Heated Indoor Storage and Winterizing the Engines

[northshore]

About engine space heaters....

Our girl is in indoor heated storage again and normally before she goes into storage, she gets winterized. This year I took care of the freshwater system, the head, air conditioning and shower sump. The marina was supposed to do the engines.

For various reasons she made it into heated storage without having the engines done. The marina that did the haul out will shortly be sending someone to the storage facility to do the engines and genset. The storage facility is kept at 55 degrees but has no back up if the power goes out. If something happened where the power did go out, I would get a call as soon as it was discovered. It would probably be about 24 hours max.

The engines and genset are all freshwater cooled

What does anyone think about getting a bilge heater run through an inverter running off the set of house batteries (2 Group 31).

If can get a bilge heater of adequate size to maintain the bilge temp at about 40 for a day or two until I can get someone in to winterize the engines if the power is out for an extended period.

The underlying reason here is to save the money of having the engines winterized every year by purchasing a bilge heater once.

Thanks,

-Mike

 

[Zorba]

What's the point of heated storage and the premium you pay if you have to winterize the engine? Why not save some cash and store in inside cold and winterize.

 

[moparlvr4406]

I would at least drain the blocks manifolds and gen
if the power goes out to the facility there would be nothing to run a bilge heater either

 

[northshore]

What's the point of heated storage and the premium you pay if you have to winterize the engine? Why not save some cash and store in inside cold and winterize.

I drum up a lot of business for the guy that runs the place so I get a great break on the storage price. To be able to work on the boat over winter without freezing is a huge benefit as well. For next to nothing, I can winterize the other systems in the boat.

I'm an engineer by trade, and big into fault tolerance and redundancy and I'd prefer to have a backup (bilge heater) just in case (and God forbid!) 'Sandy' part II ever decided to roll through town and killed the power for a few days.

 

[northshore]

I would at least drain the blocks manifolds and gen
if the power goes out to the facility there would be nothing to run a bilge heater either

Greetings Jim,

Our girl is freshwater cooled so the blocks all have antifreeze in them. Just the raw water side would be an issue.
My thinking is to run the bilge heater through an inverter hooked to the set of house batteries. This would all be more or less a 'stop gap' remedy for maybe a day or two to keep the bilge 'warm' till I could get to the storage facility.

-Mike

 

[Jimmy Buoy]

Ive been storing boats indoor heated for a number of years and have never winterized anything… Don't worry about it either. That being said, I'm familiar with the setup and there is always someone there every day for most of the day and the building wouldn't freeze that fast if the power did go out for a while. The building I'm in now even has a large solar panel operation on the roof that actually puts power back into the grid. I may think differently if it were a different setup.

 

[northern]

Since you are an engineer do the math. An inverter is 88% efficient at best. The smallest heater that probably would do any good would be 900 watts running 50% of the time as you are heating a non insulate area. I bet you find you are good for 4 hours max. Block heaters on cars are 750 watts for my days plugging in cars in Canada. Your AMP draw would be 40+ on 12 volts on 50% use of a 900 watt heater.

 

[northshore]

Since you are an engineer do the math. An inverter is 88% efficient at best. The smallest heater that probably would do any good would be 900 watts running 50% of the time as you are heating a non insulate area. I bet you find you are good for 4 hours max. Block heaters on cars are 750 watts for my days plugging in cars in Canada. Your AMP draw would be 40+ on 12 volts on 50% use of a 900 watt heater.

Greetings Northern,

Effectively, the space is insulated by stagnant air (engines, inside hull, inside building) and there is a pretty substantial amount of thermal mass (not only in the blocks, but in the other objects in the building, so the temperature is not going to immediately snap to what ever the outside temp is. This is probably the biggest difference between heating a block on a car which if outside is exposed to moving air and even in a garage and automotive engine compartment is not nearly as well sealed as a bilge. Without the rapid temperature changes that an enclosed (for the most part) bilge gets you 500 or 600 watts would probably do the trick. Its going to be somewhat of an inductive load so a draw of 7 amps out of the heater sounds real. That being the case, I'm thinking that 6 to 8 hours of run time from two group 31 (~210 amp hours capacity) batteries is not unreasonable. So if you are at a (conservative) 20% duty cycle - 12 minutes on - 48 off - the 6 hours of continuous run time would get you into the 30+ hour range before the batteries drop below the inverter minimum turn on voltage.

