Crobot

Thanks so much to you all for your helpful comments. It's given me a bit to mull over and see where I'm at. Thanks again ☺️

Hi everyone, I was hoping to hear some opinions and help clarify my currently very muddled head about how best to heat my narrowboat radiators. A bit of background... My boat is 60ft long with a solid fuel stove in the lounge at one end of the boat. This is lovely and heats this room well, however, the heat doesn't transfer enough down to heat the rest of the boat. The boat also has an old Alde comfort 2928 boiler that heats up the water and at some stage must have had heated radiators too. They are no longer on the boat but the pipework remains. As the boat is currently in a state of repair, I have been looking into options as to how best heat the radiators. Since we're going to be continuous cruisers, we were aiming to fit a calorifier that would heat most of our hot water from the engine, then use the Alde as a back up for water heating. So the question is, do we continue to use the Alde boiler and reconnect up all the pipe work for the radiators, or look into other means of doing this..? Obviously the Alde is already there and although have heard many reports about it using a lot of gas, it is already in place so would be the easiest option in a way to set back up and see how it goes... Or do we outlay a much larger cost now for a diesel boiler (webasto or otherwise) which I am aware also can be troublesome for a variety of reasons. Everywhere I read there are swathes of different opinions making it really hard to decipher how best to go. Although not fitted we do have a back boiler for the stove too which is another option. I guess I'm just looking for other opinions and ideas on how best to move forward. Many thanks for reading 🙂

Ahh what do you mean as in bubbled up rather than down? If that makes sense? To be fair my photos arent great. Il try get some better ones to give a better perspective next time. Yeah that's a good idea. I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about it being deeper than the baseplate? Sorry? As for something standing on it, it does appear that way but there hasn't been anything to my knowledge..

Thank you both for your replies! They both made me chuckle!!! Tracy, we scraped the entire floor of the bilges to remove all the flakey rust and gunk and at it's deepest the flakes were maybe 4mm/5mm which like you say and I've read, equates to about 0.5mm of the original steel. Everywhere else on the floor is fairly level bar this odd little circle which at a rough guess may sink in deeper, maybe about 5mm? Thanks Captain Pegg, I didn't think it was a pit but I didn't really know how else to describe it 😂 The hole itself seems to be very solid..we have scraped all the rust flakes away which covered the entire floor and so what's left is where it's drying out. You are so right, I guess we just want to make sure we do the best we can to prevent any further deterioration and since we have ripped all the floor up might as well so it now!!! I've attached a picture of all the manky rust that was there before. Admittedly not the best pic as it was before we lifted the floor so I took it through a tiny gap!!

Hi Guys, Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.. We are currently in the process of drying out the back bedroom of our boat following a leak. I think the water may have been here for some time as there was a fair amount of rusty debris to remove. Once we started clearing it out I noticed a funny circular notch where the steel was much more worn away than everywhere else (picture included). It seems a little strange to me to be so perfectly circular! Any ideas? And furthermore any ideas on whether we should be looking to weld over it? We are planning on treating the rest of the bilges with a rust inhibitor then painting it. The base plate is 12.5mm. Thanks for your thoughts!

Thanks Tracy, that is the plan! We have only had the boat about a week so I just thought it would be helpful to ask on here for any gems of wisdom from more experienced boaters. We have bilged the water out and the next step was to spend the weekend having a look at trying to source the root of the problem hence asking for any advise on things to check on here and arming ourselves with some knowledge beforehand. Thanks for your input!

Ahh this is all so helpful, thank you so much everybody. Thanks George and Dragon, I will do, that's a great help. Jen that really makes a lot of sense and is a great help thank you. I did think it strange but as the boat is so new to us I haven't had a good chance to look into everything yet! I will be inspecting the pipework very closely tomorrow. It does have a hot water tank yes. Tracy you can say that again!! Phew! I suspected from the nature of it, it seemed like the water was coming from somewhere internal not external but ofcourse you never know. I'm not too sure about the pipes I think plastic but il have to check tomorrow. Thanks Tony that makes sense.

Thank you everybody for your comments. Thanks George and Dragon, the well deck does have drain points you're right so it did drain away but we think at the same time something else was happening underneath in the bilges as this is when the water I found had started to pool if that makes sense!? Thanks Jen, we tend to switch the water pump off until we use it but it does kick on now and again when switched on even when the taps aren't running. Is this usual? It said something in the survey about it having a pressurised system so this is the cause of that noise? Thanks for the tips, hopefully we can trace the pipework and check for leaks anywhere along the line. Thanks Tonka, the boat is made by watercraft and is a 1990, unfortunately that's all we know! Whoa Bee what a strange thing to have happened!!! I shall be checking the sink this weekend then! You never know!!

Hello fellow boaters. Firstly can I just say what a wonderful forum this is! It's been invaluable to me so far reading up on all sorts and so I am hoping now I have my very own boaty question some of you may be able to help me! Me and my partner have recently bought a rather lovely 60ft semi-trad narrowboat and upon exploring all her nooks and crannies the other day discovered some water in the cabin bilge (cue raised heart beat and sweaty brow!) After a momentary panic I got to sorting it out and bilged it out with a very useful handheld bilge pump. My suspicions are that it has something to do with the water tank overflow pipe as when we filled the tank the other day we noticed after it had been filling for a while, some water accumulating on the well deck. The previous owner also told us this had happened before when he first bought the boat and it had been due to the overflow pipe being blocked. I just wondered if any of you more experienced ones could offer some advice on where to start prodding around to better understand the situation? We are heading down there tomorrow and are going to have a look at the water tank through the access hatch on the front deck and also try check if there is any more water pooled in the cabin bilges anywhere. If you got this far many thanks for reading and thanks in advance for your replies!