We rattlecan refinish the water heater

Obligations around home kept us from the boat this weekend but we did get a chance to collect some of the plumbing parts we'll need to connect it. Turns out that Lowes has very nice brass 1/2" NPT to 1/2" ID hose fittings at a fraction of the price of Port Supply/West Marine. We also have to accommodate a new check valve in the cold water inlet side of the water heater and to make it a nice neat installation, we also bought a simple 1/2" street elbow and a 1/2" nipple.

The more we looked at the new water heater, the more we thought it would look better if it was painted to match the engines. Sure, it's likely that no one but us will ever see it but we had the paint and primer, so why not?

We took the sheet metal parts off the heater, degreased them and then primed and painted with Rustoleum. Of course, we masked all the ports and even the numerous warning labels.

Bet we own the only blue Seaward water heater on the planet.

When we left the boat last weekend, we brought home the 50 ft. of Trident reinforced water hose that the boatyard had ordered for us. After measuring, we cut the hose in half. In this weather (and probably from having been stored in a box for who knows how long), the hose was really stiff and the last 15 feet or so that were wound around the circular form inside the box was like a tightly coiled spring. We simply couldn't begin installing it until we found a way to "relax" the two lengths of hose.

After some thought, we found that we could force a length of cheapo garden hose that we had into one end of the Trident marine hose (our heat gun helped). We added a hose clamp and then connected the other end of the garden hose to a hot water faucet near our washing machine. We led the length of marine hose out our basement door and turned on the hot water, full blast. It took two or three minutes for the water to act on the hose but it relaxed completely. Once hot, we were able to coil the Trident hose in big 4 ft. loops that will be fine for installing it.

We'll begin the heater and hose installation next weekend provided the temperature gets up to around 40 degrees.