Well, just as we were coming into anchor two things happened: first we had this almighty knock,
and then the calorifier started leaking and it's p*****g hot water. It's not good, is it?
So we thought we'd go anchor somewhere a little bit different. There is a little fishing village
just on the southeast corner of Gaya. Should be good protection from these northerlies we've got
coming through so we thought we'd just go and have a little look around there. We've anchored
on the other side of Gaya which is the other half of the fishing village. But, of course,
that's exposed to the prevailing winds at the moment... What have you got to say for
yourself then ya tw@t? Well, I didn't catch any fish which is very annoying.
But I checked on my app and it said there was no fish activity today so I don't feel quite
so bad and useless now. Anyway looking forward to getting the anchor down and making a nice
omelette, cheese omelette. With lovely little tomatoes... Oh it's gonna be lovely hungry now.
It was a nice little sail from Kota Belud where we'd been anchored all the way to Gaya, wasn't it?
Yeah it was: quite pleasant, quite exciting, we were going to a new anchorage as well.
Shame you didn't catch any fish (I know). Never mind. And then suddenly two things happened,
we heard this knock or this thudding noise. we thought we'd hit something with the prop.
And then five minutes later I noticed that the calorifier (the water heater) had burst and so we
had to turn off the water supply to stop the leak. No water. Absolutely no way of getting to water
if you turn the calorifier off is there? But we have got a hand pump that's about the only thing.
This is one reason why it's so important to have manual overrides on anything especially when it
comes to fresh water, absolutely essential. So that was the end of our little bit of anchoring
and sailing, and we had to go back to the marina (short lived). We needed the marina because just
living on one small hand pump for all your water isn't the nicest thing, so at least in the marina
we could have showers and we could do all of that, and we had water on the dock so it just made it
a little bit more bearable. And you decided to buy a new one rather than brazing it didn't you?
Yes, so the calorifier is as old as the boat, so that's over 30 years old. We have already
brazed her twice and brazing, by the way, is just soldering or welding of copper. We had brazed it
previously a couple of times and that worked well but I think my thinking was well we could try and
braze it again and then it'll be another couple of years before we have to braze it another time.
So it made sense to buy a new one. It did, it was just a matter of finding one that would fit
in that very small area. Yeah, so we settled on a calorifier made by Surejust (that's right) and
their calorifier line is called SureCal (that's why I was a bit confused). So Surejust
we approached, they're a UK based company. Now they are not sponsoring this video, but they very
kindly gave us a little discount on the delivery cost if we mention them. And we have no problem
mentioning them because they were actually really good to deal with, very helpful. And the delivery
came within five working days, so that's not bad going.
So it was up to you then to install it...
Today we are going to be installing our calorifier. I say this word slowly because
I've mentioned the calorifier before and it's not a word that's used that often,
unless you're into boating. A lot of people thought I was saying cauliflower...
I'm not going to be installing a cauliflower today. We prefer to eat our cauliflowers.
Anyway, it's basically a water heater. So it's a tank an insulated copper tank which turns
your cold water into hot. And it does this in two ways. The first is that the engine cooling water
runs in a loop and that runs into the tank so the hot water that comes out of the cooling system in
your engine goes through into the bottom of the calorifier around the coil and it heats up the
cold water that's inside and comes out the top as hot water. Now obviously the engine cooling system
in that loop then goes back to the engine. So that's the first way. The second way is that
it has an immersion heater element that drops into the top so it can be mains powered as well.
At the very bottom this is the cold water feed so that goes to the lowest point and this supplies
the pump pressure cold water into the boiler itself. The second and third fittings are the
engine in and out. And then on the top that's your hot water out. But Surejust have supplied a mixer.
Now we've not used one of these before. The idea is that this brings the hot water temperature
down to a pre-setting, which you can adjust on the end here. And the highest temperature is
65 degrees centigrade. If you turn it right down, it's set to 45 degrees centigrade.
We have gone for a smaller calorifier this time. Two reasons for that. The first is that
we couldn't find a like for like replacement for our old calorifier
(which is probably well over 30 years old). The second reason is that space was very tight
under the bed so we wanted something smaller, because let's face it in the tropics at least
we don't need too much hot water. Occasionally we shower, occasionally, once a week if you're lucky...
And of course we have to do our washing up as well. But we figured with the one kilowatt
immersion heater we could potentially run that off the lithium batteries. Now these things
heat up the water very quickly, so it's literally just a few minutes.
So in hot weather we should be able to heat it up both from mains and of course through the engine.
This is a 10 litre calorifier and you can see that it's insulated in blue foam (or foam
that's been spray-painted blue) but underneath all that is the copper calorifier itself.
I've also gone for an expansion tank as well. So this is a little two litre expansion tank.
This just allows us to add an extra two litres to our capacity but in such a way that it can be
mounted in a modular way so it doesn't have to take up the same
area in which the calorifier is mounted. We can side mount this and
I have checked my measurements. I think we've got just enough room to fit this in...
I've also asked the guys to send us various fittings. Now we use the Hep2O
push fit fitting system. This is a plastic fitting system for plumbing with an inside
diameter of 15ml. It's pretty much standard in a lot of plumbing these days and it's very
easy to deal with. We've already used it on the boat to plumb in our external shower system.
