Paloma 0 - Rinnai 1

Saturday 10th January 2009

Up and about at 06:00, Max fed and watered and walked around the lake.  Back on the boat I have a couple of cups of tea from water heated on the Morsø and watch the early morning TV news, read through all new emails and start to catch up on writing the blog.

By 10:00 I’ve waited long enough for Bev to surface so make her a cup of tea so that I can start work on the water heater.

Last night the temperature dropped to -6C and from early morning a light dusting of snow now sat on the frozen canal and marina.  I’m sure glad that the work I have to do today is all indoors.

With the water already switched off, I turned the gas off and within just a few minutes the Paloma was off the wall.  

Following the printed instructions for the draft diverter, I attached the unit to the top of the heater.  Then, on reading the instructions for the heater I discover that the flange on the front on the diverter should be pointing to the back of the heater.  So undoing the two self tapping screws I removed the diverter, turned it round and re-applied the screws.

Attaching the unit to the wall was a doddle.  Offering the heater up to the existing chimney I marked the location of the upper bracket.  Using the largest of the three supplied screws, I then hung the heater on the wall.  Then, making sure the heater was sitting straight; I secured the unit to the wall with the remaining two screws through the lower bracket.

That was the easy bit.  As expected, with the heater being slightly shorter than Paloma, I now had to extend the 3/8” gas pipe, 15mm cold water feed and 15mm hot water supply.  I had to make a return trip to Uxbridge Boat Centre to pick up a couple of tap connectors and a gas leak detector spray.  Of course, when I returned to the boat I quickly realised that I had picked up the wrong connectors, as these were cone fitting and I needed the flat 1/2″ BSP type.  So it was back to UBC where I swapped them for the correct ones.  I also picked a 15mm isolation valve.  This would allow the heater to be isolated from the cold water supply in the event of future problems.

Cutting new sections of 15mm Hepworth pipe and fitting them with reinforcing inner tubes, I was quickly able to complete the cold water feed and hot water supply.  Switching on the water pump, I was then able to test for water leaks.  Perfect first time (that makes a change!).

I then started on the gas supply.  Again, cutting a short length of 3/8” copper pipe to fit between the existing gas test point and the new 3/8” adaptor now connected to the heater.  Using the gas leak detector fluid, I spayed each of the new and existing localised compression joints and turned on the gas.  A couple of minutes later, and without a single ‘bubble’ showing, I was happy that the gas supply was sound and I could now move on to testing the heater.

After inserting the ignition battery, and following the instructions, I pressed the ignition button.  Within just a couple of seconds, the pilot light lit and on turning on the galley hot water tap, the heater fired up and quickly provided steaming hot water.

Initial impression is that the heater is definitely more powerful than the Paloma.  Bearing in mind the water in tank is sitting in a canal which is currently frozen, the hot water pumping out of the heater was too hot to touch when the heater was turned up full (point 6).  The only way to get a comfortable water temperature was to reduce the temperature to point 4.  This also provided a greater pressure of warm water.

The final test was conducted by Bev – she had a shower!

This entry was posted on 10/01/2009 at 09:48 pm and is filed under Rinnai, Maintenance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.