Onewheeler
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Posts posted by Onewheeler
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Another thing to consider is the hull design. Our Beta 38 achieves within a gnat's whisker of its rated full power RPM (3000) with a matched prop, but the boat is trying to plane at that speed (IIRC it's about 11 or 12 km/h), the wash is horrific and it drinks diesel like it's going out of fashion. Not much point in going too large. We cruise comfortably at 9 km / h at 2000 rpm with a bit in hand for when it's needed. (15.7 m boat with a fairly deep draft).
Propcalc.xls is a very illuminating spreadsheet to play with, daresay it's still around on t'interwibbly.
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Max hypothetical power ~ 500 A V^3 where A is intercept area of blades and V fluid velocity. All SI units. Unlikely to approach half of that in practice.
Not many boats will see more that 0.5 m/s flow most of the time. Do the sums and then buy a solar panel.
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38 will be fine if your prop is well matched. A properly sized prop transforms a boat. You may not be able to use full revs for an extended period on either engine unless your cooling system (i.e. skin tank) is adequate, although it is sometimes nice to be able to wind it up to "number 11" for a few seconds...
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So was the River Yare, I saw one in the Thames the other day, first for several years.
Edit,
Was it you I met waiting to come into a lock today on the Thames?
Yarp, would have wandered down to say hello but was busy holding the bow line of the bloke single-handing in front of you! We're now tied up at Wallingford.
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When I were a lad and living darn sarth I used to marvel at the big clumps of foam floating down the Thames.
And I used to wonder why the biggest thing I could catch was a 3" Gudgeon.
When I were a lad t'Thames was full of floating johnnies. Much bigger than your gudgeon.
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We replaced the old BMC 1.8 a few years ago with a Beta 38. Very, very happy with it. The Beta was almost an exact drop-in fit, only needed a very small modification to the engine bearers so the engine fitting only cost a few hundred. Another nice thing was that Beta took our PRM gearbox from the old engine, repainted it and gave it an overhaul and fitted it to the new engine, saving £1k or so. Beta are a very nice company to deal with. The new engine starts much more easily and is substantially quieter than the BMC. It's also easy to service.
Torque / power characteristics were similar too so (if the old prop had been the right size) we wouldn't have needed to reprop. (As it was, the old prop was badly matched anyway so we did fit a new one).
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To be fair, the Spirabase one was bent holding a 35 te boat when a large peniche went past...
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I've had some experience in using Spyrabase ground anchors for mooring <<http://www.spyrabase.co.uk/product_info.php?ID=10502>l, rather than the helical shaped bar ones <http://www.spyrabase.co.uk/product_info.php?ID=10018>). (We've also managed to bend one of them!)
I found these Spirafix ones while googling around - wonder if anyone has experience of them? <http://www.spirafix.com/>They look as if they might go into difficult ground more easily.
Martin/
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I looked at buying an A++ vs an A+ 230 V fridge. Not much less power consumption, a lot more expensive. The difference would easily pay for bigger solar panels.
Martin/
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EEEEE! She's talking to fridge now............
She talks to sheep when we are out, claims they talk back.
Tell her not to believe them, they're all feckin' liars.
Farmer Dai /
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No. 1 son's favourite programme when small was a hot wash. Strange boy...
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Just sharing my experience of fitting a 230 V fridge to a boat in which I have a share, in case it's helpful to anyone.
After much debate I bought a Indesit TFAA10 Fridge with Freezer Compartment, A+ Energy Rating from John Lewis (available earlier this year from several suppliers including Tescos and the Co-op). It is fitted to a 24 V battery system with a Sunshine Power 1 kW continuous / 2 kW peak PSW invertor (http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/prodshow/1000W___24V_Pure_Sine_Wave_Sunshine_Power_Inverter/VP100024.html) which draws a quiescent current (not checked) of 0.375 A.
The fridge operates very well, is very quiet and very frugal on power. Mean consumption at 230 V in warm - hot French weather is 330 - 400 Wh / day, i.e. a mean consumption of up to ~ 16 W (plus of course the standing invertor current), and an "on" consumption of about 65 - 70 W. That's with the thermostat set to its mid setting, which is fine for ice for G&T / pastis, and keeping the contents cool. Ambient temperatures in the galley were in the range 20 - 35 C most of the time.
The boat runs on two 100 W solar panels in series when not connected to shore power or sailing. In practice the panels easily keep pace with the current consumption, basically invertor, fridge, lighting and charging of small devices. Over five days tied up the batteries were easily charged by mid morning, even when the weather was cloudy. Panels are semi-flexible type bought from Photonic Universe (http://www.photonicuniverse.com), not the cheapest but they had good reviews and seem well-constructed. They also arrived very quickly (in UK) after ordering. MPPT controller is a Victron 75/15 which gives us capacity to double up with two more panels in series / parallel if we need the extra power (we won't). The panels are mounted flat on the wheelhouse roof.
Martin/
nb Boden + 1/6 oil tanker L'Héritage.
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(ps is that James's brother?)
