The heat is on (soon!)

So, back in December, out heater stopped working. Since it was just getting into winter and we were tired of seeing the steam from our food mingle with the vapor from our breath, we decided to have it fixed. A guy from "Undisclosed Heater Fixing Company #1" came down and took a look and estimated 1500 bucks to fix it. I was willing to shell out for a little comfort.

He should have applied our time estimation rule, because 2.3 bu's later he left. The heater seemed to be working great (as it should be after 2300 dollars are poured into it.) It was my impression that he had removed part of our heater, rebuilt it, and then reinstalled it. But six weeks later we come to find out that he actually put a brand new heater in there! We used to have a "Webasto Heater." I'd say most everyone in the boating community knows them to be pretty darn good heaters. Apparently, though, he replaced it with a brand I'd never heard of before. It's a "Gahdamm Heater."

This "Gahdamm Heater" has a couple of features I really don't like. First of all, and the biggest pain, is that it has a "Gahdamm Leak (tm)" in the coolant system. While it's really a great "self flushing" feature, it gets expensive and dirty. It turns out he installed this "Gahdamm Leak (tm)" right below the coolant expansion tank, which happens to be above our bed. So, now, as it flushes itself clean we get "Gahdamm Coolant" everywhere, including dripping onto my pillow. The second feature is the ignition system. I guess they outsourced that part, because Gahdamm doesn't seem to do ignition. It does save you a lot of fuel, which is really nice, but it's only because the "Friggin Ignition" only lights off 1 of every 5 tries. I think in this case I'd trade reliability for fuel savings.

So we called "Undisclosed Heater Fixing Company #1" to ask them if they could maybe put our Webasto back in there, and remove the "Gahdamm Leak (tm)" and make sure the "Friggin Ignition" is removed and replaced with a more reliable one. "Undisclosed Heater Fixing Company #1" was very apologetic, and has been extremely accomodating, even lending us a different heater while they repair our Webasto. And actually they should be on the boat right now removing the "Gohdamm Leak (tm)." Hopefully it'll all be done soon and we can enjoy our heater again.

-Tom