Hot Water Heater

[13crazyhorse]

I just purchased a boat with shore power, etc. but it doesn't have hot water just cold. I'd like to install an electric heater just wondering what your experiences have been. I see small units that are instant and larger units like the 6 gallon atwood that are not instant. I'm going to mount it under my bathroom sink and only need the hot water in there and really don't need alot of it for that matter. Any advice or past experience would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Lyle29464]

Re: Hot Water Heater

You can get a small unit that plugs in for 350 or so. I have one under my kitchen sink check out lowes. It would not do a shower.

 

[BobGinCO]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Coleman sells an instant COLD water heater, but I've never seen a HOTwater heater.

 

[13crazyhorse]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Well I have a camper with a 6 gallon heater and you can take a couple of showers with it, maybe the Atwood would be the way to go. And thanks for the reply Bob but didn't your mother ever tell you if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything!

 

[Fl_Richard]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Yea Bob and he said he needed "an electric heater ". Raise your post count with constructive info

 

[JEBar]

Re: Hot Water Heater

we used to have a cruiser equipped with a 6 gallon Atwood RV water heater .... it could heat water with both electricity and propane .... the propane exhaust had to be vented above deck .... the few times we needed to heat water quickly, we could set it to use both propane and electricity .... it worked well .... there are instant RV water heating systems available but all I have ever seen are propane only

Jim

 

[13crazyhorse]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Thanks Jim for the reply. I"m thinking the atwood electric 6 gal. would be good for me. I have plenty of room in the under deck engine compartment to mount it I don't think that would cause any issues.

 

[Chris1956]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Crazy, A lot of the hot water heaters for boats are electric as well as use engine cooling water as a heat source. if you plan to run the engines for a cruise, and then use some hot water, the engine/electrical-heated type makes sense.

 

[Capt Ken]

Re: Hot Water Heater

A good friend is in the water heater manufacturing business and he has fun catching folks on the hot water heater statement by asking why do they want to heat hot water? He broke me of that years ago

 

[rbh]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Like most of the guys said the 2 way, electric and engine cooling heat source are your best bets.
If you have a marine generator that will be running all the time, consider that as the engine cooling heat souce.
If you have twin engines plumb the system into the engine that you use to charge up your house batteries.

 

[13crazyhorse]

Re: Hot Water Heater

Thanks for the info guys. For the most part I think just the electric would best suit our needs we're kinda planning on using the boat for a weekender type deal and won't be running it much to heat the water. It's an older (86) single engine rig so I don't want to invest a lot of money either. I think I can get the heater for around 250 and run it off the shore power. We won't need hot water when we're not at the slip.