Hurricane Diesel Heater Issues

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Russell Clifton

Russell Clifton

Guru
Joined
Sep 10, 2012
Messages
877
Location
usa
Vessel Name
Sea Fever
Vessel Make
Defever 49 RPH
Today will be the fourth time in four years I have replaced the compressor in my Hurricane II heater. We live on board so it get's lot's of use. Any other users had this much problem with their heaters?
 
Our Hurricane has been working well for 13 years. Obviously, the install is quite important which we hired out to a proven BC Hurricane group. Never a compressor issue. Normal maintenance only for book things like flame sensor, fuel filter, exhaust pipe and burner cleaning.

We seldom use ours at dock though. Also when underway the engine heat exchanger negates need for compressor and burner. Reverse cycle used liberally at dock. Lastly, we have a really good Hurricane guy at our favorite nearby yard.
 
We have the Hurricane II heater, and have a problem with it at least once a week. The high and low temp sensors are always going out to the point we keep several spares onboard. The circulation pumps are also a weak point. We have replaced both of them this winter. They have both electrical and machinal issues. Also the 12 VDC blower fans are a problem.

I have discussed these problems with the factory tech support, and they have told me that 5 years of service is the life expectancy of the system. Funny that never came up when we bought or installed the system.

The dealer support is nonextant. I have several of the dealers the factory recommended, and they usually told me they only work on RVs.

The system is good when it works, but that is not very often. I would never recommend it to someone planning to use it as a primary heating liveaboard system.
 
fgarriso said:
The high and low temp sensors are always going out to the point we keep several spares onboard.
Click to expand...

Where inside your Hurricane unit are these located? Or are you referring to aquastats external to the heater and located near the HXer fans?
 
Yes the sensors are called "aquastats", and they are located on the sides if the boiler tank. There is a LOW, HIGH, and OVER TEMP . If any one of the three malfunctions it will shutdown the system.
 
In seven years, I’ve had one compressor diaphragm tear. I got a replacement from ITR and it was a five minute fix. The pump was an off the shelf item and one might be able to source elsewhere. One aquastat in an air handler was bad and other than bleeding air from the system early on, no problems. I found customer service to be very good when I had inquiries.
 
fgarriso said:
Yes the sensors are called "aquastats", and they are located on the sides if the boiler tank. There is a LOW, HIGH, and OVER TEMP . If any one of the three malfunctions it will shutdown the system.
Click to expand...

I'd have to think about this one a bit as I've never had a reason to deal with these aquastats. An electrical glitch is all I can visualize as they are as best I recall in a 5 to 12 V operating zone. Do you have a well experienced Hurricane guy assessing the issue?
 
I believe they are pretty simple bi-metallic switches. As I recall, one closes at 125 deg. One opens at 147. I forget the over temp but if there is air in the tank, that aquastat can trip.
 
If you're having a lot of electrical failures, the unit may not be getting full voltage. As voltage decreases, amps raise. Higher amp flow within electrical items may cause over heat or burnout. Watts = Amps x Volts.
 
The Hurricane II in my sailboat has over 1000 hours in 11 years use now, without a single problem or any maintenance. I installed an ITR Zephyr in the trawler last spring, other than a few leaks from hose clamps not tight enough, it has also been perfect.

With that many issues I wonder what the installation looks like. There are two sets of aquastats, one set for the diesel burner controls and another for the AC heating coil. The former have only small signal voltages and currents going through, the latter have large AC voltages and heavy currents. Which ones are failing?

If you are replacing components that often, something is fundamentally wrong with your installation.
 
Hurricane Heaters are among the more reliable and easiest heaters to work on. The most prevalent problems are clogged nozzles and worn out blower motors. Circulation pumps are a third party item, don’t know what your installer specked but I use a Grundfos circulation pump, it runs 24/7 and has been for over 10 years. I’m inclined to agree with DDW, this many issues sounds like an installation issue.
 
I would think reliable heaters should have minimal repair issues that are logging around 1000 hrs a year.


At 500 hours a year...it is almost underused to stay reliable.


My Wallas has required about 1 hr cleaning per year and a couple inexpensive parts over a 7 year period and now has a little over 3700 hours on it.


I would hope the ITR with its reputation would be just as reliable.
 
Last edited:
The old reliable Way Wolf units seemed to be built with OTS common house boiler parts. Some were "marinized" to not spark for gasoline boats which is not a diesel boat requirement .

Circ pumps come in many quality levels , the Obendorfer line is hard to beat.

With a large boat (too big for gravity hydronic)I would get a quality cast iron boiler finned baseboard or cast baseboard units and heated towel racks , and just put one together.

With a good inverter maint should only require a once a year burner cleaning.

These are cheap, so an extra one is not a big deal.
 
People I know with Hurricane heaters have had mixed results. Some work fine as others here have reported. Others are total disasters as has also been reported.

