Replacing Felicity's water heater was a necessity of Project Motor Boat. Our goal is to ultimately stay "unplugged" because we don't plan on being at the dock on shore power forever! Also, we don't plan on running a generator 24 hours a day. Just because it's a power boat doesn't mean we will use our powers for evil instead of good. (tee hee hee) We are trying to set the boat up to use battery power created by solar, wind and our engine's alternators. We will use the generator mainly to run A/C or Heat and when/if the wind/sun aren't working in our favor!;) (In our experience, you usually have one or the other & sometimes both!)
We chose the Seaward 20 gallon 120V AC Water Heater with Heat Exchanger. This bad boy provides us the options to use it in anyway we like. We can make hot water by using the engine, the generator OR the shore power!
These big, box like water heaters are designed to sit on a platform or a shelf . Unfortunately, we have seen on other boats that the shelf holds moisture which allows it to deteriorate quickly. To be one step ahead of that issue we built a frame work, more like a bottomless shelf.
You'll notice in the "Before" photo the area was dark and dirty and in the "After", the walls have been painted white and the area was a bit more cleaned up. Well, that was the bulk of the work, we sprayed degreaser all over, scrubbed, hosed it down and dried it up. Then, we sanded, vacuumed and wiped the entire area down with acetone before we began to paint. Once the paint was dry we began the shelf creation. There was a lot of measuring to custom fit one arm of the platform around the approximately 8"exhaust hose.
The *hottest* thing about this water heater project is that the space we gained from the modification allows is to build a workbench with a drawer! It will make a great place for a vise, a bench grinder and we will have room on the walls around it for shelving!! Just one more check off our looooooong list!
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