Saturday, October 25

Today was spent reconnecting the hot water heater back to the engine bypass.

FIrst, I teflon-taped the various fittings and reassembled the plumbing.  Then the inlet and outlet hoses were routed out the bottom of the lazarette, into the engine compartment, and directed to the bypass fittings.  Easier said than done!  Snaking the hoses under, around, and between other components took a bit of effort.

Once everything was hooked up, coolant was added to the tank in the lazarette and the engine fired up.  The expansion tank promptly filled almost completely with coolant, as if the entire system was emptied into the tank.   I spent a bit of time working air out of the system, but it seemed like the coolant just wasn’t circulating.   There was probably still air trapped in the system, but it didn’t really matter because I notice that one of the hose connections was leaking badly – I had only hand-tightened it.  The only way to tighten it was to completely remove the hose from the engine compartment (again!), so I just decided to keep the entire circuit offline for awhile longer.   I rarely use hot water, and then only on shore power, which still works – just can’t heat water while underway.

~ by phallock on October 25, 2008.