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Waterboiler change 2018-07-08 The change of waterboiler was a result of two things, we had noticed rust in the boiler box during few years and one other Hanse owner told us that he had found a bigger stainless steel boiler for a very cheap price and it was not that difficult to change it your self. To be clear, we never had rust in the drinking water so there was not really any need yet to make the change. We had bee told since we bought the boat that the boiler was not a stainless one so there was a potential risk that it would break one day.
Below you find some
pictures how how things looked like and alos how a boiler looks like
when its been cut open. |
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 1. We started by opening the overpressure valve and let out all water inside the boiler. We used a vacuum pump to collect the water, similar pump you use to change the oil in the engine. |
 2. In order to speed things up we removed the hot water pipe, the white one, so we got more air in the boiler. After the water was drained we removed the engine cooling agent pipes, the black one in the bottom of the box. Be sure that you have emptied the box from all water because there will be some cooling agent coming out from the engine and you do not want it to flow out from the holes in the box. |
 3. A picture inside the aft bed and behind the boiler box. The plastic tubes are very hard and almost impossible to move which caused some problems when the new tank was fitted in it s place. More about that later on. |
 4. After detaching all pipes and the belts that hold the boiler in the box we realized that the boiler had not been strapped properly because the belts had rusted all trough. Even if you are not going to change the boiler, have a check on your belts and see that they are still intact. The brackets/feet from the old boiler were dismounted and the screw holes were re-used later on when installing the new boiler. |
 5. The new boiler is in the box. As you can see the old hot water pipe is not long or flexible enough to be fitted in the new boiler without having to cut it and crimp it again, whih would require tools and knowledge we did not have. you can also see that the cold water pipe in he bottom of the box, with a blue "collar" is too short. |
 6. After lots of thinking and many visits to various hardware shops we found these flexible Pex pipes with a vowen steel cover. They gave us the necessary flexibility to fit bot hot and cold water pipes to the new boiler. We had some concerns regardng the flex pipes diameter as its smalet than the original pipes but so far we have not seen any change in water pressure from the boiler to the galley or to the showers. For instalation purpose we removed the electric outlet a sit was sitting in our way. We tried to find a new plcae for it but realized that the old and original place was best in the final end. |
 7. Here is the electric outlet fitted in its place again. |
8. The small pipe inside the red oval is the over
pressure outlet. We added later on a transparent rubber hose over it,
apporx 20-30 cm as we think it well be easier next time to empty the
tank by adding our vacuum pump to it or just let the water flow into a
small container. |
 9. The boiler comes with two stainless feet to which the stainless steel belts are attached to. But, these feet are too high for the box in our 370 so we discarded them and bolted the one end of the belt in the hole where the previous boiles feet had been. The upper end of the belt was extended with stainless steel nail band (very difficult to find) and the bolte to the upper hole of the old boilers feet hole. As the new boiler has a foam cover it doesent really matter if it is getting in touch with water or not because it will not rust. The grey webbing band in the front of the picture is only for carrying and lifting the boiler up and down during the installation. |
 10. The final installation with all pipes, hoses, belts, outlets and cables in their places. As we never done anything like this before we lived on the boat during one week just to be sure that there would not be any leakages from the connections. Regarding them, we used normal thread tape, quite many layers. |
| How does a boiler look inside and what is the tank really made of? I.e, do you need to panic for little rust in the boiler box? | |
 11. As you can see, the boilers under side is totally full of rust. This is because of the water that sips out from the over pressure valve when the cold water is heated up and it creates some extra pressure inside the tank. |
 12. Since we were curios about how badly the boiler had been effected by the rust we decided to disect it. |
 13. First step was to cut open the metal mantle. Inside there is a 3-4 cm thick layer of isolation foam. |
 14. Under the foam you find the tank and as you can see, its stainless!! So there would not been any reason yet to change the tank. I wish we had known this earlier. |
 15. The bottom of the boiler is removed. Nothing more than more insulation foam. |
 16. All foam has been removed and its clear that there are no damages on the tank it self. |
 17. Next step is to remove the cover and look into the electric wirings. |
 18. All good inside, lots of stuff that we do not understnad but all healthy and fresh. |
 19. View from a different angle. |
 20. Another angle. |
 21. All cables and the heathing element is now removed. |
 22. The front lid is fully detached and also here no rust on the tank. |
23. The cables etc are all attached to the heathing
element. |
 24. The heathing element is a bit rusty and the end of it, at the u-turn is covered in something black that stuck to the fingers when I touched it. |
 25. The rubber sealing between the tank and the electronic lid was pretty worn out. The rubber was not soft but more hard and brittle. |
 26. Hard to say but this could been the point that was going to brake in the next step. |
 27. The tank from above. |
 28. The tank from the inside. The corrugated tube is where the cooling agent from the engine goes in to the boiler and heats up the water. The tube on the top is where the hot water goes out when cold water flows in from the bottom of the tank. |
 29.The cover mantles outside shows serious rust attacks. |
 30. The inside of the mantle is not so much attacked by rust. |