Max Makes A Heater

           The first thought that crosses most peoples minds when they begin the search for a marine cabin heater is how beautiful they are.  Companies like Taylors, Cozy Cabin Heater, and Dickson Newport have produced some fine specimens over the years.  Beautifully polished stainless and brass formed into organic shapes with symmetric cutouts that help symbolize the luxury that is having an ambient heat source in what can be a moist, cold, and uncomfortable environment. The second thing most people notice is the price tag.  Given their marine classification and the limited market, marine heaters can cost up to 1000 dollars, maybe more, which is a lot for what could be considered a non-essential piece of equipment.  What is a boat heater anyway?  It’s just a heat source, of which there are many on a boat.  Is it worth spending that kind of money?           Turns out the biggest problem with heating a boat is removing the moisture created by burning whatever fuel you want to use.  Burning one propane molecule creates 4 molecules of water, burning 1 of kerosene creates 13 of water.  Thats a big problem if you're trying to dry out your boat and actually make it feel warm.  So you have to find a way of gaining the heat created while shedding the water vapor.  The first thing I thought of was an inverted flower pot.  Terracotta can radiate heat, it comes with a prefabbed hole, and it cost about 2 dollars at your local hardware store.  Heater manufacturers are always talking about the heating element, which is ceramic in most cases, and if that’s doing most of the work, how come they cost so much?  I couldn’t think of a good reason so I began designing my own with the help of my father, the portable stove expert, aka the “stovie”.

 The first step was to make a prototype as a proof of concept.  The process turned out to be pretty easy and didn’t take much longer than an hour or two.  I took a flower pot, enlarged the hole so a ¾” pipe would fit thru, tack welded a washer to the pipe and added a threaded coupling to support the pot between the bearing surfaces.  I inserted the assembly into an inverted champagne bucket, secured it in much the same way as the pot, cut a few holes in it and done… prototype complete.  We put the device on one of many stoves my father has lying around and set up a fan that would blow air into the bucket, around the pot, and out at hole at the top.

The thing worked great.  The air coming out was hot enough to begin burning your hands if you held them close enough and it managed to max out a thermometer we had close by which read up to 120 degrees.  Concept proven, I couldn’t stop thinking about building the real thing.

I have some experience in sheet metal design.  My first job out of school was for Kammetal, an architectural metal company that was kind enough to hire me even although I lacked a lot of the skills they were looking for in a new hire.  The fact that I became acquainted with the owner as his sailing instructor a few days prior to applying may have helped, but who knows.  I wanted to design a stove that was affordable to produce, used standard parts, and looked halfway decent.  I also wanted to design it as a platform to be developed rather than a product to be sold.  I came up with a simple design that is easy to assemble and modify.  Given that I had to make ten in order to make the venture cost effective, the idea was to sell the extra nine as kits to be finished by the purchaser.  You receive the break metal parts, a few bolts, a suggested parts list for completion, and perhaps a couple of directions for possible modifications.  I am hoping people get into tweaking the design and sharing information on how to boost the performance.  Maybe I'll create a whole line of low tech, modifiable gadgets some day.  I tested the platform idea by giving an unmarked drawing of the stove to an energy engineer I work with who came up with a bunch of suggestions that fell right in line with the DYI theme.  Having proven the concept and feeling relatively confident that I could sell any extras, I put in the order with Kammetal for ten, 22 gauge, 304 stainless steel, mill finish stoves with the hope that I wasn’t wasting well over 1000 dollars at a time when the boat could use the money.