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Stove or not to stove?


James Dunleavy

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1 minute ago, cuthound said:

 

What about the hernia from lugging bags of coal about? ?

 

Apart from lack of dust, the big advantage of a diesel stove is its controlability.

 

I have had coal stoves on shareboats for 23 years and a diesel stove on my current boat for 6 and a half years. I wouldn't go back to a coal stove.

 

That said, hens have more teeth than there are oil stove service technicians about.

 

 If you have a diesel stove you have to be prepared to learn how to service it yourself.

 

I agree that humping coal has become less fun as the years have gone by :( However a squirrel is very VERY controlable and after thirty years living aboard I have it down to a fine art. 

I know it doesnt happen very often but a few years ago when I worked at Daves at heyford we had a private boat come in called " Switched off " it had two major faults, one it was all electric but even worse it had a diesel stove that had a feed pipe been leaking for yonks. The boat ended up and it was a  fairly new boat with a complete replacement of floor boards and some bulkhead panels and getting the diesel and stench out of the bilge was a mammoth and VERY expensive job. Ok that was a dumb owner with too much money but shit happens. I last saw the vote rotting away on a mooring on the K and A bout 3 years ago.

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4 hours ago, Bee said:

February. You arrive at the boat. Its 4PM. Dark. everything is covered in freezing slush. The batteries are not great, the Eberspacher will not start and any heating device that needs batteries is iffy. Its nothing like it was in summer. Thank goodness you have a stove that needs no electric, Two firelighters and some sticks and the place starts to warm up and whats more the stove will stay in until the morning. Phew, your marriage is safe and the dog is not thinking of trotting up the towpath looking for a better boat. 

 

 

With a diesel drip stove such as a Kabola Old Dutch, Refleks or Bubble stove you only need a couple of capfuls of methylated spirits and a match to get the stove going. No electrickery needed.

 

15 minutes later you can turn the stove up to full if the boat is really cold and be sweating within the hour.

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1 minute ago, cuthound said:

 

With a diesel drip stove such as a Kabola Old Dutch, Refleks or Bubble stove you only need a couple of capfuls of methylated spirits and a match to get the stove going. No electrickery needed.

 

15 minutes later you can turn the stove up to full if the boat is really cold and be sweating within the hour.

Ok Ok admit it................when you bought the boat it was a lovely boat, BUT it had one major fault...............It had a diesel stove fitted :D

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2 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

I agree that humping coal has become less fun as the years have gone by :( However a squirrel is very VERY controlable and after thirty years living aboard I have it down to a fine art. 

I know it doesnt happen very often but a few years ago when I worked at Daves at heyford we had a private boat come in called " Switched off " it had two major faults, one it was all electric but even worse it had a diesel stove that had a feed pipe been leaking for yonks. The boat ended up and it was a  fairly new boat with a complete replacement of floor boards and some bulkhead panels and getting the diesel and stench out of the bilge was a mammoth and VERY expensive job. Ok that was a dumb owner with too much money but shit happens. I last saw the vote rotting away on a mooring on the K and A bout 3 years ago.

 

Poor design. Myoil stove is contained within a tiled over, cut down shower tray, so if the stove or it's associated pipework leaks the leak is contained.

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1 minute ago, cuthound said:

 

Poor design. Myoil stove is contained within a tiled over, cut down shower tray, so if the stove or it's associated pipework leaks the leak is contained.

Poor design is an understatement. It was electric drive, with of course a diesel gennie to charge the batteries :banghead: a diesel cooker and stove. He sold it at a great loss.

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15 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Ok Ok admit it................when you bought the boat it was a lovely boat, BUT it had one major fault...............It had a diesel stove fitted :D

 

I must admit That the boat came with an oil stove which I was unfamiliar with and prepared to replace if necessary. However once I got it working and got used to it I found it to be superior in every way to coal stoves. ?

 

 

Edited by cuthound
To remove a letter masquerading as a space
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Just now, cuthound said:

 

I must admit That the boat came with an oil stove which I was unfamiliar with and prepared to replace if necessary. However once I got it working and got used to it I found it to be superiorvin every way to coal stoves. ?

 

 

:P

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2 hours ago, IanD said:

 

I don't believe their estimates for Webasto (130/month, presumably based on guesswork) vs. Refleks (85/month, based on their experience) -- both burn diesel and both put most of the heat into the boat, if they're putting out the same heat they should use the same amount of diesel and cost the same to run. It's a classic example of comparing a number you know to a number you've guessed and maybe drawing the wrong conclusion.

 

Their figure for the Refleks is in the middle of their figures for solid fuel (60-120/month) but I've no idea if that is another guess, 2 quid to 4 quid a day is quite a range...