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The spreadsheet calculator on the Victron web site is helpful once you've worked out what's watt (sorry!) I recently fitted two x 100 W panels with a Victron 75/15 controller (in a 24 V system) and they run beautifully (especially in French summer sunshine!) Stangely, the smaller Victron MPPT controllers are nowhere near as silly a price as most other Victron stuff even if they don't come with metering as standard.
Martin/
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A well-silly price. I've recently fitted a slightly smaller invertor (1 kW cont / 2 kW peak) from Sunshine Solar http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/with a much lower quiescent current, very good it is and their range is much cheaper. It also seems to cope well with very warm engine rooms.
Martin/
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This Boatman stove Neil, i have seen there are a few, i just googled Boatman stove.
http://www.boatmanstove.co.uk/
if so looks a little cracker.
I installed one a few weeks ago, they're brilliant (and much better than the Squirrel it replaced).
Benefits:
- It's small
- It looks nice
- It's cheap
- Eddie is a very nice bloke (although his web site looks carp (anag) and he sometimes takes ages to respond to emails)
- We've kept it in for 15 hours without problems. Overnight is easy.
- More economical than the Squirrel
- Heats up fast
- Very controllable
- The airwash works much better than on the Squirrel
- If you close the dampers completely it goes out and cools in half an hour to the point that the chimney can be capped
Problems:
- The ash pan is mickey mouse, far too small. To stop ash falling out when riddling it's useful to keep a steel pan on the floor under the door. Ours lives there permanently.
- That's it.
Martin/
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I went for a Hobbit stove (I like the look of it) with about 500mm of double skinned insulated flue where it passes through the roof, and insulated chimney above. From the stove to the roof bit is vitreous enamel. HETAS man that checked it said it was good.
I like the idea of a short length of insulated through the roof fitting. I'll have to measure up to see if the hole is big enough.
Martin/
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As you point out, the biggest disadvantage of the ones stuck on a roof is that you can't angle them towards the sun
I'm not convinced in the context of a boat that this is much of a disadvantage. If it's sunny you'll get plenty of power whatever, and if it's cloudy you'll still get some power but I think it will be maximised with it pointing upwards to give the most exposure to scattered light (can't find any data however).
Martin/
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Our Squirrel has breathed it's last, cracks everywhere, looks beyond economical repair and I've got better things to do than try to fix it. (Bits available if anyone wants them).
The replacement will be anything but a Squirrel, possibly a Boatman or maybe a Hamlet 5. Either way, the current mild steel 4.5" flue will be too short and it's a bit corroded.
Any views on whether to get a new length of mild steel welded up (I need a couple of gentle bends to get to the chimney fitting tidily) or go for an enamelled single skin flue? My inclination is the latter, as I suspect that one of the causes of the end of the Squirrel was the weight of the flue sitting on it. (Incidentally, the Boatman site says that double skinned flue is now mandatory on all new boats - is this right, I'd understood that the BSC is only recommending double skin).
Cheers!
Martin/
nb Boden, Oxford on Thames
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Don't forget to open the little valve below the oil pump. It had me confused after some vigorous and unfruitful pumping.
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The stove is a Franco Belge Parisienne 3kw
www.oilstoves.co.uk have a diagram of your stove and parts list (look under spare parts). They seem to have spares for everything. Prices fairly reasonable as such things go. I've just replaced a flue collar on our Squirrel and various other minor replacements. Took a lot of penetrating oil, some brute force and a bit of drilling out of screws. A few taps came in handy. They delivered the bits very promptly too.
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As I mentioned the only chance of diesel escape will be through poor welding on the tank tops. My fabricator now counts as a boating friend and this WONT happen!
We were thinking of a drip feed diesel stove, but due to experience of others (mainly concerning soot and diesel leaks, usually due to bad installation / operation) and the wish to have a differeent fuel back up to the diesel central heating we have now opted for a multifuel stove. Wood and peat is widely available in Ireland.
In some lands they dry poo and use it for fuel in their stove.
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If it were mine, the first thing I'd check is that the heaters are working and getting a good supply of electricity. They take a lot of current, and this might account for the poor starting / white smoke. My old BMC needed preheat even in the summer. Then check the valve clearances as it only takes a few minutes and could account for some of your symptoms. Have you got oil pressure?
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A Beta 38 is pretty close to a drop in replacement for a BMC 1.8 (we did it a few years ago). It's actually slightly smaller, we just needed to move the engine bearers a little and our local engine man only charged a few £hundred to fit it and get the old one out (I did a lot of the preparation first).
You might be able to keep the gearbox, the PRM we have was a straight swap onto the '38 (and Beta even spayed it green to go with the engine). The torque and power characteristics are close enough that you won't need to re-prop and the Beta is quieter
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Jerry cans
in Boat Equipment
Posted · Edited by wrigglefingers
Taste and style ...
On the Thames diesel is expensive other than from an outlet in Reading. I fill jerry cans with red diesel a farm suppliers, no messing with "heating or propulsion".
A jiggle syphon is easier and cleaner than pouring it out, one just needs to practice a sort of action to get the flow going. Less than six quid from Screwfix.
Martin/