical or  horizontal  and you'll notice here this is where  you're going to have an overflow tank  you see this little nozzle here and here  that's connected to this overflow tank  remember with exact anything hot there  it says  on the cap but you can never open that  up when it's warm of course it says  right on the cap so you got to wait  if you're going to service your heater  you got to wait for it to cool down  right because this is going to get  pretty high pressure in here  when it's running  overflow tank this is a picture of a  coolant some  some heaters have the coolant pump  integral part of the unit some have it  external right  but that's because remember your diesel  heater  warms up coolant but i mean it's one  thing to warm up something you have to  then  start circulating throughout the boat  and so you do that with a coolant pump  okay and that's the pump that actually  circulates all the coolant throughout  the boat  same with the hydronic you've got  different thermostats but here's where  it gets interesting  you have these aftermarket sort of  boards  right the ability of controlling  multiple zones so you could say  i want my head to be warmer than  my cabin but i want my flybridge to be  so and so temperature  you can actually have the heater turn on  and off  individually for different zones  so if all the zones are off the heater's  off you turn one zone and you say i want  this zone to be at 72 degrees fahrenheit  i want this zone to be at 78.  if no heater is on the 78 is going to  see i need heat  at 72 the other one said now i'm going  to only turn on the fan the heater's  running  and i'm going to have the fan running so  they're both deciding if they should  turn on the fan and if there's not  enough heat in the system  they're going to turn on the heater as  well so you're literally controlling  all these different zones on your boat  which is nice  that means that you don't have to have  everything warmed up all at once at the  same temperature  because what happens is you might have a  thermostat in one part of the boat  right and then that place gets hotter  sooner than somewhere else and so you  might have cool spots and hot spots  the way to do that is to have multiple  thermostats sounds great  downside is it costs more money it takes  more time right  so it depends on what you want to do  easy is one thermostat and whatever  temperature is at that thermostat  is the temperature that the heater is  going to stop working so you might  increase the temperature there and have  it warmer in some places and  to make it less cold than others right  so that's why i like to have multiple  thermostats on a hydronic heating system  so that everyone can have the  temperature they want  where they want it  so the takeaway here is you know when  we're installing  the first conversation let's say for  example for that alaska owner  never saw the boat got blueprints of the  boat we said okay well how many heat  exchangers we're going to put on board  right  that's the first question what do we  need to warm up do you want to warm the  fly bridge  you know are you do you want to warm up  both you've got three cabins on board  are we warming up all the three cabins  yeah are we warming both heads  yeah are we going to warm up the galley  the salon  yeah then you start okay all right so  now let's where are we going to put  those heat exchangers and there's what  you imagine  and what's going to fit because before  you start and then you've got to measure  okay  here's the one i'm speccing out oh yeah  where the hell am i going to put that  can't do that that's not going to work  and then that's where you got to go back  to the drawing board and start getting  creative in your selection  of these hair antlers right to figure  out which ones are going to work  and then you decide okay well then where  am i going to put the thermostat  because if you've got a heat exchanger  that's doing the head and the cabin  where is the thermostat is it in the  head or is it in the cabin  it can't have a thermostat in both  places right because it's controlling  one heat exchanger  the other thing too that can be very  frustrating with a coolant base or a  hydronic-based heating system  is the reality that you've got this  coolant loop but if ever there's air  locks  in that that can give you a lot of grief  i learned years ago the best way is to  not hope for that coolant pump to be  able to remove all those air locks  what we end up doing before we even put  any cool in it  we actually connect city pressure water  like 50 psi  literally in the system and we blow  literally just simply normal water  right through the system we get all the  air locks out at this point it's going  to work  i can get remember in life there's hope  and there's reality hope never pans out  that's why i don't play the lottery i  don't hope i just plan  i'm like i got people installers are  like oh no we're going to try with the  cooling pump like you're wasting  your time remove the air locks connect  it to city water  right run make sure there's water  everywhere  once it's out then what we end up doing  is we run a separate pump not even  the coolant pump and now we got a big  bucket and now we start pumping coolant  via  separate pump through the system make  sure that everything's good  coolant's coming in it's all even right  mix  and then we hook it up to the heater and  to the existing coolant pump  and then when we light it up it works  hope there's no place on a boat don't do  it you're just gonna  just like no shortcuts you try to do a  shortcut you bang your head against the  wall two  three days and you're like oh