liverpool · leeds & liverpool canal · liverpool canal link
Narrowboat diesel heater repair and servicing for Liverpool canal liveaboards
We are a two-engineer workshop on Bold Street that works almost exclusively on boats. If your Webasto locks out at 3 am, your Eberspächer smokes white and refuses to run, or your Refleks drip-feed is sooting up the flue, this is the page that tells you exactly what we do, how we do it and what it costs.
Most of our work is mobile: we come to you at Salthouse Dock, Canning Half Tide, the Liverpool Canal Link moorings, Litherland, Aintree, Melling, Maghull and up the towpath as far as Burscough. Bench work — burner strip-downs, control-unit testing, pump rebuilds — happens at the Bold Street unit while you stay warm with a loan heater.
Liveaboard priority. If the boat is your only home and you have no working heat, say so in the first line of your message. No-heat liveaboard jobs are placed ahead of routine servicing, and we carry loan 2 kW diesel units for the gap.
- coverage
- Liverpool city centre docks, Stanley Flight, Leeds & Liverpool to Burscough
- units
- Webasto, Eberspächer, Mikuni, Hurricane, Kabola, Refleks, Wallas
- engineers
- Dan Whitfield (marine heating, 14 yrs) & Priya Raman (12 V electrics)
- founded
- 2016, moved to Bold Street 53 in 2021
Services
Each block below is a job we actually book, with the work included and a realistic time on the boat. Everything is carried out to the heater manufacturer's service schedule and recorded for your Boat Safety Scheme file.
Annual diesel heater service
The yearly strip, clean and re-test that keeps a forced-air heater from coking up over a damp Mersey winter. Burner head removed, combustion chamber de-sooted, glow pin and screen replaced, fuel dose metered, exhaust and air intake checked for blockage, then a full burn cycle under load with a flue gas reading.
No-start and lock-out diagnosis
Flashing fault lamp, repeated F02, or a heater that fires then dies after ninety seconds. We read the controller codes, test the dosing pump pulse, measure voltage drop at the loom under start current, check fuel pick-up and standpipe depth, and separate a genuine burner fault from the far more common flat-battery or airlock cause.
Burner, heat exchanger and pump replacement
When a unit is beyond cleaning we rebuild rather than bin it where parts still exist. Combustion chamber and heat exchanger swaps, dosing pump replacement with correct stroke rating, control unit exchange and re-pairing, plus overheat sensor and flame sensor renewal. Genuine or OEM-equivalent parts only, with the old components handed back.
Flue, exhaust and skin fitting work
Corroded exhaust runs, rattling lagging, badly angled skin fittings dumping fumes back along the gunwale, and Refleks or Kabola flue sections that have sooted solid. We re-route to a safe fall, renew clamps and sleeving, seal the hull penetration properly and carbon-monoxide test the cabin afterwards.
Radiator and calorifier circuit tuning
Cold radiator at the bow, lukewarm taps, air locks that return every fortnight, or a circulation pump that whines all night. We balance the loop, fit or relocate bleed points, test the pump head against pipe run, flush and re-dose the system with marine-grade inhibitor and set the stat so the heater is not short-cycling itself to death.
Winter preparation and fuel hygiene
The single biggest cause of January breakdowns in the docks is dirty diesel. We dip and sample the tank, check for water and diesel bug, fit a pre-filter and water trap on the heater take-off, raise the pick-up clear of sludge and show you how to dose correctly for your tank size.
Liveaboard emergency call-out
No heat, in winter, on a boat you live on. Same-day attendance where the boat is reachable from a towpath or dock access point in our coverage area, with a van stocked for the common failures: glow pins, dosing pumps, filters, controllers and loom repairs.
Process
How a job runs from first message to invoice. Nothing clever, but it is the same every time so you know where you stand.
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Message with the basics
Heater make and model if you know it, the fault code or the symptom in plain words, your mooring or dock, and whether you are living aboard without heat. Photographs are not needed — a clear description of the noise, the smoke colour and when it cuts out tells us far more.
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Triage reply within four working hours
We either book you in or talk you through a two-minute check first. Perhaps a quarter of winter call-outs are solved on the phone: a tripped isolator, a stale fuel line after a long cruise, or a timer left on an old schedule.
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Attend and diagnose
Engineer arrives in the agreed window, works mat and boards down, electrics isolated before any loom work. Codes read, pump tested, combustion checked. You get the finding there and then, not a vague follow-up.
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Fixed-price quote before any parts go on
Written on the spot, parts and labour separated, with the honest option included — sometimes that is "replace this unit next spring rather than spend three hundred pounds on it now".
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Repair, test and record
Work completed, full burn cycle run from cold with the system up to temperature, CO sweep of the cabin, old parts returned. You get a dated report for your Boat Safety file and insurance record.
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Follow-up at fourteen days
A short message to confirm the fault has stayed fixed. If it has not, we return at no charge for anything we touched.
Pricing notes
We publish rates rather than hide them behind a quote form. Prices include VAT and travel inside the coverage area.
- labour
- £62 per hour, charged in half-hour blocks after the first hour
- annual service
- From £185 for a single forced-air unit, parts included
- diagnosis visit
- £75, fully credited if you proceed with the repair
- emergency
- £110 call-out Mon–Sat, £150 Sunday and bank holidays
- loan heater
- No charge while your unit is on our bench
- outside area
- £0.55 per mile beyond Burscough, agreed before booking
Two things we will never do: quote a repair without seeing the unit run, and charge you for a part you did not need. If we open a heater and find it is a five-minute airlock, you pay the diagnosis fee and nothing more.
FAQ
My Webasto throws the same fault code every few weeks. Is the unit finished?
Usually not. Repeating lock-outs on a unit that otherwise burns cleanly point to supply rather than the burner: voltage sagging below 10.5 V at start, a dosing pump losing stroke, or fuel drawn from the sludge at the bottom of the tank. We test all three before anyone talks about replacement. Genuine end-of-life looks different — a cracked heat exchanger, heavy coking that returns within weeks, or a corroded chamber.
Can you work on the boat while I am away, or do I need to be there?
Either. Plenty of liveaboards leave a key with the marina office or a neighbouring boat and we send the report by email the same evening. For first visits we prefer you aboard so you can show us how the system behaves day to day, but it is not a requirement. We are DBS checked and carry public liability cover; certificates are available on request.
Is a diesel heater service part of the Boat Safety Scheme examination?
The examination looks at the installation — fuel lines, flue routing, ventilation and the hull penetration — rather than the internal condition of the burner. A service is not mandatory, but a sooted flue, a perished fuel hose or a badly angled skin fitting will fail you. We service to the manufacturer schedule and flag anything likely to be marked at the next examination, so you have time to put it right.
Contact
Workshop and office are at the Bold Street address below. Drop in for parts and advice, or send the form and we will reply with a booking window.
- workshop
- Bold Street 53, L1 4EU Liverpool
- hours
- Mon–Fri 07:30–18:00, Sat 08:00–14:00, winter rota to 19:00
- moorings
- Salthouse Dock, Canning Half Tide, Stanley Flight, Litherland, Aintree, Maghull, Burscough