Burst water heater pipe

It looks like the kind of reinforced hose used on car engines/cooling systems held in place with a couple of jubilee clips.

Examples taken at random and not necessary the best source or price.

maybe

Not to me it doesn’t! Flexible hoses in a gas fired appliance strike me as being very unlikely.

Looks like a thin walled metal pipe but not copper. On a boat I would guess frost damage is always likely but it looks corroded to me. If it is corroded I wouldn’t have though that the heat exchanger is worth repairing.

As to how to repair, no idea really. If it’s low pressure I guess some sort of epoxy *might* work but I wouldn’t hold my breath. A soldered or brazed patch maybe?

Tim

can't tell what it's made from. If solderable, a patch could be soldered on but skill is required. Just maybe you might get compression plumbing fittings to get in there, but likely not. Or get some cu pipe that would slide on, bend it & solder on. I wouldn't want to use epoxy there, but a very high temp epoxy may do the job if all else proves infeasible - available from car tool places.

Unless you're a skilled coppersmith which by your very question it appears you are not. Sometimes it's better in the long term to bite the bullet and replace the unit.

Edit heat exchangers are usually available as spare parts but the economics are questionable. See example

Tim+ is correct. It is metal. Using epoxy would be a problem forming it to not block the pipe. The unit is reasonably new so rust was not the problem. It was drained down at start of every winter but some water must have remained in which froze and caused the burst. Time for a new one I fear. Thanks to all for their help

There are repeated ads for what looks like grey colored epoxy on facebook that they claim works well in that situation.

No idea how well it actually works tho.

I bet the pipe could be filled with something dissolvable first, or use epoxy smeared onto glassfibre mesh.