Kabola vs. ITR boiler

I was about to buy an ITR boiler for the trawler as I have one on the sailboat. The ITR dealer suggested I also look at Kabola. I'm pretty familiar with the ITR, not so much with the Kabola.

It appears to have many cast iron parts and a steel enclosure. Have there been corrosion problems with these?

It appears not to be highly integrated - control boards, heat exchangers etc. all are external. Some of the ITR products are highly integrated with few external components required. Kabola makes a "calorifier" and a "combi" model, but damned if I can figure out from their literature what the difference is. Anyone know?

The Kabola runs on 240V50Hz, and they get there by supplying an inverter. There is not a heck of a lot of specs on power consumption for control, igniter, blower, circ pump etc. In fact their documentation could be described as sparse.

Looking for experiences on these, particularly if you are familiar with both.

First let me say that I haven't owned either an ITR (Hurricane) or Kubola, but I know a number of people with both. Most of the people I know with Hurricane systems have had issues, but in fairness, many have been system design and installation issues, not boiler issues, so can't blame Hurricane for all those problems.


As for Kabola, everyone I know who has one loves it. Few if any problems reported. So there is no doubt that they work well.



For me personally, I prefer Olympia. There is too much complexity in the Kabola, accompanied by too little documentation for my taste. I'm helping a friend design a system around a Kabola currently, and the most basic things like the electrical control interface to the Kabola are not documented. I can make a pretty good guess, and will probably be right, but I shouldn't have to guess. And they are only sold and distributed by a single firm in the US. In contrast, the Olympia is well documented because it's all widely used components from the heating industry. Common parts I can literally buy in a hardware store, and even the most complex parts I can get from any HVAC supply house. That's more to my liking.

The smallest Olympia is 60K btu which is going to be too large for this boat. It's also about 300 watts electric consumption, and I gather that is just the boiler. Add the circ pump and fan heat exchangers I'm almost into the range where I could heat the boat with electricity . The ITR is only maybe 160 watts total, and only 80 for the boiler. That has me leaning back towards the ITR.

The Kabola is a bit of a black box - if the guy at Marinetec retires you're probably screwed.

Two things. First, as TT mentions, the install is ever important. Not only for the boiler, but for the piping, aquastats, heat registers and overall system layout.

Second, if going ITR consider Real brand registers vs the ITR units. Our Hurricane II unit has been flawless electrically and indeed benefits from following the ITR book’s maintenance schedule for burner cleaning and flame sensor replacement.

We would not hesitate to go the ITR route again. Overall the unit draws about 30 amps (12v) with all units running, about half that on average when anchored on a 50 degree night. Add the engine heat option so boiler shuts off when engine running.

A friend recently had a Webasto installed. Great layout, nice install and heats well. But coolant pump issues have been plaguing the unit. Point being, lots of peripherals to go wrong even if brand ABC boiler is perfect.

DDW said:

The smallest Olympia is 60K btu which is going to be too large for this boat. It's also about 300 watts electric consumption, and I gather that is just the boiler. Add the circ pump and fan heat exchangers I'm almost into the range where I could heat the boat with electricity . The ITR is only maybe 160 watts total, and only 80 for the boiler. That has me leaning back towards the ITR.

The Kabola is a bit of a black box - if the guy at Marinetec retires you're probably screwed.

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It's pretty funny. I've measured the power draw on just about everything on my boat EXCEPT the Olympia boiler. I'd guess it's a bit lower than 300W, but not less than 200W. But that includes the burner and circulator pump. In addition are the heater fans, but they are only about 2W each. I wouldn't expect there to be much difference between the various oil boilers. All need to pressurize the fuel, run a blower, and run a circulator pump.

My ITR Hurricane II on the sailboat runs at about 15 A with everything on high. More typically a bit less than that.

Hi. I have replace an old mikuni 12kw wet system with a domestic oil fired boiler 15 / 18 kw condensing and balanced flue

Spent a long time doing research Kabola etc. Very expensive. I found a company called firebird that did a small unit 450mm x 450mm foot print and 650mm high and they converted it to run on red diesel.
We run 10 radiators and unlimited hot water. And the 22mm pipe work in the engine room is unlagged so we have the chill taken off in there.
We live aboard in the UK and it’s to warm for me.
The best part £1300 all in