Mac of Cygnet
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Posts posted by Mac of Cygnet
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I do
OK, fair enough, but a man who consorts with Daleks is capable of anything.
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A coolie hat is perfect to let the smoke out and keep the rain out until the next weekend.
MP.
Are you implying that you go away and leave the boat for a week with the stove still on? I don't think I'd do that. Anyway, having seen my coolie hat actually blow off in a gale, I don't think I'd rely on it when away from the boat.
Mac
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The boater was identified easily enough, and stopped by BW who said they would charge him for the cost of the damage. His reply was "That's OK, my insurance will cover it" to which BW responded "I think you'll find it won't".
Are you going to name and shame, then? I thought the top lock at Marsden was padlocked out of hours.
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Several people here have come to the same conclusion - when the stove is lit. But of course if there a heavy rainstorm when the fire is out, it will just run down your chimney and start to rust your stove. Make sure you have some sort of cover on when not using the stove.
Mac
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I have found that wind does influence the draw of the fire, on a windy day the air controls need to be closed a little more than on a calm day.
Similarly, atmospheric pressure seems to be an influencing factor too. During periods of low pressure the fire draws better than when pressure is high.
I have no idea of the science, the above is just my experience.
Ditchdabbler
I believe this is called the 'Venturi Effect', where air movement across the top of a pipe will lower the pressure in the pipe, and draw up gas or liquid through it. Carburettors work on this principle. I may say I bravely have not Googled this, but am relying on science lessons of 50 years ago.
Other things being equal, I can't see how air pressure could affect a flue's drawing power, except that dropping pressure is often associated with high winds.
Mac
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? My understanding is that the circular thingy is meant to redirect the hot air around the top of the stove before it leaves via the flue. This sounds like a good idea but also sounds like it may be very prone to blockage.
Any ideas?
In most stoves it's the baffle plate which redirects the heat around the top of the stove before it goes up the flue. Anything above this would be extra. By 'circular' do you mean a disc controlled by a handle sicking out of the side? In which case this would be a damper for further control of the rate of burning of the stove by restricting the progress of flue gases. In doing this they are IMO downright dangerous in small stoves for the very reason you describe - mine has one which I can't get out, but is never closed. If yours is working fine without it, I wouldn't put it back. Our much larger stove at home has one which I occasionally use on half setting, but I'm still wary of blockages if anything falls back down the chimney.
Mac
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What a palaver!!!! Thank goodness I don't use coal.
Grahoom's came nearest to mine - paper, small twigs, large twigs, logs, in that order (but minus the coal at the end). Light. Push door almost closed, BUT DON'T GO AWAY. When blazing, close door and open air vent. Whaen stove hot, close air vent. Both on the boat and at home.
Mac
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I'm on my third handspike, all home-made. One was a square-section steel rod (part of my old market stall) - finally bent at Cromwell lock, which also saw off one of the others. A slight taper at the business end helps to remove it from the paddle gear and let the paddle drop. Don't make it too short-you need a lot of leverage sometimes.
Mac
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A perfectly reasonable explanation ... but what about your boat name ???
It's presumably Finnish, an impenetrable and tongue-paralysing language.
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Personally I would rub patches back to ensure there is no loose rust wipe over with white spirit and then do a thinned down coat of blacking, followed several hours later by 2 or 3 coats of blacking straight from the tin leaving 24 hrs between coats and then leave to dry for at least 24hrs. Bitumen blacking seems to go well on dry rusty steel with rust that isn't loose
Prob with using undercoats or special primers is when it comes to reblacking it is difficult to ensure primer reapplied to patches overlaps the original unless you can take all the old blacking off which would entail grit blasting.
Thanks for the (only) reply. I would hope it isn't loose rust after only a few days of exposure. Got a bit lost in your second bit about primer reapplied to patches, though.
Anyone else have any actual experience of using Vactan under blacking?
Mac
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Yes, I know this exact question has been asked before here but as it received two replies which contradicted each other, has anyone had further experience in the intervening 18 months?
