The most beautiful project of the winter 2016-2017 is a new heating system. One of the two Webasto heaters will break down in the autumn of 2016. That's a good reason to do all this major modification now. We are looking for a solution that will work well for longer periods of time on the boat, even in colder areas. A hot air system is less suitable for this. The heat feels less pleasant and the hot air stoves are not able to withstand full continuous operation.

We arrive at the CV heating system of Kabola, a Dutch supplier of advanced diesel CV stoves. We have the 7 kW version Ecoline, with 0% soot emission. It is a hot water system, in our case cooling water with antifreeze. Heat is emitted through six radiators (three in the living room, one in our bedroom and two in the bathrooms), combined with three heat exchangers that provide hot air (two in the girls' bedrooms and one outside in the cockpit!).

The radiators in the living areas are in a beautiful copper-brown color so they do not stand out at all. Some are equipped with a system with small air fans, which doubles the capacity. In the bathrooms there are white radiators.

Because of this system we can easily install heating in the cockpit. In the engine room there is a large heat exchanger that converts hot water into warm air. There are two nozzles in the cockpit that blow hot air. It's nice when it's a bit colder and you still want to sit outside in the evening, or during cold nights at sea.

The system is controlled by a Nest room thermostat that hangs in the living room. Just like at home. The capacity is now perfect and the indirect radiant heat from the radiators is so much more pleasant than hot air heating. We are very happy with it.

In addition, we maintain the Webasto heating as a back-up or extra boost when it is very cold. We replace the two old 3500 Watt stoves with one new 5500 Watt stove with a digital control. We connect the original two pipe systems with each other.

A huge plus is that with the new Kabola stove we can also heat the boiler. We replace the boiler with a version that can make hot water in three ways: via electricity when we're on shore power, via hot cooling water from the engine when we're on the engine and via central heating water from the Kabola in all other cases. Enormous luxury, we now have an abundance of hot water anytime and anywhere. Until the water tank is empty of course 😉