[If gas was not an option.....]

Hi House Martin

Please find me; Vintage Ranges

Cheers

John

[Heating and cooking on your boat?]

Hi All

 

We joined your excellent forum only 24 hours ago!

Very informative and superbly professional. I must make a plea of repentence to Lady Muck for my flaglant breech of the rules.

I am quite simply very zealous about my cookers! Apoligia.

Perchance, our son was exploring your forums and he happened upon the below post. Dare I say, it warmed my heart!

My wife checked our records and these people have just ordered one of our Vintage 500 Duo's!

 

Best Regards

John

 

Hi Guys

 

I must apologise for appearing to not present my case directly to forum. Truth is, I couldn't work out an efficient way of linking to my blog without spending a couple of minutes longhanding!

I am now going to longhand the original blog and if you will all allow me to start from this point I will be honoured......

 

Heating, hot water and cooking on your boat: Vintage or Heritage?

 

"Hi All

We have just caught our breath after attending a wonderful Crick Boat Show 2011.

Though we have not owned a boat of this type before, we like to think we know what we want!

We are planning a new boat build. We had decided quite a few details, large and small, before we visited Crick. We were always going to be "Gas-free", we were always going to have the boat built exclusively in the UK and we were always going to have a traditional, but modern range cooker on board to provide for all our heating, hot water and cooking! My wife is an avid chef! Running on diesel,the engine and cooker, that is!

Our boat will be a 70ft Northwich Trader replica. At Crick, we firmed up on most of the detail and spec. We have narrowed, forgive the pun, our choice of builder down to three, it's not all down to price. We have a reasonable working budget, we will make reasonable compromise where required or necessary but certain features of the fit-out will not be compromised. We shall tender our designs to our three build candidates and shall in a 'step-wise' manner build the boat spec layer by layer. It may be an unorthodox approach, but this is how I/We have always undertaken our major life projects. We feel we can get closer to our goal by working this way.

I digress; Heating and cooking on your boat!

As earlier stated, our unshakable choice with regards to heating and cooking is a proper Range cooker. Back to Crick! We went to Crick to see first hand all the products and materials/techniques we wanted for our boat. We saw Heritage of Cornwall, reasonable/good quality and has a favourable reputation in the marketplace. However, we felt the sales rep, though seemingly pleasant, was a little fuzzy/wooly on product knowledge and his understanding of installation requirements on narrowboats left a lot to be desired.

We then quite serendipitously, found Vintage Ranges. The designer and owner of Vintage,(the selfsame person) was there proudly exhibiting a Vintage 500 Duo, which was after the show going aboard a new build boat*. The Vintage certainly "Ticked all the boxes", for an appliance of just 500x680mmSQ, 2 big ovens, a huge hot plate and buit like the proverbial brick-tank; superb build quality and attention to detail, it was a revelation. And a great price too!

In truth we could have nearly bought a Heritage Uno. The Vintage man certainly knew his 'onions' and his obvious passion for his cookers was a refreshing experience for us to enjoy. Isn't lovely to meet the person who has sweated blood and cried tears for his art! He most assuredly made a lasting impression on us!

Funny thing, the Vintage man, John, was the founder and designer of the Heritage cooker and has with conspicuous delight, massively improved on his earlier designs. John explained that when he brought his Heritage cookers in to the narrowboat market in 2003, his aim was to always be 'gas-free', safety being foremost in his mind.

www.vintageranges.com If it sounds like we have made our choice, well yes, but we want to share our wisdom and gain any feedback you guys may have to impart.

 

Your Truly

Honest Jim *Just remembered, the boat the Vintage 500 duo is aboard is www.nbsiskin.com

[Rayburn SF range]

Erm - I think you are addressing the wrong person. The only person writing in this thread identifying themselves as "Richard" so far is me. My post was attempting to answer questions posed by the OP (Tomsky) who I assume has plans to install a solid fuel Rayburn range and was asking stuff about how to tackle the installation.

 

I regret to say I am not interested in your product for myself which appears to be a clone of the Heritage oil fired range. I have a friend who has a Heritage on his boat and he is delighted with it. When he told me how much it cost I immediately knew why I had decided not to have one! I imagine your prices are not very different from those of Heritage.

 

Your type of oil fired fully automatic all singing all dancing range may be fabulous for those that like that sort of thing but as mrsmelly has hinted, many boat folks are rather fond of the simple life and actually prefer the "hasle" (sic) of solid fuel.

 

Also I think you are breaking the rules of this forum and I see you have been reported from your post in another thread.

 

Sorry, I won't be talking soon!

 

Richard

 

Dear Richard

 

I am one and the same, the creator and designer of the Heritage range cooker. I have been designing, manufacturing and selling my products since 1983. In 2003, I saw that there was a need to provide the Boat Fraternity with a more convenient, cleaner, responsive ans safer method for providing heating, hot water and cooking. Therefore, I launched my Heritage cookers onto the market at Crick; to great acclaim.

Several years later, the 'un-worthy' I had chosen to be my business partner was to reveal himself!

I immediately re-designed my products and improved many of the key features with regards to build quality, oven sizes etc.

My prices are actually even more favourable than Heritage, as I provide a product with higher value and utilty.

I am not offended you should say my products are a "Clone" of Heritage; a designer reserves the right to make improvements on an earlier concept! You simply did not know the story. We all make mistakes in our judgments of people, I know that!

See www.nbsiskin.com

Best Regards

John

[Rayburn SF range]

Hi Richard

 

Why Solid fuel on a boat?

Why have all that hasle? Please visit my website www.vintageranges.com see www.nbsiskin.co

Talk soon

 

John