Uniformly excellent reviews come from Olympia (Sure Marine) and Kabola. Both are residential boilers at their core.
 
twistedtree said:
People I know with Hurricane heaters have had mixed results. Some work fine as others here have reported. Others are total disasters as has also been reported.

Uniformly excellent reviews come from Olympia (Sure Marine) and Kabola. Both are residential boilers at their core.
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. I've found the ITR heat exchangers to be absolute junk and leak prone as compared to what Sure Marine sells.

Another consideration is the design of the control circuitry to the unit. I've found 12V much more failure prone than 24V or 110V. It also seems that owner installed units of any make are more troublesome. I've assisted trouble shooting on several hydronic units that were installed by previous owners with some interesting things done to take shortcuts, or ignoring install directions.
 
Olympia and Kabola are great, but both require 110V power and a lot of it, as well as a lot of space as they are not highly integrated. The ITR heaters do not come in 24V or 110V versions as far as I am aware. I had to install the Hurricane II with a DC-DC converter in my 24V sailboat.

I actually prefer the ITR heat exchangers to the Suremarine. I've not had one leak other than at the hose connection (this bit is better on the Suremarine). Be aware that the Suremarine units will not come even close to their stated heat output, you will get maybe 1/3 of the rating.

I've seen some very dodgy installs of the ITR, and those were "professionally" done.
 
Out of curiosity, what are the electrical power requirements for a Kabola, Olympia or similar?
 
DDW said:
Olympia and Kabola are great, but both require 110V power and a lot of it, as well as a lot of space as they are not highly integrated. The ITR heaters do not come in 24V or 110V versions as far as I am aware. I had to install the Hurricane II with a DC-DC converter in my 24V sailboat.

I actually prefer the ITR heat exchangers to the Suremarine. I've not had one leak other than at the hose connection (this bit is better on the Suremarine). Be aware that the Suremarine units will not come even close to their stated heat output, you will get maybe 1/3 of the rating.

I've seen some very dodgy installs of the ITR, and those were "professionally" done.
Click to expand...




The Kabola and Olympia probably do use more power, but I don't think it's a huge difference. Regardless of the system, the power used by the air handlers and circulator pump would be the same for a comparable sized system. And all the systems need to pressurize the fuel to atomize the spray, and need a blower to fan the flame. I doubt any one has much magic vs any other.


And why do you say the Olympia produces less than rated output? If someone is only getting 1/3 of rated output, my guess is that it's a problem delivering the heat out through the air handlers rather than a boiler problem. Unless of course someone decided to use a smaller nozzle, in which case output will be reduced correspondingly. It's actually a handy way to tune the boiler output to the boat.
 
The smallest (23Kbtu) Kabola uses 350W. The next larger 240W. That's just the boiler, got to add the circ pump and air fans to that. My ITR uses about 100W full tilt, every fan running. Whether that is significant depends on - whether than is significant. If you are running a genset 24/7 then not. On a small boat on batteries, yes, that is significant.

I didn't say anything about Olympia. What I said was the Suremarine heat exchangers do not produce the rated output. 1st, they rate them at a very high water temp, not the more typical temp that the exchanger will see. Second, the rating is the max rating that raw heat exchanger will do under lab conditions (that info from Suremarine). Mainly the fans are too small to produce anything like the airflow required. In contrast the ITR units are rated at a realistic water temp (130 deg) and have much higher air flow. I have 4 Suremarine heat exchangers and 4 ITR heat exchangers and can tell you that without equivocation. The Suremarine are nicely built but need bigger fans, especially if ducted at all, and if you can't maintain 170 deg water throughout the system, derate them by a proportional amount.
 
DDW said:
I didn't say anything about Olympia. What I said was the Suremarine heat exchangers do not produce the rated output. 1st, they rate them at a very high water temp, not the more typical temp that the exchanger will see. Second, the rating is the max rating that raw heat exchanger will do under lab conditions (that info from Suremarine). Mainly the fans are too small to produce anything like the airflow required. In contrast the ITR units are rated at a realistic water temp (130 deg) and have much higher air flow. I have 4 Suremarine heat exchangers and 4 ITR heat exchangers and can tell you that without equivocation. The Suremarine are nicely built but need bigger fans, especially if ducted at all, and if you can't maintain 170 deg water throughout the system, derate them by a proportional amount.
Click to expand...


I see, you are talking about the air handlers. My misunderstanding.


But I remain confused by your statements. Looking at the ITR air handler catalog, they specify output at 170F water temp, not 130F as you say. In contrast, the Sure Marine air handler catalog has graphs showing output at 5 different water temperatures, across an 8 gpm range of flow rates. So you can figure out output for you system's parameters.