Cygnet had a hull survey done on Friday while out for blacking, and the surveyor took several patches back to bare steel to take his readings. The boatyard will not get round to doing the blacking for several days. I'm paying a brief visit to the boat on Tuesday.
Should I apply Vactan to the bare patches, which by then will have aquired a patina of rust? I know that red oxide under blacking is not recommended, but the Vactan instructions say that it 'forms an impermeable organometallic layer' which can be painted over. It doesn't mention bitumen blacking as far as I remember.
Or would the blacking go better direct on the bare patches even after a few days?
Nothing scary found in the survey, BTW.
Mac
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There appears to be a gap between pontoon and lock tail. How big is this? A leap from one to the other would be very dangerous in slippery conditions.
Mac
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I understand that the composition of fuel (red diesel) is to change in the next year or two to contain more ( much more ?) biofuel .... and being more hygroscopic is going to cause boaters with a slower consumption, e.g. over the winter months (and car manufacturers with cars sitting in fields for months with half a gallon in the tank !) more problems with water in the fuel, damaged injector pumps etc... I am sure (!) that the industry is working hard to arrive at what the level should be and the associated problems it will bring e.g. owners of older, less tolerant engines with fuel system components unable to tolerate higher levels of Biofuel in the mix.... and hopefully ways around the problems....
Can anyone add any more to where the thoughts are at the moment as to what we are going to be dished up with ?
Thanks
Nick
Is this all red diesel? An agricultural contractor friend informs me that a couple of his machines' warranties would be invalid if he used diesel with a biofuel content, and that his supplier will continue to supply non-bio diesel.
Mac
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I actually prefer rivers to either, but last year I travelled on the FEVE (Ferrocariles de España de Via Estrecha) narrow-gauge line from Santander to Oviedo in Northern Spain, over a period of two days. It was really great.
You can read an account of the trip here
Mac
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Carbon monoxide is odourless and colourless and may or may not be present in conjunction with smoke.
A stove should be installed so that it can operate up to its maximum operating temperature without causing a problem - if it does then either it wasn't installed properly or it was overloaded. It sounds like you put far too much fuel in the one that glowed red hot! Was it a pot belly by any chance?
Of course CO is odourless and colourless. My point was that wood very rarely burns without smoke, and therefore gives advance warning of any malfunction of a stove, whereas coal, especially smokeless coal, can produce CO into a living space with no prior warning at all. (I did say I have a CO detector as well!)
Coal has as FAR higher calorific value per volume than wood, so is more capable of overheating a stove filled to the correct capacity when something goes amiss (in my case a lower fire door not fitting properly due to an accumulation of ash behind - easily missed.)
As an aside, many years ago I nearly died of acute CO poisoning due to a poorly maintained gas water heater in my parents' house. I've never used one of these since.
Mac
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You could run your boat on wood, just replace the diesel engine with a steam driven one.
Roger
JUST?
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£8.50 - £10.50 unless you get some bulk deal.
Dirty? Wood will produce a lot more tar deposits in your flue and chimney.
Dangerous? In what sense? Yes its a fossil fuel, but then so is diesel and I assume your engine runs on that?
I meant dirty in the handling. The tar deposits are easily dealt with by regular sweeping. The dangerous bit refers to the fact that coal, but more especially smokeless fuels, can produce carbon monoxide in a faulty stove without any other danger signs, whereas wood signals faults by an excess of smoke coming out of the stove. (Yes! I do have a CO alarm - I'm not that complacent.) In addition, it is unlikely to cause a stove to overheat to the extent of causing a fire or scorching of the surroundings, as wood will burn away more quickly with an excessive air supply.
I have three wood-burning stoves - one in the boat and two in the house. In the past thirty-five years I have had two potentially dangerous incidents with stoves - one in a coal-burning stove in a previous boat, where the lower fire door didn't close properly, and the stove ended up glowing red, and the other with a wood-burning stove at home, where an old unlined large chimney showered tar back onto the stove. The latter is very unlikely with the short reach of a boat flue.
