Talk to me about hydronic heating
Good morning everyone. We're shopping for the next coach and the model we like has the option of either conventional furnace or hydronic heating. Those with experience with both, what are your thought...
Forum Discussion
Executive wrote:
The Aqua Hot has both electric heating element/s and the diesel burner. It seems that issues with the diesel burner (Webasto) are more common than any issue with the electric heating element. However, if the burner will not work, the electric element is limited in how much hot water or heat it can provide. But, you can still have some hot water with just the electric element.
To follow-up with with how well the electric side of our Aqua-hot system operates, admittedly, we are somewhat conservative water users but, the electric element provides all of our hot water and heat needs unless outside temperatures fall much below 45 deg F or so. If we have guests onboard, the diesel burner gets fired at times. However, for boondocking, remember the electric element is dependent upon shore power or genset whereas the diesel burner is not.
I have no data to support this comment but, I suspect operating a hydronic Aqua-hot heat system with the diesel burner and then using batteries only to operate the pump and the small fans at each heat exchanger on our coach would require significantly less battery power than running a propane fired furnace like we've had in our other motorhomes.
Smelly and noisy would not be my description of a properly operating Aqua-hot hydronic system.