And picking air handlers at comparable rated outputs, the ITR unit is 250 cfm and consumes 19W, where the Sure Marine is 203 cfm and consumes 5 watts. So yes, less cfm, but much less power.


Then ITR says the boiler itself consumes 78W, which is pretty good, I agree. But a circulator pump will be about 100W to 150W, depending on size and capacity. So a system with even just one air handler is over 200W.


I don't have any particular gripe with ITR, but want to see a realistic comparison.


On my last boat I did quite a bit of power consumption measuring, but of all the things I measured, the heat wasn't one of them. But the nameplate rating on the burner was 5.8A @ 120V, so 700W. Now that would be with the igniter on, and that shuts off after the few seconds to a minute.



But I think in practice, the boat size tends to drive the selection. The ITR systems tend to be on the smaller side, and the Olympia and Kabola on the larger side. And on a larger boat, even on batteries, a few hundred watts to get good reliable heat is a tradeoff many people have made, and seem happy with. Space too. If I were heating a 40' boat, I'd be giving ITR more consideration.
 
I have an earlier version of the ITR cabin fan catalog, and it specifies the same heat output at 110 deg F. Typo? I don't know. 170 would certainly be more reasonable, as the cycling thermostat in the ITR is set to go on at 160 and off at 180.

What I can tell you for certain is the Suremarine specs are for the component alone, not the assembly. That is, the heat exchanger as a component is rated by the manufacturer under lab conditions to do what the graphs say. This is what Suremarine told me directly. Similarly, the fan is rated by the manufacturer for that CFM standing alone. You can look that up from the part number.

Fans are the particular weak point of the Suremarine: they use small brushless axial fans to keep the noise down. This also keeps the heat output down. Axial fans with short shrouds - 20 or 25mm in this case - are very intolerant of any pressure rise, so anything blocking the output - like a heat exchanger or any ducting - reduces the CFM very substantially. Longer shrouds like 50 mm mitigate that to some degree. You can find this in many manufacturer's specs. Of course a radial fan is much more tolerate of back pressure.

The ITR exchangers have much larger fans, with longer shrouds. The air output is considerably higher as an assembly and the difference is not at all subtle. In fact I have purchased 50mm thick, higher cfm fans to replace the Suremarine ones which I will install this spring. CFM in fans is pretty much related to power. I do not know how ITR specs the cfm (fan alone or assmbly?) but I can tell you without doubt the output is much higher.

Similarly the heat output of the exchanger assembly is much higher. On the sailboat I have 3 Suremarine and 2 ITR heat exchangers on the Hurricane II system, on the same loop. The difference in heat output is dramatic. On the trawler, I have 1 Suremarine and 2 ITR on the Zephyr system, again the heat output difference is dramatic. You are welcome to drop by and experience it for yourself. Nothing against Suremarine, I like the people and the company - but don't believe those specs. The fans need to be much larger to achieve that output. The 5kbtu rated air handlers on the sailboat are each blowing through about 2' of duct with one 90 deg bend. I'd estimate the heat output is less than 2kbtu, based on the fact that a 500W electric heater will heat that cabin quicker (they are in the heads and guest stateroom). The ITR exchangers seem to achieve their rated output, guessing from electric heating equivalent.

On power, the Zephyr is spec'd to run at 6.5A. The March circ pump is about 2.5A, and the fans about 1.5A all running. That'd be 10.5A full on, though in practice I measure it at about 9A. For 20 seconds or so during starup, another 5A or so for the igniter. So I'll say 117W. On the Hurricane II, it seems to be about 10 or 11A running. Those are measurements, not specs.
 
DDW said:
I have an earlier version of the ITR cabin fan catalog, and it specifies the same heat output at 110 deg F. Typo? I don't know. 170 would certainly be more reasonable, as the cycling thermostat in the ITR is set to go on at 160 and off at 180.

What I can tell you for certain is the Suremarine specs are for the component alone, not the assembly. That is, the heat exchanger as a component is rated by the manufacturer under lab conditions to do what the graphs say. This is what Suremarine told me directly. Similarly, the fan is rated by the manufacturer for that CFM standing alone. You can look that up from the part number.

Fans are the particular weak point of the Suremarine: they use small brushless axial fans to keep the noise down. This also keeps the heat output down. Axial fans with short shrouds - 20 or 25mm in this case - are very intolerant of any pressure rise, so anything blocking the output - like a heat exchanger or any ducting - reduces the CFM very substantially. Longer shrouds like 50 mm mitigate that to some degree. You can find this in many manufacturer's specs. Of course a radial fan is much more tolerate of back pressure.

The ITR exchangers have much larger fans, with longer shrouds. The air output is considerably higher as an assembly and the difference is not at all subtle. In fact I have purchased 50mm thick, higher cfm fans to replace the Suremarine ones which I will install this spring. CFM in fans is pretty much related to power. I do not know how ITR specs the cfm (fan alone or assmbly?) but I can tell you without doubt the output is much higher.

