Using a generator when there is no Shore line.

[MartinW]

Hello all, I hope that this is in the correct place and I did try the search function. I will be doing some recommissioning work on the boat I have bought before puttng it through its BSC and re-registering it. I have mostly 240v power tools and , in the absence of a shore line (I have no mooring yet) will have to hire/buy a small Generator.My first question is, since the boat has an isolating transformer fitted, should I plug the genny into the shoreline socket to power the boat or plug tools directly into the Gennie?

Since I have no mooring yet (whoops) I think that I may need temporary generation as a semi-permanent thing so am thinking about buying a small diesel generator (Not petrol) and installing it under the stern plates alongside the motor or storing it on the boat and lifting it onto the towpath. I have a fridge, cooker and microwave on the boat but was thinking about maybe  3kw set. Does that sound ok or would one of the geeky-sparkie people school me please.

 

[Alan de Enfield]

20 minutes ago, MartinW said:

I think that I may need temporary generation as a semi-permanent thing so am thinking about buying a small diesel generator (Not petrol) and installing it under the stern plates alongside the motor

 

The last guy that did that killed his wife and daughter with Carbon Monoxide.

 

They are not designed to be installed like that,

If you want to fit a proper marine diesel generator, and have it installed correctly, you can expect it to cost around £8000 - £10,000.

That is the difference between buying a £200 'construction site' generator.

 

An extract from the Inquiry :

 

On Monday 1 April 2013, the emergency services attended the motor cruiser Arniston on Windermere, Cumbria, where a mother and her daughter had been found unconscious. The two females were taken by air ambulance to Lancaster Royal Infirmary where they were pronounced deceased. A postmortem concluded that the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. The subsequent MAIB investigation identified that:

• The carbon monoxide poisoning had resulted from the inhalation of fumes emitted from a portable generator installed in the boat’s engine bay.

• The external exhaust system fitted to the portable generator had been modified to incorporate a silencer that had become detached from both the generator and the outlet pipe to the vessel’s side.

• The portable generator’s engine exhaust fumes filled the engine bay and spread through gaps in an internal bulkhead into the aft cabin where the mother and daughter were asleep.

• The portable generator was not intended by its manufacturer to be installed into an enclosed space, nor was it intended to be modified in any way.

• The improvised exhaust system attached to the generator was constructed from materials and using methods that were not appropriate for this application.

• The boat’s occupants were not alerted to the danger because two carbon monoxide sensors fitted to the boat at build were out of date and had been disconnected from the power supply. 

 

 

 

 

Pay for a mooring and get power - it really does make sense.

27 minutes ago, MartinW said:

Does that sound ok or would one of the geeky-sparkie people school me please.

That is hardly likely to endear you to the electrical knowledge base that is available on this forum.

 

Maybe start again ?

[TheBiscuits]

45 minutes ago, MartinW said:

would one of the geeky-sparkie people school me please.

 

Well I took it as gentle humour - most geeks know we are geeks and grew out of being offended by it when we were 18 or so.

 

As Alan said, DON'T try and install a portable generator inside the boat - run it on the towpath, downwind of your boat and not where the fumes go into any other boats.

 

Diesel gennies tend to be a lot heavier than petrol ones, which is why most people don't use them, even though you have to be a lot more careful with petrol on a boat.  Keep the petrol can in your gas locker, never refuel the genny on the boat and run the genny dry every time you use it. 

 

It doesn't really matter if you plug the tools straight into the genny or plug it in to the shorepower socket.  Your isolating transformer won't do much but won't harm anything, and at least that way you can charge your batteries too.

 

If your cooker is electric, it's not much cop on a cruising boat in winter - you'd be better off with a gas one.  I suspect your boat had shorepower with it's previous owner.  Solar - as much as you can afford and have space for - will start being very helpful in a few weeks, especially if you have a decent inverter so you can run power tools on sunshine.

[Richard10002]

A Honda EU20i, (EU22i now I think), is 1600w continuous, and weighs 21kg. I could lift it an cart it around, but it was heavy and a faff. I'd guess a 3kW genny would be much heavier.

 

Unless you go the diesel genny, properly fitted at £8-10k, (which is what you might have meant?), you are likely to end up with a petrol genny along with the issues of safe storage of the genny and its' petrol on board. This requires the equivalent of a gas storage compartment where any fumes, or spillage, is directed overboard.

