Cabin Heater Installation Advice, Please

[jtighe]

Thanks Skylark. If I'm looking at the picture correctly, it looks like the heater is set off from the bulkhead by about 2 inches, and that there is a steel shield offset from the bulkhead (about an inch?) that shields the bulkhead from the flue. You're satisfied with this? Also, when you're running the heater, how hot do the sides get? How close to the heater could you keep your hand (theoretically) for any length of time? Again, thanks for your response and picture; it really helps.

[Skylark]

The cylinder in the middle of the housing is the heater part, the stainless housing is separated from the burner by airspace. Air flows through and tends to cool the housing a bit. Generally the outer housing is hot but not extremely hot. You can put your hand next to it (not touching) as long as you want, it does not burn. The housing gets hot and you might get a burn from it on top, but the lower half is typically warm but not burning hot.

The flue heat shield is just what you see, a piece of stainless sheet metal a half inch or so away from the bulkhead. Air can flow behind it.

The parts of the boat that get hot are the cabin top above the heater, and the flue is usually quite hot. The top of the heater is very hot. The top of the outer housing is hot.

[Skylark]

[jtighe]

Wow! Thanks for all the trouble of taking those pictures. They are extremely helpful. Nice installation, by the way.

[Skylark]

One difficulty of mounting your heater near the mast is that the stack will exit near the mast. You need room around the mast to work the halyards and sails, often in bad weather. You can put a bend into the stack, and move it a foot or two, but a bend is not ideal.

Have you found a good location to drill the deck for the stack?

[jtighe]

Yes, you're right about the mast. It will end up exiting a little abaft and stbd of the mast, which puts it somewhat away from my halyards, reef lines, but still not ideal, but, as anyone who has worked on or built.a boat knows, everything is a compromise on a boat. The solution I've come up with (besides learning to work around it, like everything else on deck) is to make to the charlie noble so that it detaches easily and then to secure it to the boat with a wire lanyard. If I ever need to take it off to work at the mast, I can quickly grab it (hot! maybe weld a handle?), pull it off and let it drop without worrying about losing it. In the warmer months, I figure I'll take the stack off altogether and cover the flue exit with some kind of deck plate. I believe Dickinson makes something for this purpose.

[osirissail]

I have the same Newport diesel fuel cabin heater and it does put out a lot of heat. This heat will slowly "cook" the wood bulkhead behind the heater. To avoid this I took a rectangular piece of polished flat stainless steel a few inches larger than the overall size of the heater and mounted it about 1" off the wooden bulkead on stand-offs. Then the heater was mounted to the flat stainless steel plate resulting in it being about 1.5" off the ss plate. I did the same thing with a smaller plate that lays between the wooden bulkhead and the flue pipe.
- - The idea is that the radiant heat from the heater will reflect or absorbed by the ss plates and then act like a heat sink to shield the wooden bulkhead from getting cooked over the years. Replacing a bulkhead is a serious amount of trouble.