Simon R

Some more links for meters: This guy has a lot of meters made by Crompton, mostly for AC circuits. I've dealt with him quite a bit and he's very helpful. These are very heavy duty meters - metal body, nitrogen filled, toughened glass, many have war department markings: thexmod (Beware of the frequency meters, they need a special transducer which costs hundreds from Crompton, unless you can design and build your own). I've also had some good quality meters from here, it's a bit of a luck dip but sometimes they have what you need: surplus sales Nebraska Simon

Very expensive and I doubt they are really high quality. I mostly use military surplus meters, the quality is of a different order, but it is has been hard to find meters for big DC amps. I needed a couple at 100-0-100 amps and one at 200-0-200 amps. They are hard to find and the shunts can cost a lot. Westach in the US make some pretty ones but there's a guy in Ukraine who is selling Russian ones on ebay that look like good quality - military grade shunts and, he says, the meters are used on the Moscow Underground. I've taken the plunge and ordered a few. I'll report on how they are when they arrive. Here's a link, do a shop search for 100A, 150A or whatever: ebay ammeters link Simon

I've got a Vodafone dongle. I suggest you install the 'Vodafone Mobile Broadband' software, plug in the dongle, launch the software and look at the tab labelled 'Main'. The phone number is at the bottom of this panel. It will probably be 078.... something.

Nylon is the usual thing for warps because it is slightly stretchy. Polyester has slightly better abrasion resistance and is almost as strong but it doesn't stretch, which makes it good for sheets (the lines that control sails) but second choice for warps. Polypropylene is much weaker than either but has the single virtue of being lighter than water, it floats, which is good for life lines. I always put the warps through a piece of flexible plastic tubing where they may rub, the sort of stuff used for plumbing bilge pumps etc.. An easy solution that works. As for expensive rope, chandleries always mark up the prices. You can get the same stuff for a better price elsewhere. I got 220m of 1" nylon, enough for all my warps and towing lines, from this website: www.ropesandtwines.com [edited for grammar]

It sounds like your old wiring was something like fig 3, which is a misinterpretation of the idea Calder is describing. Fig 1 (Gibbo) and fig 2 (Calder) are very similar. Calder's idea is that in fig 2 the battery bank will behave like a smoothing capacitor. It will, but it will behave like that in fig 1 as well. On balance I will go with fig 1 if only because it requires just one isolation switch, fig 2 requires at least two.

For completeness here is how NOT to do it, fig 3 Not the same as fig 2. I am about to start setting up my installation. I had intended to do a fig 2, but I'm not sure it's any better than fig 1. Simon

I've been reading Nigel Calder's book The Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual, which is usually regarded as very reliable. He says that it is best to take power from opposite ends of the battery bank, which is in agreement with the page referred to above. My drawing of this is fig 1: However, he also says "with large, paralleled battery banks, if possible, wire the boat's distribution circuits to the positive and negative terminals at the opposite ends of the bank to those used for the charging circuits. This will create some degree of separation between the charging and distribution circuits, which will help keep unwanted voltage spikes and interference out of the distribution circuits (in effect, the batteries act as a filter)." Nigel Calder's book is very widely used but in some installations this may have been misinterpreted. What I think he actually means is fig 2: I can see his argument, but I think the batteries will be acting as a huge capacitor in both circuits? Simon

Digging a bit deeper on the Trinity website I spotted these - window - Is that what you mean by a split porthole?

I got mine from Trinity Marine. Cast bronze and, considering the quality, a very reasonable price. Link: Trinity

Your heat requirements could be worked out very exactly using u-values and such but most plumbers use simple rules of thumb to work out how many watts are needed to heat a certain room volume. The trouble is that boats are never as well insulated as houses. But I have found a couple of calculations specifically for boats, one works in cubic metres and kW, the other in cubic feet and btu/hr. Converting between them shows that they produce very similar results. The short answer is you need about twice the heat input that a house does. These are PDF files: Kabola method, in m3 and kW - http://www.kabola.nl/pdf/berekencapEN.pdf ITR method (in the small print at the bottom), in cu ft and btu/hr - http://www.itrheat.com/documents/QuickGuid...nstallation.pdf Simon

I thought, from the previous thread, that 'dog box' was another name for 'deck skylight' - so I posted pictures of skylights - now I'm confused again. What is a dog box?

Where does the hot water for the taps come from? The circuit for the radiators will have antifreeze in it. Would it be worth adding a third coil to feed the radiators - I've heard that this is not very effective. Why not use a heat exchanger to link the engine cooling circuit to the boiler circuit when the engine is on, and use this to feed the calorifier? Could something like the Dunsley Baker Neutralizer be used? Lots of questions. I'm trying to devise something similar.

Dog box and from inside This one not a dog box, I think. For a family of cats perhaps? Simon

It's boat porn isn't it... and expensive. Sorry for exposing you to it Looking at the pictures I would guess the (less expensive) rabetted ones - they may project the light deeper. The guy who runs the site would know. I'm thinking of using the (even less expensive) round prismatic ones. I just wonder about skidding on them when they're wet? Perhaps they're best on a hatch.

There are some lovely ones at Classic Marine . The melon type looks very impressive. Simon

Even though Gardners are not made any more, spare parts are not too much of an issue, these people are still making them: Gardner Enthusiast . I have a pair of Gardners and they are indeed noisy, but they are in need of a rebuild and new exhausts, and a lot of the noise is due to the way they are mounted, which can be changed, pictures here: Glala engines . It's all fixable. If you want a simple quiet life perhaps you should avoid vintage gear, but then, for some, keeping these old things running is a pleasure in itself. Every so often someone has a look in my engine room, smiles, and says something about Gardners being the "Rolls Royce of marine engines" (they are always male and of a certain age).

These look seriously marine; Polar Power but like most DC gensets very expensive. Does anyone have any experience of them? Simon

I think they probably are depth charges, and possibly a machine gun on the foredeck. She was refitted in the 1980s so much of the interior has been changed. She has a pair of Gardner engines now, probably 1960s vintage. There's more info here NRHS and here ADLS.

I'll sort out some good ones for the "Photos of your boat" thread. In the meantime, this is what she looked like in 1940; She was built during the First World War. The hull's good but everything else needs rebuilding, especially the decks which leak badly. She's a big renovation project. To be honest, she's slightly too long to fit in a canal, but I follow these forums anyway, being a live-aboard.

Blue LEDs, and they twinkle.

I'm dreaming of one of these: Navigator Stove Works. The small ones burn wood and charcoal, the big one does coal. But it looks like they're made to order, so they are very expensive.

Yes, that makes sense. I've just done this calculation: very approximately, a typical internal combustion engine puts about 1/3 of its heat into propulsion, 1/3 into the water jacket and 1/3 into the exhaust. So, if the engine is producing, say, 50hp, then another 50hp is heating water. That's about 37kW! One should be enough, it just seems a pity to waste all that energy.

I've been trying to figure out how to take heat from two engines. All the descriptions of calorifier systems I have seen assume a single engine. A colorifier with two coils is one answer, but suppose I want to feed the central heating from the top coil, and put heat into the bottom coil? Twin calorifiers seems an elegant solution. I must be reinventing the wheel, how is it normally done?