Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 8:37am

Hi, I have recently had a service carried out on my Ebersacher and the burner was badly coked up and need replacing. What are the pros & cons on having a small DERV tank installed in the engine bay of my cruiser stern narrowboat. Presumably the better grade fuel would enhance the heaters' performance and life. Regards, Ray Fairwood

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 10:09am

Dear Raymond, in the 1960s I was so impressed with the reliability of similar heaters running on gas oil we fitted a whole hire fleet with tanks for kerosene. However the combustion system was different then. It may or may not help, these heaters seem to have all sorts of problems on boats and there is suspicion that the "poor fuel" thing might be an attempt by suppliers to avoid warranty claims. It is interesting that another maker has lost a court case and had a similar heater declared as "not fit for purpose" on a narrowboat. Running the heater on derv (EN590)may help but a sit contains a proportion of bio diesel that readily absorbs water I am not so sure it will. I think using the tank for paraffin or kerosene has more chance of achieving your aim. In the long term I am not sure I would not put the cost of the extra tank towards an alternative type of boiler. The main con is actually obtaining the alternative fuel otherwise its the cost of the tank etc. Tony Brooks