Now I did say that I was using Hep2O. I've been using Hep2O in the same way people say "Hoover" for
vacuum cleaner. Because this time we weren't using Hep2O, we were using another brand. Now this was
sent through by the suppliers. It's a brand that I've not used before, but I have to say actually
it's really easy to use. The Hep2O systems, in order to loosen them you have to use a special key.
Whereas with these you literally just push in the end of the fitting and the pipes pull out.
At the foot of the bed is our old calorifier. Fortunately this is almost a straight swap.
Apart from the mixer valve which goes at the top here that's the hot water out
We've just been running the engine to come into the marina,
so this is full of hot water. Those are the engine cooling in and out there on the top of the other
Because it's full of hot water, we have what should be a pressure release valve here.
Unfortunately old one broke and wherever I happened to be at the time, I couldn't find
a pressure relief valve. So I had to put a straight cock on that, which is not ideal.
And which also could be why this burst. We have to open this up to let out all the water inside.
And crack off the engine cooling as well, taking these off. I think previously when we filmed us playing
with the calorifier, a couple of you had pointed out that these connections were not ideal. And in
fact I think the last time we had a problem with this, one of these had popped off.
Now ideally, this outlet here should be barbed...
And it's not it's. It's a straight fitting rubber hose onto this copper pipe here.
So fortunately with the new system that we've got, the attachment that we put onto
the calorifier is a barb system, allowing us to simply pop this on with a jubilee or a hose clip.
So that's uh the excess water coming out of the cooling system of course, which is why it's that
horrible green colour. Fortunately when we do this we don't lose too much water out of the cooling
system, it's literally just the excess that is running in the additional hoses from the engine.
And finally we'll take off the hot water out which should release the pressure. There we go.
Now we've taken that out it can drain.
I think at this point it might be appropriate to put some
detergent down there to flush through the bilges as well, keep them clean.
The biggest modification that we have to make to this system
is to convert these old hoses. Now these are the hoses that were
installed on the boat back in 1988 when she was built. And the new system the Hep2O system which
uses the standard 15ml inside diameter hose, is very slightly different. Fortunately Hep2O
has these adapters which we can use. They are metal aluminium inserts like so...
And the idea is is that we chop this hose, we'll get rid of this, we'll chop it about there.
And then we literally insert this metal insert inside that hose. That then makes it compliant
to these fittings. Now these fittings are very easy, quite intuitive in fact. You simply push the pipe in,
they lock into position, and they are watertight. Very clever system very easy to use.
We're going to be attaching that cold water system from the old hose system, converted, to this.
This is the inlet for the cold water which goes in at the bottom, but you can see
it has the built-in pressure release valve. Now this is slightly different to our old system,
which was independent. This one's built-in. This is a pressure release valve that's set at 4bar.
So if the pressure increases beyond 4bar, the idea is this automatically opens up.
It pops open and the excess pressure and water will drain out into the bilge via this pipe.
Once that pressure has stabilized that then closes automatically.
So that is my cold water feed now, this one here. And we want to feed it into the bottom
of the calorifier. So what this means is putting on another Hep2O fitting onto the
barb that you see at the bottom there. And this is very straightforward, they literally slot in.
Now you can see when you try to pull it off that pulls out and is preventing it from coming off.
To take it off, you hold this in place and literally pull it, like so.
So we push it on. Once it's on, we then screw this part closed just to secure it into place.
Next we want to put in a right angle here to make that connection there. This means cutting a
piece of hose to fit into that end and the right angle end. Bear in mind, of course, this hose
goes into the fitting so you need a minimum length, I've marked it on here. When you end up putting
this elbow in it will go right up to that black mark there, so we need at least that much for that
end, the same again for that end, and we'll give another few ml just to give a little gap for play.
In order to have a mixed hot water outlet
with a variable temperature, which goes on the top here, I need an extra cold water supply.
So rather than putting the 90 degree elbow, I had to T that off.
So I've got an extra cold water supply which is going to come up to this mixer here.
We've got these barbs here, these are the barbs I was talking about that are recommended for
putting straight onto the hoses. And they can be clipped on with hose clips.
The installation is all going along swimmingly. The issue now is the expansion tank, which is...
...oh this is killing my back [laughs]. So this is the expansion tank, it's two litres, it's pressurized
to 3bar. And obviously, we've got the water that comes out of the calorifier, goes into this
to fill this up, and then back out to our hot water supply. Now there's loads of room here,
I got my measurements right. Plenty of room to mount this somewhere. The main thing is trying
to mount it in such a way that a) the hoses have an easy run, but b) and more importantly, I
can get to the fuel cut off and various other things that are down in the bilge there.
Just give me a moment while I ponder this and work out where best to put the expansion tank.
So that's it. Job done. All in... don't know how many hours it took really, because I had to
adapt some of those hoses. I think if I didn't have to do that it would have been much quicker.
But anyway, it's not too bad a job at all.
As you can see, I put the extra tank in sideways.
I did this because I didn't want to put it on the other side where there
was potentially more room, but that is where the mains power for the immersion heater is.
And I didn't want any water in that area, so I put it on the other side.
It fitted OK. Hoses all cut to size, no problems with that whatsoever. Turned the water on...
No leaks, got running water again. I mean that's the great thing about these push fit piping systems.
Yeah, job done.
I expended 2 000 calories on that job.
Bloody back hurts though... Gor dear, all that bending over...