Whoops - 70 amps @ 12 volts out of a set of 210 amp hour batteries get you about 3 hours. At the 20% duty cycle drops you to about 15 hours of saftey

Thoughts???

-Mike

 

[villain style]

And this is why I am in sales!!!!!!

 

[northern]

If you put in a heater run off the inverter let us know how it works.
We go north in the spring and it is cool. We run the generator to make heat every few hours in the day. We have 10 six volt deep cycle batteries and I have used them once on a 500 Watt (On high all the time) oil heater to heat the salon. The batteries drain in less than a day.
My boat goes into heated storage, figure if the heat goes off and things get damaged I would claim it on insurance and they would go after the storage people.

 

[rondds]

Not convinced you guys could get an Sandy type event up there but FYI, Sandy blew the power at my entire marina for pretty much all winter. Shut power to my house for 17 days. So God forbid something of that magnitude happened to you, don't expect anything to be done in 48 hours. You have no idea how crippling a loss of power is. Everything comes to a complete standstill so no one is going to run in there and winterize your engines.

If you are capable of winterizing your fresh water systems, you can certainly figure out how to winterize your own engines. 2 cases of pink stuff should do the trick. That's what I'd do for complete insurance.

 

[KnotEasy]

No heater required. Leave the engines un-winterized while stored in heated. Relax. That is one of the advantages of heated storage.

 

[northshore]

Not convinced you guys could get an Sandy type event up there but FYI, Sandy blew the power at my entire marina for pretty much all winter. Shut power to my house for 17 days. So God forbid something of that magnitude happened to you, don't expect anything to be done in 48 hours. You have no idea how crippling a loss of power is. Everything comes to a complete standstill so no one is going to run in there and winterize your engines.

If you are capable of winterizing your fresh water systems, you can certainly figure out how to winterize your own engines. 2 cases of pink stuff should do the trick. That's what I'd do for complete insurance.

Greetings Ron,

The tail end of Sandy made it to the Cleveland area, obviously with considerably less force than the east cost saw. We lost power in the home for four days and the storage facility for 2 days. 25 footers on Lake Erie manged to destroy the marina next to ours. None of the boats that were in survived most of the docks and pilings were destroyed. The marina just reopened for dockage this year. Up the road at a second marina, severe damage but only a few sinkings.

Since I only have the raw water side of the engines to do, maybe doing it my self is the way to go!

Again, the chances of anything happening like that again are slim, but just in case.

-Mike

 

[moparlvr4406]

the question I have is in the case of an extended outage ...would the storage facility be responsible for freeze damage ??

 

[Molson]

Do they allow your batteries to be hooked up while in storage?

 

[rondds]

Mike
You have to do what will make you rest easy at night. It's simple enough to pink the engines. It literally takes more time to pour the gallons into a container than run the stuff through.

 

[Gary Hill]

Here is an idea. I understand you want some back up. Think about just running a couple of 100 watt light bulbs if the heat goes off in the bildge. This could buy you the additional time in case of outage.

 

[KnotEasy]

Most storage facilities here in West Michigan do not allow electrical devices plugged in and running when not attended. (ie Light Bulb, Heater) Ask the poor saps at North Shore Marina how they felt when some dude blew up his boat while working on it a couple winters ago. Damaged the building and many boats because of his stupidity.

 

[sbw1]

Most marinas are not going to allow light bulbs, bildge heaters, etc. in their buildings during winter storage. Frankly, you don't want that either. Even working on boats by owners should not be allowed because people do stupid things on their boats that impact many others. The principle risk of allowing people in is fire. Some careless guy at a local marina here caused an explosion that destroyed 5-6 boats and heavily damaged more than 80 others ruining the boating season for lots of people.

I've never worried about the heat going out at our marina. During one winter storm a few years ago a huge overhead door was blown in by extremely high winds. My boat was exposed to the elements in February for several hours. It sustained no damage because the marina staff got on the problem and used high lows to install temporary door sections that were held in place by a jury rigged system. When the weather moderated, a new steel door was installed. No boats were harmed. You have to remember that the boats and concrete structures are all about 51 degrees, and floors will not drop below that without a lot of cold air for hours.

Relax and trust the systems in place at a well run business. It all fails, your insurance should cover any losses.

 

[KnotEasy]

is there an echo ??