coolant for Hurricane

[Tom and Pam Brown]

The valves it is referring to are in the engine compartment.  You can google Hurricane Heater and download the manual for better direction. I used as was suggested 50/50 from an automotive store and it has not been an issue.

Maybe that's why it's yellow and has an distinct odor.

I am reasonably sure it is just a valve that is not open near the expansion tank for the hurricane heater.

Good luck!

[Tom and Pam Brown]

Sorry, I misspoke you must use a NON TOXIC  anti freeze no particular brand mentioned.

[Gerald Farris]

Barb and Jack,
Your coach has an electric hot water heater as well as the Hurricane diesel fired heater. If you are plugged into shore power or have the generator running and the breaker for the water heater is turned on, you will have hot water without the Hurricane even running. Are you sure that the diesel burner is running? The Hurricane burner will be make a noticeable noise when it is running as well as you will also have a noticeable exhaust flow from the Hurricane exhaust.  

The coolant that the Hurricane originally came with is regular 50/50 automotive antifreeze. If you want to change the system over to the non-toxic boiler fluid that is mentioned above, you will have to completely flush out the system to remove all of the antifreeze or you will just be wasting your time and money. I think that the Hurricane system in you coach holds about four gallons of coolant if it has not had a Comfort-Hot added to it.

Gerald  

[Keith Moffett]

Left valve open, right closed is the winter position.  503-668-9424 Jim Rixen  Rixen's ent. , Sandy Or.
This is the original inventor of the Hurricane and the man with all the proper answers

[Keith Moffett]

Sorry Gerald, I should have said Jim has the proper answeres if Gerald is unavailable.

[barbhalsell]

Barb and Jack,
Your coach has an electric hot water heater as well as the Hurricane diesel fired heater. If you are plugged into shore power or have the generator running and the breaker for the water heater is turned on, you will have hot water without the Hurricane even running. Are you sure that the diesel burner is running? The Hurricane burner will be make a noticeable noise when it is running as well as you will also have a noticeable exhaust flow from the Hurricane exhaust.
The coolant that the Hurricane originally came with is regular 50/50 automotive antifreeze. If you want to change the system over to the non-toxic boiler fluid that is mentioned above, you will have to completely flush out the system to remove all of the antifreeze or you will just be wasting your time and money. I think that the Hurricane system in you coach holds about four gallons of coolant if it has not had a Comfort-Hot added to it.

Gerald  

Yes we definitely had the hurricane going, flames and noise.We were not plugged in and no generator going. We viewed the ITR video online and Jack checked a few components to see if they were OK before we fired up.
 Where is the electric hot water heater?  

Also, we did add regular RV antifreeze since it obviously had been leaking and someone had loosened hoses. Anyway, we will have to drain, flush and refill with the proper fluid.
 Do you agree that the diverter valves will be in the engine compartment? Close to what? It is still dark this morning but I will go check as soon as I can

[Dick Simonis]

If we have vavles someplace, I've never found them.  I is possible that they are located under the chassis somewhere but???

I just used Prestone 50/50 E.G. anitfreeze.  The low silicate stuff that the engine manual calls for and it works just fine.  The only potential contact with the potable water would be an internal leak in one of the two heat exchangers but from what I can tell they are only on the cold water inlet to the hot water heater....looks like it preheats the inlet water.

http://www.itrheat.com/documents/HurricaneSCH25ManualRevFeb2011_002.PDF

Here is a link to the manual for an SCH25.  While ours is a SCH 45, the info should still be similiar the big differance being the BTU output.

If your air handlers are not heating, they could be airlocked.  After replacing the HW heater, I manually ran the pump using the jumper in the "brain" and kept an eye on the coolant level.  Had to keep the pressue cap off the tank to allow air to burble out.

Good luck.

Dick

[barbhalsell]

If we have vavles someplace, I've never found them.  I is possible that they are located under the chassis somewhere but???

I just used Prestone 50/50 E.G. anitfreeze.  The low silicate stuff that the engine manual calls for and it works just fine.  The only potential contact with the potable water would be an internal leak in one of the two heat exchangers but from what I can tell they are only on the cold water inlet to the hot water heater....looks like it preheats the inlet water.

http://www.itrheat.com/documents/HurricaneSCH25ManualRevFeb2011_002.PDF

Here is a link to the manual for an SCH25.  While ours is a SCH 45, the info should still be similiar the big differance being the BTU output.

If your air handlers are not heating, they could be airlocked.  After replacing the HW heater, I manually ran the pump using the jumper in the "brain" and kept an eye on the coolant level.  Had to keep the pressue cap off the tank to allow air to burble out.

Good luck.

Dick

So your Hurricane just heated coach and water from day one? There is supposed to be the option of turning a valve or valves to only heat water or to do both.
Would we have hot water in the tank if our air handlers were not heating?

[Dick Simonis]

Yes, it does send hot water through the air handlers but with the fans off, no heat is generated except inside the unit.  Not a bother.  Especially since I don't run the unit for hot water as the electric HW heater seems to provide enough on it's own.  The exception being if need a larger supply of HW than normal.  I have looked in the Hurricane bay as well as the Engine bay for valves and never found any.  Finally figured out that I don't care that much.

I think the air handlers and HW heater are all in series but not sure.  If one works the others should unless there is air an you simply aren't getting the proper recir flow.

