All Forums  Norman Boats  Well My Norman has ...............?  Rinnai Heat Exchanger repair

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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by Stan the Man[/i] [br]One night I forgot to drain the Rinnai water header when leaving the boat and the next time I visited the water in the heater exchanger had frozen and split the two half-found copper pipes at the top left of the heat exchanger. Given that a replacement HE is around £100 (expensive when the entire heater can be had for around twelve that amount), Graham "the gas" Freeman suggested that the HE was eminently repairable. It looked like one of the pipes had already been repaired in the past with a blob of solder which had failed. The HE is made of copper and, after the pipes were thoroughly cleaned a patch was soldered over each split (copper or brass will do). I used phosphoric acid flux and both a high-wattage mains iron and a gas-fired pencil iron to ensure both that the patch was secure and the edges filled with a fillet of solder. I did the repairs with the HE removed but this was merely to made access easier. To date these repairs have lasted well and have shown no tendency to fail. For anyone out there who can turn their hand to some soldering then it is well worth attempting a repair to save the cost of a new HE. [/quote]   Click here to attach a photo to your post   Check here to include your profile signature.