Similarly the heat output of the exchanger assembly is much higher. On the sailboat I have 3 Suremarine and 2 ITR heat exchangers on the Hurricane II system, on the same loop. The difference in heat output is dramatic. On the trawler, I have 1 Suremarine and 2 ITR on the Zephyr system, again the heat output difference is dramatic. You are welcome to drop by and experience it for yourself. Nothing against Suremarine, I like the people and the company - but don't believe those specs. The fans need to be much larger to achieve that output. The 5kbtu rated air handlers on the sailboat are each blowing through about 2' of duct with one 90 deg bend. I'd estimate the heat output is less than 2kbtu, based on the fact that a 500W electric heater will heat that cabin quicker (they are in the heads and guest stateroom). The ITR exchangers seem to achieve their rated output, guessing from electric heating equivalent.

On power, the Zephyr is spec'd to run at 6.5A. The March circ pump is about 2.5A, and the fans about 1.5A all running. That'd be 10.5A full on, though in practice I measure it at about 9A. For 20 seconds or so during starup, another 5A or so for the igniter. So I'll say 117W. On the Hurricane II, it seems to be about 10 or 11A running. Those are measurements, not specs.
Click to expand...


Thanks. That's all very helpful. I'm in the middle of building a new system, so particularly interested.


Those March pumps are miserly indeed. I had a Grundfoss moving significantly more water, and using correspondingly more power.


Fingers crossed my new system works well. The last one did, so I'm optimistic.
 
You've got a big boat there, my sailboat is 45' and the trawler 34'. Also you have a lot more power to play with. In that situation I'd probably use the Kabola. For heat exchangers, if you are going through much ductwork I'd use the radial fans. A lot more power and more noise, but they will push air through ducts and the axials will not. I think ideally I'd use Suremarine exchangers, but modify or replace the fan plate with one holding a large diameter fan (the ITR high output are 6"). You can tune the CFM by fan selection, they aren't expensive to experiment with. On the ITR system, there is the option for two speed fans, accomplished by simply putting a dropping resistor in the line. Because they are brushless DC, the power will be reduced too (though not as much as the output) but the noise goes down as well. For fast heat up, put it on high, normally leave it on low.

The reason I'd do that using the Suremarine instead of the ITR, is that the Suremarine have threaded water connections which allows you to use PEX hose fittings and plumb with PEX. That would be a better installation than hose, which is sometimes problematic to keep tight.
 
FWIW, Sure Marine will work with you in getting the heat exchangers you need. Many of their units are available in multiple configurations with different fan options to balance output, noise, and power consumption. I have worked with them on multiple installations of Olympia units, Webasto units, and providing supplemental parts for Hurricane units. It is also easy enough to source AC fans for their heat exchangers to make an Olympia installation entirely AC powered.
 
Suremarine is great to work with. That said, when I ordered this last heat exchanger, I asked for the largest fans they had, and it is still woefully inadequate. They only work with the parts they stock. It is relatively easy to modify or make a fan plate to take your own sourced fan though. A place like Digikey lists 10s of thousands or choices.
 
I’ll look at largest fans if some zones are too cool. I have been expecting to reduce the fan capacity in a few spots like heads which are easily over heated.

All plumbing is PEX except for the big 1-1/2” loop through the boiler and manifolds.
 
twistedtree said:
I’ll look at largest fans if some zones are too cool. I have been expecting to reduce the fan capacity in a few spots like heads which are easily over heated.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't the heads have their own thermostat?

Here is an example of the axial fan problem. From the Mechatronics catalog, the brand and size that Suremarine uses (though others are similar). Note the precipitous drop in CFM with even slight backpressure: 60% or more lost at only 0.05" H20 (about 0.002 psi).

A0szwAa.jpg
 
We were full time on board several winters with an ITR Hurricane 28,000 btu Hydronic heater with 3 zones. With the system boiler firing I only saw a max amp draw of 32 amps 12 volts DC. Without the boiler firing(ie using engine heat with just the circulator (12 volt march) pump and the zone muffin fans it drew less that 6 amp 12 volts dc/. When we sold the boat The system had 1990+ hours on the hobbs meter without a single failure or any maintenance done on the system of any component. We loved it. It was less than dock power kw costs per btu and the water was too cold < 40 degrees to use reverse AC for heat. I loved how easily accessed the components were which were all easy to just R&R. All in all a robust simple heater except for the control board printed circuited board which is an R&R as well.
 
The boiler alone only draws about 6A, except for a few seconds when the igniter is lit. If you saw 32A, something else was using it. I run my whole Hurricane II hydronic system on a 20A dc-dc down converter, and it is lightly loaded most of the time and has never blown the 20A output fuse.
 
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