Near the end of our summer trip, I did start using it for heat and it works just dandy.  Usually, I would start the unit with the fans off until the furnace came up to temp and shut off the burner.  Than kick the fans on.  Normally, heat is supplied by an electric space heater in the bedroom and the built in baseboard heater in the living room but if the outside temps drop into the 30's/low 40's additional heat is required so I flip on the Hurricane.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the Hurrican but have never had an Aqua Hot so can't compare the two.  The hurricane, being seperate modules is sure easy to work on though.  Love the HW heater as a seperate unit...very easy and inexpensive to service/replace.

[Joel Weiss]

The coolant that the Hurricane originally came with is regular 50/50 automotive antifreeze. If you want to change the system over to the non-toxic boiler fluid that is mentioned above, you will have to completely flush out the system to remove all of the antifreeze or you will just be wasting your time and money. I think that the Hurricane system in you coach holds about four gallons of coolant if it has not had a Comfort-Hot added to it.

Gerald  

Gerald--

Does the use of automotive antifreeze imply that a double-wall heat exchanger was used on the potable water loop?  According to the ITR manual a double-wall exchanger was an option but I don't know how to tell if it was used.  If it's a single-wall exchanger wouldn't it be safer to convert to a non-toxic antifreeze?  That's what the ITR manual says should be used.

Joel

[JimDyer]

Maybe I can explain the issues in using non-toxic propylene glycol versus ethylene glycol (regular or ELC antifreeze) If you drink it, the regular antifreeze will act pretty much the way alcohol does in your bloodstream, taking the place of oxygen in your blood. This will starve your muscles of oxygen and eventually kill you. The cure is to pump alcohol into your system in slightly less than a lethal dose so it pushes out the ethylene glycol to be destroyed by your kidneys and liver, and then eventually after 24 hours or so, letting the alcohol get cleaned up by your system much as if you had had a whole bottle of tequila. .....If they got to you in time you'd have a bad time but you would live.

If your dog gets into it, because of the sweet taste the dog will lick up everything it can get, and very quickly get such a high dose it won't survive.

Because of all this, the conventional standard is that if a failure will lead to antifreeze contamination of drinking water, you use the non-toxic, but if a failure will only lead to leakage out of the system you use ethylene glycol.  Hydro-hot/Aquahot/Hurricane/ hydronic heating systems for coaches come in a number of configurations:  on mine the domestic hot water runs in a copper coil which is wrapped around the furnace body so ethylene glycol antifreeze is fine.  Some have a single wall heat exchanger where a leak will result in contamination of both streams with the other, so propylene glycol non-toxic is used. From a post above, an option was offered at one point to have a double-walled heat exchanger which technically would be fine with ethylene glycol. but for efficiency it would probably have some liquid in the centre, and two failures would result in cross-contamination. Since that's not something I would expect your routine maintenance to detect, I'd recommend the non-toxic for those as well.

[JimDyer]

Barb and Jack,

If you feel you have a full system (check at the cap - looks like a radiator cap) which is firing and heating up but not delivering heat to the registers, the official next step according to Aquahot is to trace the lines with your hand from the main boiler to the header, to the pumps, to the check valves, and to the lines going to the coach.  

1. If the hot slows down near the pumps, or a screwdriver running between your ear and the motor doesn't detect a motor running sound, pull out the electrical schematic and see if the 12v pump motor should be running for that loop. NOTE that many versions use switches on the ground side rather than the voltage side so if you want to 'hot-wire' it, you need to run a jumper from the ground side of the motor to ground, not from the hot side to a voltage source. So it is very important to figure out which way yours works before you go jumpering around! You'll need a 12v DC meter or a multimeter to figure this out.

2. Before you waste too much time on the electrical part of this, take your big screwdriver you used to try and hear it running (you said one zone was working, so it should be easy to tell which pumps are running and which aren't)  and whack the check valve firmly. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to shake it loose if it's stuck.

I think the next step is to take some pictures and post them so that we can see what you have.

[Jerry Carr]

I have the Aqua Hot and have been getting the boiler anti freeze from Bend they stock this in a 50gal. barrel so you need to bring a one gallon bottles. I have also been told that this is "Boiler Antifreeze" and this is the only product to use in the Aqua Hot system.
I don't recall the service guy's name from Aqua hot he does work on the units during the rallies but he will also supply the same product it's red in color.   FYI Bend has the best price about hALF the cost(8.00 per gallon)

I did try camper world and a few heating/AC suppliers the stuff is hard to find. You can order at Ture Value but in a case of 4 gallon bottles.

My point is this is not the same product that is used in the Hurricane unit so be very careful  
  

[Dick Simonis]

Gerald--

Does the use of automotive antifreeze imply that a double-wall heat exchanger was used on the potable water loop?  According to the ITR manual a double-wall exchanger was an option but I don't know how to tell if it was used.  If it's a single-wall exchanger wouldn't it be safer to convert to a non-toxic antifreeze?  That's what the ITR manual says should be used.

Joel

Bearing in mind that the heat exchangers are on the inlet to the hot water heater, one would need to be drinking hot water in quite large quantities for it to be an issue.

[Joel Weiss]

Bearing in mind that the heat exchangers are on the inlet to the hot water heater, one would need to be drinking hot water in quite large quantities for it to be an issue.

Nonetheless, I believe accepted plumbing practice would be to use non-toxic antifreeze in this situation.