Should we be concerned about the potential of engine coolant leaking into our hot water system and or water getting into our coolent sys if there is a pin hole leak. I have heard this is very unlikely but very hard to detect. Opinions please. We may replace our current hot water heater, any suggestions on what brands are preferable? Thank you.
Patti:
If you would have a coolant leak into the water heater or other place, then your coolant level would be down. We check out coolant level every day we run before we start the engine and it is always full. You will know from this is you have a coolant leak.
AS for water heaters, the fleet has added links for these under plumbing in the links section. Please see here: You will see water heaters there. ipyoa.com/links/48-plumbing
Two weeks ago I installed a replacement Seaward 6 gal. Water heater/heat exchanger in our IP-31. Aside from working between your heels sitting in the port lazarette the installation was straightforward. Purchased at West Marine and was an exact duplicate of the original. You may have to engineer a little to raise the platform and move the tank outboard so that you can insure that you have at least 8-10 inches of working room to hook up 2 water, 2 coolant, and 3 a/c wires. I think the factory must install these things before they lower the cockpit on top of the hull. I replaced ours because of corrosion on the box which rendered the mounts useless. Mike "Nomad"
I replaced my water heater this spring and offer the following. While you have the water heater out clean up the area and plug the old mounting screw holes unless you are replacing with same brand and model. Next consider installing bypass plumbing to make winterization easier. Finally, the water heater was originally installed athwart ships but when I replaced it I turned it slightly so that the plumbing side was slightly facing the access panel. This made hooking up the water and coolant lines much easier. This did make securing the opposite end a little harder but I got around this in the following manner. I put the hot water heater in place and traced around the mountng bracket. Then I pulled out the heater and made a template of the bracket. Then placed the template over the tracing and pre drilled the mounting screw holes.
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