BAC Forum
General Boards => Technical Support => Topic started by: barbhalsell on October 08, 2011, 06:53:09 PM
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Where does one buy the special hydronic coolant for the Hurricane?
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Where does one buy the special hydronic coolant for the Hurricane?
I just used regular 50/50 mix antifreeze from the auto parts place. Same stuff I use in the engine. Perhaps I'm wrong....thought that is what the folks at Beaver Coach said.
Dick
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It is called inhibited propylene glycol. a food grade antifreeze.
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Is it just regular RV antifreeze?
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I just used regular 50/50 mix antifreeze from the auto parts place. Same stuff I use in the engine. Perhaps I'm wrong....thought that is what the folks at Beaver Coach said.
Dick
I thought this was a no-no. Doesn't the Hurricane system have a heat exchanger with potable hot water on one side? Normally you're not supposed to use automotive anti-freeze in any single-wall heat exchanger when drinking water is involved.
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OK, got the RV antifreeze in, the Hurricane is running, heating the hot water tank nicely and supplying hot water. Now where is the heat for the coach?
Page 48 of the Beav owners manual says there should be 2 control valves next to the control box. These would be both turned either to a winter or summer position for either both heating or just the hot water tank. WE HAVE NO VALVES?????????????
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Is it just regular RV antifreeze?
The more expensive propylene glycol concentrates like Dowfrost have buffers (aluminum hydroxide is one) that prevent the glycol from turning acidic. The buffers in different propylene glycols are rated from about 280°F to 325°F. I don’t know if all RV antifreezes have the necessary buffers for protection, since they are not normally subjected to elevated temperatures. If they aren’t advertised as inhibited, you should check with the manufacturer to ensure buffers have been added.
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So where do you buy Dowfrost?
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Have you turned the thermostats to 'heat" yet?
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So where do you buy Dowfrost?
http://www.dowfrostglycol.com/
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Yes we have turned the thermostat to heat. Waited 30 minutes and was still blowing cool air. Seems to be a valve or diverter that we have not found yet. ANYONE with this system on a 2000 Pat please tell me where this might be.
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Joel, have you actually had to add any antifreeze to your system? How much do you think it holds? Should we mix with water? Obviously this is another one of those clueless without the original owner manual.
Barb.
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I suggest you call the folks at ITR on Monday and get some help. I've been providing advice based on the few things I know. Maybe someone else can provide more complete answers.
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When I replaced the HW heater on mine I had to pretty much drain the system and, if I rember, it took a tad ove 1 gallon to get it back up and running. Also, if memory serves, the capacity is 6 qts.
Is you'rs low on coolant??
The manual called for 50/50 mix as I recall. Anyway, that's what I used and I guess I should be looking for some P.G. to replace the E.G. Works the same but Joels comment about a leak in the heat exchanger and E.G getting into the Potable water system is correct....not a good thing.
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We are figuring that is the case, it would not stay running. It had obviously been worked on, loose hoses and water damage in the bay. We added RV antifreeze as the Beaver book said we should. It now runs, produces lots of hot water, but no heat in the coach. The Beaver manual says there are valves to use for heat/hot water or just hot water. There are no valves in the bay with the Hurricane. What coolant did you put in? and does your set up have valves somewhere?
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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!
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Sorry, I misspoke you must use a NON TOXIC anti freeze no particular brand mentioned.
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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
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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
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Sorry Gerald, I should have said Jim has the proper answeres if Gerald is unavailable.
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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
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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
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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?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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On our 98 Patriot, those valves are located under the bed beside the Hurricane coolant tank and the Hurricane overflow tank. The factory manuals for our coach had several errors including the Hurricane system documentation.
Larry
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Joel,
I agree that the nontoxic boiler fluid would be preferable to use in all hydronic heating systems. However 10 years ago no one used it. Then everyone who installed Aqua Hot or Hurricane systems used ethylene glycol coolant as the heat transfer fluid. The product liability lawyers made everyone see the exposure that they were facing, so everyone switched to nontoxic boiler fluid.
Gerald
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Thanks to Tom and Pam for the general idea of where to look for the valves and thank you to Larry for the exact location. The bed is lifted up, side engine access also lifted for the 2 valve location next to an over flow tank. The actual radiator capped tank is under the closet engine access. Turns out the valves were positioned correctly for winter and we are pretty sure they have never been touched since the coach was new. We just needed to add more liquid to the coolant tank to get the registers blowing warm air.
