round to square hot water heater replacement

[John Fogelgren]

Our new square water heater has fastening feet on each end, which do not fit on the round wood pad.  What should we do?

John Fogelgren
hull 718

[Ted Pounds]

Replace the round pad with a square one or, if there is enough clearance, just screw a square pad onto the round one. 

[Ken Juul]

John,
I should have looked at the message board first.  My water heater shelf was square, so it was very easy to scab an extension on.  If yours is round to match the old water heater the concept is the same, it is just a bit harder to match the scab to the existing mount.  I suggest making a cardboard template of your curved mounting board.  Then place the new water heater on the existing shelf, put your template under it and trace the outline of the new mounting feet.  Use the template to cut a mounting shelf extension, then scab it in place.

In the attached diagram.  Blue is the existing shelf, red is the shelf extension, black is the scab and the green arrows represent screws or bolts.  Use glue too.
Hope this makes sense.

[Ron Hill]

John : I'll guess that the plywood platform that your old round water heater sat on is nailed (ungalvanized finishing nails!!) into 2X4s that are glassed to the hull. 
Just remove that platform and build a new one to fit the new square water heater and use some brass/stainless screws to secure it to those 2x4s. 
Also make sure that your new water heater has the same port/starboard inlet/outlets as the old one - makes hooking the new one up much simpler!!  A few thoughts

[Stu Jackson]

This might be a good time to consider replacing the hoses from the engine to your new heater, if you haven't done so already.  Here's how to:  http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,3769.0.html

[John Fogelgren]

Thanks for all your responses.  I'm ready to tackle it.
John

[John Fogelgren]

Thanks folks for your info; I just finished the job:
    After removing the side access door and frame and disconnecting all the hoses and wires I removed the top four screws from the old round tank and took the top off  then cut the cover from the tank with tin-snips and striped the fiberglass wool rather than remove the front drawer frame to remove the tank. Then it was easy to remove.  The pad under the old tank was a round piece of plywood(about 3/4" thick) glassed directly to the floor; it was smaller than the new square tank footprint and mounting brackets. I cut off approxmately 1/2 inches from the end of each mounting bracket to shorten the Tank footprint and made a mounting board of 1/2 " plywood just long enough to mount the new heater on and countersank the boltheads in the plywood from the bottom and epoxyed them in place as there was no way to hold the bolts from turning on the bottom after the board would be mounted. I shortened the brackets because there is very little more length for the new seward tank because of the mount on the starboard side for the waterpump and manifold stand.
I cleaned off the old pad and then screwed and glued the new one down to it as far to starboard as possible so as to gain access to the portside for all the hoses and electrical connections.It was then easy to slip in the new tank and bolt it down to the 1/2 inch mount.  I had absolutely no problem at all replacing the heater hoses-just slid them through the holes in the engine compartment and pushed them until they came out under the galley and grabbed them.  I used 8 feet of hose, but didn't need all of it.
I used  a Seward 6 gallon tank(model F600) with all hoses on the same side as the electical connections.  It still did not leave a lot of extra room by the cabinet to hook up everything and for general access to the plumbing.

[Mike and Joanne Stimmler]

Congrats John, sounds like you got r done! Did you purge the air out of your new hoses to the engine by pouring anti freeze directly into the hoses from the engine side? And have you run the engine to check for over heating? Hope everything checks out for you.

Mike