 

Anyway other things (cosyness vs. ease of use) are more likely to push people one way or the other -- having both might be ideal for resilience but then you have all the negative points of a stove (storage, effort, dirt, space) *plus* the cost of a diesel central heating system ?

So 4 quid a day for solid fuel, and the same to run the Eberspacher for 8 hours. Depends on how many hours out of 24 you run it at full whack, then -- what do you find? (IIRC they're about 0.2l/h at minimum)

 

Mind you that'll change if red diesel disappears... ?

 

My Kabola Old Dutch keeps the boat comfortably warm (23-28°C) on its lowest setting (1 of 6).

 

At this output it uses about 0.25 litres an hour, so 6 litres per day at say £0.85 per litre of red diesel.

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23 minutes ago, Mike Tee said:

If your builder reckons you don't need heating, he may be an experienced boat builder, but he has never lived on a boat in the winter. I really can't imagine any experienced builder suggesting what he has.

I think that is very true of a lot of things boat fitters suggest

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8 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

My Kabola Old Dutch keeps the boat comfortably warm (23-28°C) on its lowest setting (1 of 6).

 

At this output it uses about 0.25 litres an hour, so 6 litres per day at say £0.85 per litre of red diesel.

 

So £5.10 a day or £35 a week for heating. 

With the Hobbit shut right down we used about 1.5 bags of Phurnicite a week at £13 a bag or £20 a week..

Assuming 6 months use = best part of £400 a year difference.

 

 

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32 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

With a diesel drip stove such as a Kabola Old Dutch, Refleks or Bubble stove you only need a couple of capfuls of methylated spirits and a match to get the stove going. No electrickery needed.

 

15 minutes later you can turn the stove up to full if the boat is really cold and be sweating within the hour.

I kind of agree, I have just removed the coal stove from our 10m boat, it was fiddly, took up too much space, needed somewhere to store fuel etc and I have replaced it with a home made version of a Taylors paraffin stove based on a primus stove. Its quick and easy and electric free and puts out a theoretical  2kw (I reckon its less) which is OK for a small cabin. If we had a bigger boat and lived on board I think I would still go for a coal stove but there is a lot to be said for liquid fuel.

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1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

I think that is very true of a lot of things boat fitters suggest

This is I have found the major problem with liveaboard boats. Many years ago I went to enquire with a boat builder who sold lots of boats as live aboard spec as to how long he had lived aboard, this was not to try to catch him out but just in passing, he told me he had never lived on a boat. Its a bit like some bloke advertising his expertise in guns who has never fired one.

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Our Bubble drip feed stove hasbeen running on minimum for several weeks now. We have the front doors open all the time along with windows, Houdini and side hatch top hatches to stop the RSPCA prosecuting us for cooking the dog. 

Full tank to fultank for the last 7 days used 29litres at 69 p/litre (coutesy of Turners) so £20.30 for a weeks heating.

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On 26/10/2020 at 14:11, Richard T said:

We have a stove at the front of our 62ft boat...

 

Which raises another issue. If you are going to install a solid fuel stove (and I don't think you'll regret doing it) then install it in the right place, which isn't like so many badly thought out narrowboat interiors, at the bow end of the cabin!

 

On a boat of around 55ft or longer it should be more central along the length of the boat and that way you'll get a more even heat distribution throughout the boat without needing a backboiler or radiators.

Edited by blackrose
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On 26/10/2020 at 22:24, WhiteSuit said:

Our Bubble drip feed stove hasbeen running on minimum for several weeks now. We have the front doors open all the time along with windows, Houdini and side hatch top hatches 

 

That sounds like a complete waste of energy. I think I'd feel like an environmental vandal. Surely the point is to heat the space using the minimum amount of energy rather than overheating it and having to let it all out the doors and windows?

Edited by blackrose
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On 26/10/2020 at 22:20, mrsmelly said:

This is I have found the major problem with liveaboard boats. Many years ago I went to enquire with a boat builder who sold lots of boats as live aboard spec as to how long he had lived aboard, this was not to try to catch him out but just in passing, he told me he had never lived on a boat. Its a bit like some bloke advertising his expertise in guns who has never fired one.

I do agree. 

However, many builders/fitters are up against the preconceived and stubborn ideas their customers request. There are times when you absolutely have to put your foot down and say no! We will not put our name to that! But if they are stuck on the idea of a bow area stove, you can't always change that thought (out the way of walking trip hazard etc)  For us we stopped them in their merry tracks when they wanted reversing style alarms all down the side of the boat to warn them if they got too near to a tunnel side! Can you imagine?? They were a bit miffed we refused.

