This is my heater installation aboard Freebird, a 1982 Hunter 33. The heater is now about 18 years old and I have just finished replacing the burner and fuel lines. She burns great, puts out a lot of heat and with the unit mounted close to the floor of the boat, it warms your cold feet too. The stack travels straight up, made from 1 inch SS tube that was 6 ft. but cut to proper length on the boat with the heater installed so I got the length to fit the vent cap mounted on deck without being too long or too short. The brass piece that surrounds the SS Vent Tube is shorter than the SS Tube, held in place by two brackets and does not touch the SS pipe anywhere, this tends to protect hands that might find a hot pipe otherwise. It seems to also distribute heat as well and to me looks kinda neat. This brass tube was purchased at home depot along with the brackets that hold it in place.

Force 10 Cozy Cabin Heater - Diesel / Kerosene

This shows the area where the heater is mounted. There was a cabinet that had two drawers that were fairly small and unused. I cut away this cabinet and put two sheets of SS metal plates that act as a heat shield for the heater, then using a piece of tile to give a bottom to my fireplace. The hole cut in the tile allows the fuel line to pass thur to the burner of the heater. This fuel line comes thur the bottom of the locker on the port side and then passes into the forward port locker in the V berth. See next photo for fuel tank installation.

Another view of heater

This fuel tank I purchased used, it was used with a kerosene stove and is the same size as the one that operates my kerosene stove in the galley. Look carefully and you can see the fuel line passing thur the bulkhead into the hanging locker where it goes down and under the wood face of that locker to the location of the heater.

I cleaned out the tank very well, and filled with a really good grade of K-1 heater grade kerosene fuel purchased from Lowes. 5 gals is $18 as of November 2001. Pumped it up to twenty pounds of pressure with hand pump and fired her up! The heater runs for several hours on one gal. of kerosene.

The fuel supply