Hot Water Tank

The surveyor reported that the hot water tank on our IP 27 was "suspect" when we bought the boat last summer. In my opinion, those were not strong enough words and I would advise anyone with an older IP to take the time, locate your hot water tank and inspect it. This "out of sight, out of mind" item can be a problem and we have the problem. Two issues, the tank itself is leaking, second and more of a potential catastrophic issue, the heat exchanger located inside the tank is also leaking. Fortunately I had to winterize the fresh water system which requires bypassing the hot water tank to keep the winter antifreeze out of it. I noticed the puddle of fresh water which I thought was from draining the tank, a rust ring only about 1/4" high around the base of the tank and finally, the puddle turning pale green when the engine coolant leaked out. With the coolant leaking into the fresh water system, even if you only use it for dish washing, you are washing the dishes with poison. Of course, the engine will overheat once the coolant is gone, but thirdly, for those of us up North, the closed coolant system can be compromised by sucking fresh water in through the heat exchanger. That raises the freezing temperature of the coolant which can result in a cracked block.

We are still on the hard so I have not been able to start the diesel yet, I have my fingers crossed that all is well with it. The old hot water tank is out, that was a huge mess of coolant soaked rust under it. Finding a replacement tank has also been a challenge, this spring, many of the suppliers are out of stock of the model with the configuration we need. I have been trying to get a tank since the beginning of April, one is currently in transit from Seattle, hopefully to be installed on Friday.

Hi I too am looking to replace my hot water tank. Just curious which model did you select, and why?

Thanks
Mark

Hi Mark-
I recently replaced the hot water heater on my IP29. I replaced it due to the reasons discussed by others ie. 20 year old tank.

The original tank was a 6 gallon tank. I replaced it with a 3 gallon tank made by Seaward. I chose the smaller tank since there is a little more room to work around the tank, easier to inspect the hoses/attachments and I do not use much hot water.

The variables when you choose a tank is the side of the tank the raw water and fresh water inputs on. I could only find the 3 gallon seaward tank with the fresh water on front and raw water on the left side.

Installation was straight forward.

Rich

We ran into the same situation as Rich. I was looking for a tank other than the Seaward that was in the boat, specifically one made of aluminum rather than the galvanized and painted because ours pretty much rusted through. Unfortunately, all I could find in stock any place with the correct configuration of heating water and fresh water in and out was the exact model we already had. There are other brands out there but the lead times on delivery were months.

Thanks for your input on this. I ended up getting the 6 gallon unit from seaward I installed it last weekend. I purchased the hot water heater that put all of the hoses , both the hoses from the engine as well as the fresh water inlet and outlet hoses on the front side of the unit. I thought this would make them more accessible if needed in the future. The job itself was relatively easy to understand but the access space made the installation challenging. In order to secure the backside of the tank I installed an offset bracket so the rear tank mounting pad would slide under the bracket. In this way I was able to install this mounting point before the tank was in place. The reason I did this was I had such a challenge in removing the mounting screws of the old unit that I did not think I would be able to get the new unit attached. These mounting screws were only accessed by contorting myself with in the port side lazerette and stretching across the fuel tank again with almost no space. I knew there was no way I would be able to get these mounting screws back in so I had to come up with a different solution.

Hi Guys,
I noticed the same ring of rust around the bottom of the tank, but I know I had leaky hose... The tank worked great all last summer. I was still going to pull it out to clean it up, get rid of the rust and paint it... Is that bit of a job that you'd recommend replacing it altogether by the time it's out?

Thanks,
Claude

If you have a suspicion there is something wrong with your hot water heater I would suggest to spend $500 and install a new one. It was such a PITA to remove and replace a hot water heater in my IP420 that I consider myself lucky it leaked dockside and not somewhere far away in the islands. It took 5 hours cursing and banging my knuckles just to pull that bloody thing out. Sometime I think of a dedicated place in hell where boat designers and aftermarket installers should spend the rest of eternity servicing their machinery located in inaccessible places...

If you can, could you please provide Picture and model number of the new 6-gal Seaward hot water tank you installed? Thanks