[blackrose]

4 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

The last guy that did that killed his wife and daughter with Carbon Monoxide.

 

They are not designed to be installed like that,

If you want to fit a proper marine diesel generator, and have it installed correctly, you can expect it to cost around £8000 - £10,000.

That is the difference between buying a £200 'construction site' generator.

 

An extract from the Inquiry :

 

On Monday 1 April 2013, the emergency services attended the motor cruiser Arniston on Windermere, Cumbria, where a mother and her daughter had been found unconscious. The two females were taken by air ambulance to Lancaster Royal Infirmary where they were pronounced deceased. A postmortem concluded that the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. The subsequent MAIB investigation identified that:

• The carbon monoxide poisoning had resulted from the inhalation of fumes emitted from a portable generator installed in the boat’s engine bay.

• The external exhaust system fitted to the portable generator had been modified to incorporate a silencer that had become detached from both the generator and the outlet pipe to the vessel’s side.

• The portable generator’s engine exhaust fumes filled the engine bay and spread through gaps in an internal bulkhead into the aft cabin where the mother and daughter were asleep.

• The portable generator was not intended by its manufacturer to be installed into an enclosed space, nor was it intended to be modified in any way.

• The improvised exhaust system attached to the generator was constructed from materials and using methods that were not appropriate for this application.

• The boat’s occupants were not alerted to the danger because two carbon monoxide sensors fitted to the boat at build were out of date and had been disconnected from the power supply. 

 

 

 I'm pretty sure in that case it was a petrol generator rather than diesel. But the point still stands than unless a generator is designed to be installed within an enclosed space it shouldn't be. 

 

I've seen a few diesel site generators safely installed inside boats engine spaces but they still are hellishly noisy. Like you say, the only way to do it properly is with a proper marine diesel generator.

Edited January 9, 2021 by blackrose

[NB Alnwick]

When we bought our boat in 2005, we didn't have a mooring and knew that we would need a portable generator for those days when we were not cruising - or in our case not running the engine fast enough to charge the batteries. I couldn't understand why so people bought Honda generators with what appeared to be many much cheaper options available on eBay. I bought a "portable" diesel generator which looked as if it would do the job for about £300 - it took two of us to lift it and it proved very difficult to start - when it did start it was incredibly noisy and the vibrations caused it to walk all over the towpath. We couldn't use it, we couldn't sell it and we gave it away. We bought a small Chinese petrol generator for about £200 - this was much better. It was small enough to run on the back deck with the exhaust pointing away from the boat. It was still very noisy but had rubber feet and produced very little vibration. It was guaranteed for 12 months and after a year the built in inverter burned out and was beyond economical repair. By this time I had become regular member of this forum and the overwhelming advice from forum experienced members was that I should get a Honda EU20i - at the time they were about £800.

 

So having wasted £500 on cheap generators we bought our Honda EU20i from Brown Power in Rugby. It proved to be easy to carry, cheap to run, and although not silent in operation it was quiet enough as to be barely noticeable. So far, it has given 13 years of reliable service and is powerful enough for all our power tools including our domestic vacuum cleaner. For more than eight years we ran it daily and apart from having it serviced every two years, the only problem that we have had with it was when thieves entered our boat and tried to steal it - fortunately another boater saw them and chased them off.

 

So to sum up, I think the Honda EU20i is worth the money (the current price is in the region of £1,200) and probably the best buy in terms of portable power generation. The downside is that you must run it outside, preferably chained and padlocked to the boat and petrol needs to be kept in a tightly sealed can in the gas locker or outside. We use a 10 litre metal jerrycan and have found that, when moored up, we usually use about 10 litres of fuel a week.

Edited January 9, 2021 by NB Alnwick

[Alan de Enfield]

7 hours ago, Richard10002 said:

................... Unless you go the diesel genny, properly fitted at £8-10k, (which is what you might have meant?),.............

 

You may be correct, but in which case it would be difficult to ....................

 

 

8 hours ago, MartinW said:

................ buying a small diesel generator (Not petrol) and installing it under the stern plates alongside the motor or storing it on the boat and lifting it onto the towpath.

 

[BEngo]

Whatever sort of generator you buy, please only run it for long periods when you are well away from other boaters.  Even the quiet ones are surprisingly annoying after a while.

 

Of course, if someone moors nearby after you have started, the noise problem is theirs and you can carry on till 8 p.m. if you wish.

