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hi youtubers  jeff cote here from pacific out systems  we've got a question from a fellow  boater  scott i forgot to ask you if it's  possible to heat hot water  using an inverter and if not can i use a  methanol fuel cell  to warm water well that's a pickle  you know and i get this question all the  time it happens  probably 10 times 20 times a week you  know as boaters  um we're looking at ways of warming  water aboard our boat  using our ac uh powered hot water tanks  and some of them can also be powered via  coolant and the question is well can my  inverter without the use of the shore  power or a generator  can i actually have my inverter power  my ac water heater and  technically the answer is yes but  unfortunately that technical answer  doesn't really apply to most of us  because the  challenge is that we don't most of us  won't have a battery bank that is big  enough  to run the inverter on a high load for  20 or 30 minutes while the hot water  tank actually warms water  and so in in practical sense i'd say  probably only one out of 100 maybe one  out of 200  is able to actually run a hot water  heater  off an inverter and the other question  or some part of that question that scott  had was  what about an ethanol fuel cell we've  got to remember a methanol fuel cell  only creates dc power and it's dc power  at a very low amperage  a e4210 for example which stands for 210  amp hours  a day outputs about eight eight and a  half amps  per hour and you look at what your hot  water tank is going to draw which is  probably 15 amps at 120  that's probably going to be a 150 or 200  amp load  for maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes so  your methanol fuel cell is going to  allow you to maybe catch up  maybe by the end of the day but yeah  methanol fuel cell unfortunately cannot  power directly  a hot water tank and an inverter can  power a hot water tank  but you probably want to do that because  it's going to simply draw your batteries  too much  so for hot water what you need to do is  install a heating system  that is hydronic that runs coolant  through the hot water system  to warm hot water and that's how we do  it here in the pacific northwest  well thanks for watching and send your  questions our way