Talk to me about hydronic heating

tropical36 wrote:

smlranger wrote:

tropical36 wrote:

Executive wrote:
While not the Hydronic system, we have it's brother, AquaHot. If it smokes, it needs servicing. It will smell a bit though. That said, our unit has separate blowers at each of the registers so it's very quiet when it's running. We leave ours on electric most of the time and only need to fire up the unit for showers as DW likes long hot showers in the morning. Heating the rig is just a humming sound. Wouldn't have another coach without it....Dennis

Question....How does all this work and let's say the AquaHot/Hydronic, system fails and whether or not you're boon docking or not, what do you do for hot water, heat, etc....and until you get it fixed?
I would guess the genset for space heaters, but how about the hot water and if I'm to understand this thing correctly, most everything is dependent upon it working, instead of having individual self contained appliances. I'm also assuming that the range is electric and needs the genset, correct?

If your Aqua Hot system failed completely, you would not have hot water or the ability to heat the coach beyond what you could do with electric heaters (generator or shore power) or overhead heat pumps.

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.

Thanks for that and kind of what I thought, with the kind of specifics, I was looking for.
I'm getting old and still a little old school as well, so with our two overhead heat pumps, two independent forced air furnaces, elect/propane hot water and of course, portable on board space heaters, I feel that we're good to go, no matter. Still have the RV fridge, too, but just as soon not, with having a 2KW inverter.
Eventually these modern systems will be the only thing out there and pretty much bullet proof, as well. For right now, I am hearing about a lot of failures surrounding these systems, that don't sound like an easy fix, while out there on the road.

Frankly, I don't think you can count on any new 'systems' on modern RV's being bullet proof. In fact, it seems they fail more often as they get more complex. Not unlike home appliances these days. They are fully featured but don't have seem to be as reliable or durable as what many of us came to expect over the years. Just the way it is, IMO.