Cruising the Pacific Northwest

Sea Eagle was purchased with two Wallas Diesel Heaters (D40’s) that had been installed by Nordhavn (PAE) when the boat was commissioned. During the purchasing and survey process, I was lead to believe that they simply needed servicing and were functional, so I pulled out both furnaces and took them up to ScanMarine in Seattle for service. ScanMarine inspected both units and informed me that they were not salvageable and in the strongest terms possible warned me to inspect my exhaust system for a splash riser.

Both furnaces had ingested so much salt water through the exhaust that they were corroded into a mass of gunk inside. That meant having to purchase two new furnaces for 6 more BOAT units! OUCH! The forward unit that heated the staterooms only had 27 hours of run time on the furnace and it was now nothing more than a high priced brick.

I returned to the boat, checked the exhaust tubing and sure enough, it ran straight down from the through hulls to both furnaces. There were no drip loops, splash risers or anything done to prevent the intrusion of salt water. I was appalled that the heater installers had failed to even follow the minimum requirement of a 12″ splash riser at the through hull (required by Wallas), so had wasted two $3000 furnaces. It’s hard to get good help these days.

After the shock wore off, I installed the two new Wallas furnaces (40dT’s). Having the power, fuel and ducting already run (although some of the ducting was also wrong) helped immensely, but replacing and re-engineering the exhaust tubing was quite a job. It took me a couple of days to get the new thermostats installed, new exhaust installed/insulated and everything up and running.

The good news is that I like the new Wallas DT units much better than the older D units. They bring in fresh air and heat it, helping to keep the boat dry. I had Wallas heaters on all three of my dive boats (including the Dive Charter Boat) and always marveled at how well they would defog the windows even with 14 dripping wet divers huddled in the cabin.