When I bought the boat, it came with a bulkhead mounted Taylor kerosene heater. This is an excellent little heater, but did not have enough power to keep us warm in late fall or early spring at the latitudes of our normal cruising grounds. In order to extend our cruising season, and at the same time be free to anchor or dock where there was no electricity, we needed a more powerful heater. The new heater should be able to provide a comfortable temperature throughout the boat, should not make noice, should be simple and robust, and should not use electrical power.

Our choice fell on the traditional fisherman's diesel-heater. I bought a second hand Refleks, and then spendt a small fortune in parts, including chimney, bulkhead insulation and a full water borne heating system throughout the ship. I bought this from Glembring, who sells their own similar heater with compatible parts. If I had gone for original Refleks parts, the fortune spent would have been larger... The only compromise I made with respect to the above requirements was to acknowledge that the water must be circulated by a small (and expensive), low wattage circulation pump.

The old heater had scorched the bulkhead, so I scrapeed of the damaged varnish and oiled the bulkhead with a few coats before covering it with insulation, and a sheet of aluminium. Next, I plan to put another sheet of stainless on top, with spacers giving a gap of about 2 cm between the two metal sheets.

To mount the chimney, I have first cut slightly oversized hole in the cabin top. I molded epoxy pidestall topside to get a horizontal mounting for the external chimney base. In the same operation, I filled the rim of the hole with epoxy, thus sealing the teak from any further ingress of water.

The heater was installed on a stainless spill tray, and bolted to the flooring. Since I would want to keep access to as much of the hull as possible (and especially the depth sounder which is almost directly under the heater), I had to cut the existing flooring sections so that only the absolutely necessary area is permanently screwed to the traverse frames.

A simple day tank was be installed in the outboard cabinet in the head, and a feeder system with an electrical pump was mounted to enable easy filling directly from the main tank.

A good installation of these heaters require that an overrun connection is made to some low and big enough spillover tank. What could be better than to route spillover oil directly back to the main tank in the keel, by the same route as the return line from the engine? Excellent!

The plan is to mount radiators on every conceivable vertical surface in order to take of some of the heater's high heat output. I actually haven't got enough radiators  (or vertical surfaces) for the maximum effect that the water heating system should deliver as per spec., so I hope I do not have to run it on full steam. If I do, that is what I may get, which is not a good thing in a radiator system. I might have bought a too powerful heater; time will tell...
So far I've only added a few radiators, in the forward cabin, the heads, and in the aft cabin. I want to gain some experience before I decide on the placement of additional radiators.

Now, we should -in principle- be able to extend the cruising season considerably, which is the only sensible reason I can find for spending all this time and money in the first place. Of course it has suddenly also become much more comfortable to work on the boat during winter!

Remaining work:

• The system will also be connected with the calorifier, so that we can take warm showers without running the engine first. Maybe I'll also connect it to the engine, so that the boat can be heated throughout by the engine's (fresh water side) cooling water when motoring.
• Adding the additional stainless steel sheet for bulkhead protection. Will it be necessary?...
• Addin the overrun connection
• Adding additional radiators. 

Any ideas, experiences, warnings or encouragement is much appreciated