 

For my main homeboat my stove sits 18ft aft of the bow doors, even on our new tiny 20ft studio boat its half way down.

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39 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

That sounds like a complete waste of energy. I think I'd feel like an environmental vandal. Surely the point is to heat the space using the minimum amount of energy rather than overheating it and having to let it all out the doors and windows?

Last trip we were putting ours off when we went to bed and on again after lunch the next day, some days it was off about 9pm

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23 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

That sounds like a complete waste of energy. I think I'd feel like an environmental vandal. Surely the point is to heat the space using the minimum amount of energy rather than overheating it and having to let it all out the doors and windows?

Yes it is a waste but.....

Our 57ft boat came with two heating systems, the bubble and a mikuni running radiators. The mikuni is great if not too cold and you want a short blast but uses electric to run and not the most efficient. The bubble is a continuous even heat which is capable of warming through the length of the boat to ensure I don't get too chilled on the tiller, it's about 10 feet from the front doors. It is not as easy as a solid fuel stove to let out and relight due to having to thoroughly clean it between. Therefore once cold enough to light it, it tends to stay alight. When it gets a lot colder the doors hatches etc get closed.

My wife will definitely not be cold.

I had a Morse squirrel on my last boat which struggled to keep a 50 ft warm. That boat had a useful coal store built in which countered one of the solid stove problems of coal storage.

Our current boat is also very well insulated and with hindsight we could have a smaller stove except as far as I know there isn't a smaller one available. 

Everything about a boat is a compromise. 

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46 minutes ago, blackrose said:

On a boat of around 55ft or longer it should be more central along the length of the boat and that way you'll get a more even heat distribution throughout the boat without needing a backboiler or radiators.

Often one doesn't want even distribution of heat. Its great having a warm living area but a warm bedroom is the last thing I want.

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Just now, Loddon said:

Often one doesn't want even distribution of heat. Its great having a warm living area but a warm bedroom is the last thing I want.

Totally agree, our stove is by the bow doors and heats the main sitting and eating area of the boat leaving the rear bedroom at a more comfortable temperature for sleeping.

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32 minutes ago, Ally said:

I do agree. 

However, many builders/fitters are up against the preconceived and stubborn ideas their customers request. There are times when you absolutely have to put your foot down and say no! We will not put our name to that! But if they are stuck on the idea of a bow area stove, you can't always change that thought (out the way of walking trip hazard etc)  For us we stopped them in their merry tracks when they wanted reversing style alarms all down the side of the boat to warn them if they got too near to a tunnel side! Can you imagine?? They were a bit miffed we refused.

 

For my main homeboat my stove sits 18ft aft of the bow doors, even on our new tiny 20ft studio boat its half way down.

I bought this boat from a bloke who owned a hire fleet and had it built for him and his wife to live on which they did from new 2008 till I bought it 2015. he had extensive boating and liveaboard experience and the boat is the best live aboard fit out I have ever been on in every way possible from electronics set up to amount of a/c sockets to seperate laundry room great bathroom  etc etc. I have also owned purpose built liveaboards from other places including a well known high end builder non of which come near this. Of course this bloke had personal extensive experience as do I of living aboard. I do feel for you that people who dont have a clue about living aboard but just have money and say what they want even though its usualy complete nonsense and expect you to produce it. You were far better to refuse to put your name on stuff that was never going to work than just doing it for the sake of money.

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24 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Often one doesn't want even distribution of heat. Its great having a warm living area but a warm bedroom is the last thing I want.

I agree - our bed gets nicely warm in winter because the calorifier is under it. On a hot summers day this is not so good!!! When we bought our boat it didn't have an SF stove in it. Ideally we would have sited one nearer to the middle but this was not feasible so it had to go at the front and on the starboard side. Not ideal but we make it work.

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44 minutes ago, WhiteSuit said:

It is not as easy as a solid fuel stove to let out and relight due to having to thoroughly clean it between.

Then you are doing something wrong.

The overriding benefit of a diesel stove is that when you want it off, it goes off in a couple of minutes. When you want it on, same thing, on in a couple of minutes. It needs cleaning at most once every two or three weeks.

It must burn with a blue flame to prevent build up of solids - if it is not blue, your settings are wrong.

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50' boat. Aarrow Acorn 4 stove starboard side forard. When I bought the boat I thought it would be too small but I found no need to change it. It's neat looking and looks like new after 14 years use. Must say the boat is very well insulated with spray foam insulation and tong and groove planking. Saloon and bedroom areas have good fitted carpets which makes a big difference. When neighbours call they always comment on how warm my boat is.

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