Whoever planned this ridiculously inaccessable set up for the Hurricane should be shot or at least whipped 40 lashes.
The Beaver manual says the valves would be in the Hurricane Bay and also that you use RV antifreeze in the boiler. Who wrote this? I cannot believe the mis- information. I realise not all of our coaches have the same Hurricane systems or setups but there should be some aspects that are consistent, like where components are located. Apparently there are a few coach owners that have never found the valves, no wonder!
So, still not sure which coolant to use. It sounds like a lot of our systems still have the original prestone type coolant in use. On the other hand, do I really want to take a chance of possible cross contamination?
Barb
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Barb,
Your system came with ethylene glycol (green automotive antifreeze). If it still has green coolant in it, and it probably does, just top it off with regular 50/50 automotive coolant. I am still running ethylene glycol (green coolant) in my 2000 Marquis, however if I ever perform a complete fluid change in the system, I will change to nontoxic boiler fluid.
If you want to change over to nontoxic boiler fluid, you will have to completely flush the system to remove all of the original coolant before installing the boiler fluid.
Gerald
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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.
bluwater, you're forgetting that ethylene glycol will stay in the bloodstream, occupying the spots which oxygen normally uses to go from your lungs to your muscles and brain, etc. for quite a long time, so that you start like an athlete and end up like somebody who needs an oxygen tank arrached to their walker, all without anything wrong with your lungs.
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Gerald,
My 03 Contessa has a Hydro Hot and about 3 years ago I needed to add coolant. I asked at the local RV store and was told the fluid to use is the red boiler antifreeze, so that is what I have been adding since then. I recently had to get a new radiator cap for the Hydro Hot and discovered that the fluid is green. I have added almost the entire gallon of red boiler fluid since and now wonder if I have caused myself a problem. The system seems to work fine as is. Any suggestions?
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the mixed fluid will work fine, but you aren't getting the non-toxic effect if that's what you're looking for. Also, you should take a sample and pop it in the freezer to see if it is up to strength before winter....
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Can my Seaward 5 gallon electric hot water heater be used to heat the water used to supply the coach heaters thus allowing me to heat the coach not using the Hurricane Furnace??
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Thanks to Tom and Pam for the general idea of where to look for the valves and thank you to Larry for the exact location. The bed is lifted up, side engine access also lifted for the 2 valve location next to an over flow tank. The actual radiator capped tank is under the closet engine access. Turns out the valves were positioned correctly for winter and we are pretty sure they have never been touched since the coach was new. We just needed to add more liquid to the coolant tank to get the registers blowing warm air.
Whoever planned this ridiculously inaccessable set up for the Hurricane should be shot or at least whipped 40 lashes.
The Beaver manual says the valves would be in the Hurricane Bay and also that you use RV antifreeze in the boiler. Who wrote this? I cannot believe the mis- information. I realise not all of our coaches have the same Hurricane systems or setups but there should be some aspects that are consistent, like where components are located. Apparently there are a few coach owners that have never found the valves, no wonder!
Barb
Barb:
Thank you for going through all the trouble to find your valves; now I'll know where mine are! We could access the tanks through the engine compartment but had no idea where the valves were ;D
We have always had ours set for heating and won't change them anyway. We spent lots of times in the mountains of MT, WY and ID this summer and there have been quite a few times when the temps were down in the 40's and 50's at night. We believe heat is meant to be used if the temps necessitate it even if it is August. So I wouldn't want to have to go through all this just to be able to have heat when I want it. It's easier to leave them alone.
However, after this winter when I get the Hurricane serviced I do intend to replace the coolant with the non-toxic variety. Since a failure of the system is a "high consequence" event, I would prefer to be safe than sorry.
Joel
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I just took a look at the heat exchangers and they are double wall.
Here is a link to a similiar product that explains it pretty well.
http://www.doucetteindustries.com/pdf/dii_liquid_109.pdf
If yours look like this than it is also a double wall.
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Also, the Rixxen site does call for a 3 year change out on coolant as part of their reccomended maintenance on the Hurricane.
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My valves are located on the top side of the engine compartment kind of under the bedroom closet. Lift up the bed, lift up the floor hatch and you should see quite a few heater hoses 2 of which will have a valve - mine are the lever kind. If this is the problem then one of them will be turned 90 degrees from the line of the hose so just turn it parallel and you should have house heat.
I've been using a product called Sierra anti-freeze in the Hurricane which has survived 2 Winters and is environmentally safer than the regular stuff.