I would love to run my engine on wood. In fact a first-time hirer asked me a couple of weeks ago if my boat ran on wood! Do you know of a conversion kit?
Cheers
Mac
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None. Burn only wood. It's free. Wouldn't burn coal even if it were free too. Dirty and dangerous.
Mac
Edited to say that wood is also carbon neutral, although I hadn't considered that until recently. Whatever floats your boat (as some people say).
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That'll be my fault. The images I'm using are picked up from other parts of the internet and arrive as they are. I didn't post them so I have no control over how big they are.
However, I'll bear that in mind as I look for fresh material.
Richard
Yes, I can see your point if you are using images from other sites and transferring them straight here. I've tried to see if there's a way of resizing them without an intermediate stop at an image hosting site, but I'm not an expert. Perhaps someone else can come up with a way that is less hassle than an intermediate stopover at Photobucket, etc. (Although it's not that much of a hassle)
Mac
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Can I put in a plea for those posting photos to resize them BEFORE posting, and not just rely on the forum resizing software? The forum resizes AFTER download, which means that the full-size picture takes ages to appear for those of us with less speedy connections. And we don't know when one of these huge beasts will appear in a thread.
Photobucket and I presume the other image-hosting sites have easily used resizing facilities, even suggesting a suitable size for forums (800x600?)
Thanks
Mac
P.S. I was prompted to write this after waiting ages to get into the 'Anyone want an argument?' thread, but got fed up waiting for the pic to download, and wandered off.
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Bitumen is a byproduct from the distillation of crude oil,
Tar is a byproduct from coal, plentiful and at giveaway prices when we were producing coal gas.
Next question will be what's coal gas
Big Col
Fair enough, but what I really meant was difference in physical and chemical properties, use, etc. After all, 'bitumen' and 'tar' are both used for what is put on roads (to say nothing of asphalt, which has a different origin altogether).
Yes, I remember coal gas. A convenient suicide method now lost to us.
Mac
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I agree, though, that the emergency stop ought to drop the gate and stop the lock filling or emptying, rather than just stop the gate from moving. It is very counterintuitive.
I disagree there, I'm afraid. If the emergency stop button were to drop the gate, and the boat had managed to get underneath it, then disaster.
At the moment, what the emergency stop does is to override the initial gate/sluice opening which happens without the finger kept on the button, and allows the gate to be lowered using the 'lower' button. An emergency stop should be just that, and no more.
As an aside, I notice that many 'old hands' on the river use a clip attached to the button to allow 'hands-free' operation. At first I thought this was a good idea, but now think that the EA are right to discourage it by redesigning the buttons.
Mac
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What's the difference between tar and bitumen? I thought they were the same.
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Colin Edmondson's 'Going it Alone' describes a method of flicking the centre rope over the footbridge and catching it with your foot to pass it under the bridge and finish hauling the boat in.
Or with bigger bridges he suggests getting the boat going in and dropping the rope on the roof then picking it up from the roof on the other side of the bridge with a long boathook
I've tried this 'flicking the rope over the footbridge' several times on the L&L, Rochdale, and C&H. To my shame, despite berating Mrs Mac for her rope-throwing, I've only once managed a successful catching of a rope past a footbridge when single-handed either going up or down
so either use a boat hook (while stiil keeping hold of the rope) or with road bridges go up or down the ladder. There are a few ladders where I've not been happy, but all in all it's less hassle.Mac
Cooley Hats on chimneys
in Boat Equipment
Posted
Yes, of course an efficient double skin could reduce tar condensation in the chimney, but it has to go somewhere, and I would have thought that the coolie hat would condense even more. But are we talking about coal or wood? Coal should produce very little tar, but it's almost impossible to avoid with wood.
(Ducks to avoid incoming smokeless wood polemic from NB Alnwick.)