maybe i  should have done that at the beginning  okay so bleeding is a big issue and what  we'd end up doing too is we end up  putting valves everywhere at the high  points  so like really good heat exchangers are  going to have bleed valves everywhere  and at every high point in a hydronic  system we put a bleed valve  so that you can actually if there is an  air pocket there you can actually bleed  it out  we talked about a little bit about the  gooseneck for the heat exhaust right to  make sure that before it goes outside of  the hall  it's got to go up and then down and out  and then  the length of the exhaust can only about  be six and a half feet  so that's a challenge that means the  heater can't be in most cases installed  in the middle of the boat  right it's got to be installed on port  or starboard and you got to figure out  your exhaust run  right and the other thing too is if  there is a little bit of water that's  going to get in and there's normally  some water that gets in just from  condensation  it's actually going to drip through this  little  contraption here okay and that's at the  bottom of all the exhausts  so with that i'm going to open the floor  to questions anybody have any questions  on marine heating systems yeah go ahead  yeah i don't think it's that much it's  maybe about six amps depending on the  size  i don't know yeah  six 10 amps not that much  uh the airtronic five six thousand eight  hours  uh generally uh  ceramic glow plugs i've heard uh  fuel pumps  yeah and you know what there's depending  on the company you choose it from  there's people that actually have  service departments like roton for  example  they do their own servicing of espar and  there's a guy that full time just does  some heating or 20 year old heating  systems they come back you bring them to  the bench  they'll be able to change some parts  right  yep  the question is what's the typical  temperature of a hydronic heating system  oh my god it's really warm i  i don't even know but scalding hot like  it's  like freaking hot like you can't like  you would get burnt  so 200 c or something i don't even know  i have no idea  i'm guessing it's freaking hot  freaking hot it's definitely over 100  i don't even know what it is yeah  okay thank you anybody else any other  questions  anybody here in the room have a heating  on board  thinking about it s bar  you have a heater not yet thinking about  it  i mean just in closing i i think the  consideration is  if you want to extend your boating  season beyond the really warm months  or you want to go further north here in  the pacific northwest  it's for us and for the motors we've  done it it's a way to sort of extend the  cruising season  you know like sometimes in may and april  it's gorgeous  sometimes in september and october it's  gorgeous without going crazy like not  that many people boat in december  like i do but even the shoulder months  before the peak season  those would be the arguments and also if  you're going up north  if you're going up north and you pass  desolation sound where the summer ends  once you go in discovery islands or  browns or outside vancouver island  then the weather drops by about 10  degrees celsius even in the summer  and that's where there's an argument to  consider heat  but you don't have to yeah  oh yeah that's a really good question  really good question what is the  correlation or relationship between  heating a boat and condensation in a  boat and that's  that's a great question um most of our  boats are not really well insulated  right i mean it's a haul and uh  to avoid condensation on a boat you  should avoid eating it  the moment that you increase the  temperature of your boat  beyond the temperature of the water  around our boat so if the water is at  let's say 50 degrees fahrenheit or  10 degrees celsius or whatever that is  the moment you warm up your boat beyond  that and you don't have really good  insulation your bot your boat will weep  it will be crazy crazy amount of  condensation  the water temperature is 50 degrees and  you're heating your boat at 75  that's 25 degree is going to cause your  hall to weep like there is no tomorrow  so on our boat when we do that because  in the winter time the water temp might  be 50 degrees fahrenheit  and inside is 70 we actually open the  windows  dramatically on our boat you have to let  it out otherwise it becomes almost a  sauna like it the the amount of  condensation that happens is everywhere  if you don't see it open somewhere and  you'll find like literally i'll have  pools of water so there is no way around  that because we don't have our halls  well insulated  hence when i'm not on my boat i don't  keep my boat at 70 degrees fahrenheit  if i'm not on the boat i keep it  slightly warmer  only slightly warmer than the water temp  so i warm it but just not by much  otherwise what you're doing is you're  losing a battle if you're keeping your  boat at 70 degrees fahrenheit  and the water temperature's at 50 the  very thing you're trying to avoid which  is condensation is what you're creating  you can't  you'll never be able to solve it because  the water around you is at 50 and you  can't warm the ocean  and it's cooling your boat faster than  any heater than anything you could ever  do and it's condensating condensating  and then you'll have water pooling  everywhere  and that pooling is causing moisture and  then you're fighting that moisture by  heating  and it's just you just can't win you  can't win  any other questions thank you everyone  for taking the time to be here  and if you've got further questions i'm  going to be upstairs at our booth  thank you  you