N

[MartinW]

What a brilliantly informative range of replies. My mention of 'Geek' was an attempt at gentle humor, since the poet in me always rhymes it with 'chic' so I see it as a compliment rather than insulting. My dislike of petrol was partly as a result of having been burnt in a petrol-fire some years ago but also because of the extensive mentions of the hazards in the BSC literature. I see the issues very clearly now. 

I apologise in advance for any inadvertent use of terms or words (Like 'old' or 'Banger' and 'Lister' in the same sentence) and look forward to allowing myself to be educated by the knowledge and mistakes of others before I make expensive ones myself.

Just to preview possible areas of insult, my boat has a Technodrive gearbox........

[ditchcrawler]

10 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

The last guy that did that killed his wife and daughter with Carbon Monoxide.

 

They are not designed to be installed like that,

If you want to fit a proper marine diesel generator, and have it installed correctly, you can expect it to cost around £8000 - £10,000.

That is the difference between buying a £200 'construction site' generator.

 

Not sure if you missed the end of the sentence   "under the stern plates alongside the motor or storing it on the boat and lifting it onto the towpath. "

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

Not sure if you missed the end of the sentence   "under the stern plates alongside the motor or storing it on the boat and lifting it onto the towpath. "

Yes I did.

 

 

It was an either / or and I was explaining why it should not even be considered, leaving the other option available.

[MartinW]

Cheers, Brian, I was grateful to Alan for the detailed information I didn't already have about the sad suffocation case. CO alarms are high on the list of my items to check/obtain.

 

[peterboat]

I am just fitting a secondhand water cooled vetus 6kw diesel generator, I dont have a diesel engine so have all the room in the world to fit it. I bought it cheap from a friend because it had issues which were sorted very easily. I can safely say that its not portable in the slightest and neither are the smaller diesel gennys.

I am a gennie mechanic to trade so I find this stuff easy but when you are fitting it remember BSS covers it the same as a engine install

[MartinW]

' I can safely say that its not portable in the slightest' Masterful understatement, I imagine. I think that it will be next to impossible to find a mooring anytime soon ( I am on lots of waiting lists but know that it's about the person as much as the boat and being in the right place at the right time) so it looks like a Honda will be in my future, and the acronym B.reak O.ut A.nother T.housand is beginning to ring true. I will take possession of the boat in about a week so then can have a really good look at everything and revise my 'white Board' list accordingly. Thanks again.

[blackrose]

2 hours ago, peterboat said:

I am just fitting a secondhand water cooled vetus 6kw diesel generator, I dont have a diesel engine so have all the room in the world to fit it. I bought it cheap from a friend because it had issues which were sorted very easily. I can safely say that its not portable in the slightest and neither are the smaller diesel gennys.

I am a gennie mechanic to trade so I find this stuff easy but when you are fitting it remember BSS covers it the same as a engine install

Peter, I'm thinking of ripping the diesel engine out of my engine hole and filling the roof with solar panels so that I can smugly improve my green credentials and laud it over all these fossil fuel dependent Neanderthals. Then later I'll install a big diesel generator in the space where the diesel engine once stood. Perhaps you could offer me some advice? ? 

 

Sorry, Peter, I'm just pulling your leg, it's meant to be friendly, I couldn't resist. 

Edited January 9, 2021 by blackrose

[peterboat]

6 minutes ago, blackrose said:

Peter, I'm thinking of ripping the diesel engine out of my engine hole and filling the roof with solar panels so that I can smugly improve my green credentials and laud it over all these fossil fuel dependent Neanderthals. Then later I'll install a diesel generator in the space where the diesel engine once stood. Perhaps you could offer me some advice? ? 

 

Sorry, Peter, I'm just pulling your leg, it's meant to be friendly, I couldn't resist. 

I had the injection pump converted so it can use full biodiesel, which my whispergen can't use, my bubble stove can use full biodiesel as well so their is method to my madness! The whispergen is going in the bathtub along with 1 kilowatt of flexible solar that I took off the big boat. The plan is to get ready for a few years constant cruising which means a charging source for the winter for the drive batteries.

I reckon that my genny at 500cc will use way less diesel than the engine it replaced plus I can sound proof it. But I get your point and it's a hard decision to make, the biodiesel swung it for me

Edited January 9, 2021 by peterboat