To help ensure that our cold water supply is clean, the tanks are chlorinated every season. This is then filtered when used for drinking.
Easy checked water supply good and drained tanks and spare cans. At this point it became apparent that the marina supply was off for the remainder of the day.
Was this a foretaste of hot water issues to follow?
The immersion heater failed in 2014 but it is not too much of a hardship, when the water in the tank is at 30C, to have cold showers and to boil water for washing up. So replacing the heater was not a priority job. It should be a short job to unscrew the old heater and screw in the new.
Domestic hot water on Sea Bunny is heated in a calorifier - a tank which has a coil through which engine cooling water circulates and heats the the fresh water in the tank The calorifier also has an electric immersion heater for use when we are not under way. The circuit breaker feeding the immersion heater blew. It was clear that the immersion heater had a fault. No problem - there's a spare in the bilge (there since we bought Sea Bunny in 1998). But this doesn't fit the new calorifier we bought in 2009!
So in preparation for job a new one was shipped to Langkawi and as most immersion heaters have an octagonal flange with an across the flats measurement of 85 mm an immersion heater spanner was also acquired.
 |
| Immersion heater spanner |
Access is obtained by lying on top of the engine and reaching over the generator. Richard can then just reach the heater although pipes and other obstructions restrict use of the spanner. However, brute force gets it to turn freely for about half a rotation, at which point it locks solid. Clearly something is fouling inside the tank. This takes a day.
This is where a "simple" job became complicated. As already stated the calorifier is outboard of the genset, which in turn is outboard of the engine. There is not room to work on it in situ. There is not space to extract it either over the genset and through the engine room access or through the cockpit locker floor. To extract the calorifier requires removal of the genset through the cockpit locker. This takes another a day.
 |
| The calorifier tank |
Once the calorifier is out on the pontoon it is a short job to cut off the connectors for the element and drill through the flange, at which point part of the element fell into the tank with a clunk.
 |
| The remains! |
The flange could then be unscrewed and the distorted element removed. Tank was then washed, the new immersion heater fitted and the tank leak tested-OK.
 |
| New heater fitted in tank |
With the genset and tank removed it was opportune to tidy up some of the wiring and piping in the engine compartment. This takes another day.
Refitting the tank was relatively easy. It was connected, filled and tested - we have hot water!
Next was getting the genset in. This is not too difficult - we use a purchase on the boom to lower it through the cockpit locker floor. Lining it up on its mounts is a lot more difficult and required a change to its fixings to achieve.This took two days.
All the above done with good grace between heavy tropical downpours!
Finally it has to be reconnected and recommissioned which we are doing at present.
NB. To replace immersion heater (if you have previous knowledge that part has fallen into tank- which is unlikely) allow one week..
