Livaboard heating

[Slim]

3 hours ago, Phoenix_V said:

yep could all go wrong

Diesel engined cars ?

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

The presumption is that most people will be able to use their mobile phone to make 999 calls during a power cut. 

We were up in the Lake District immediately after Storm Arwen last November. There were extensive areas with no power. And our mobile phones couldn't find a network - presumably because all the local masts had lost their power supply too.

Edited February 14, 2022 by David Mack

[Bee]

17 hours ago, jonathanA said:

Looks like a primus stove with a milk churn on top ! Get that going in a boat and the CO or CO2 will get u long before the cold....😀

Not far off, It is pretty much a primus with a bit of extra piping to a bigger pressurised fuel tank. Its supposed to put out 5 kw but I doubt that it does anything like that. Mine is in fact a primus sat in a stainless cylinder with a chimney and is rated at 3 kw. No sign of CO and it does keep a small cabin warm, They used to be very common on sailing boats but these days they are incredibly pricey. Much safer than the old paraffin heaters that used to be common in houses where the fumes were just released into the room.

[tree monkey]

57 minutes ago, David Mack said:

We were up in the Lake District immediately after Storm Arwen last November. There were extensive areas with no power. And our mobile phones couldn't find a network - presumably because all the local masts had lost their power supply too.

Don't a lot of masts have back up generation to cover such issues

28 minutes ago, Bee said:

Not far off, It is pretty much a primus with a bit of extra piping to a bigger pressurised fuel tank. Its supposed to put out 5 kw but I doubt that it does anything like that. Mine is in fact a primus sat in a stainless cylinder with a chimney and is rated at 3 kw. No sign of CO and it does keep a small cabin warm, They used to be very common on sailing boats but these days they are incredibly pricey. Much safer than the old paraffin heaters that used to be common in houses where the fumes were just released into the room.

But household paraffin heaters smelled heavenly, the smell of childhood winters and the smell of being in a polytunnel/greenhouse with the rain beating down outside, lush

[MtB]

1 hour ago, tree monkey said:

Don't a lot of masts have back up generation to cover such issues

 

I think they do in rural locations. Certainly around here most have a big green box at the base which looks suspiciously like there is something bigger than a Honda E20i inside. 

[cuthound]

23 hours ago, tree monkey said:

Don't a lot of masts have back up generation to cover such issues

 

Unless things have changed since I retired, the masts just have an input connection to allow quick and easy connection of a mobile generator. 

[IanD]

1 hour ago, cuthound said:

 

Unless things have changed since I retired, the masts just have an input connection to allow quick and easy connection of a mobile generator. 

 

Some basestations nowadays certainly do have LFP battery backup now costs have dropped, I believe some bigger ones even have an inbuilt generator -- the problem with a mobile generator is you have to get it there, and do this quickly to all the basestations hit by power cuts, which given that these often occur in severe weather conditions like snow or flooding, is not always easy...

23 hours ago, MtB said:

 

I think they do in rural locations. Certainly around here most have a big green box at the base which looks suspiciously like there is something bigger than a Honda E20i inside. 

The big green box may be the guts (signal processing and networking) of the basestation, with only the radio-frequency circuits up in the antennas on the mast.

[MtB]

4 hours ago, IanD said:

 

Some basestations nowadays certainly do have LFP battery backup now costs have dropped, I believe some bigger ones even have an inbuilt generator -- the problem with a mobile generator is you have to get it there, and do this quickly to all the basestations hit by power cuts, which given that these often occur in severe weather conditions like snow or flooding, is not always easy...

The big green box may be the guts (signal processing and networking) of the basestation, with only the radio-frequency circuits up in the antennas on the mast.

 

I was vaguely musing about this and I too decided the green boxes probably don't contain generators, for a different reason. 

 

I can't actually imagine a £50k genny in a box in a field actually surviving indefinitely without being nicked. Therefore I suspect the green boxes prolly don't contain gennies.    

[Slow and Steady]

I made my living designing mobile phone transmission sites for all the operators - there were no generators on any of the thousands I designed. UPS to allow the systems to shut down in a tidy fashion was about it.

When we have a power outage here it's bye-bye to the local masts, hello carp connection from further afield. I don't think they rush around with generators either. It was different when we were all paying for each minute and they could quantify what they would be loosing but now it's inclusive minutes and Gb it doesn't make any difference to their income so why would they rush?

I remember 20 odd years ago once they decided they wanted a site in a certain position they regarded it as "loosing" up to £18K per day until it was built. Fun times if you like working under time pressure.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Slow and Steady

[IanD]

7 hours ago, Slow and Steady said:

I made my living designing mobile phone transmission sites for all the operators - there were no generators on any of the thousands I designed. UPS to allow the systems to shut down in a tidy fashion was about it.

When we have a power outage here it's bye-bye to the local masts, hello carp connection from further afield. I don't think they rush around with generators either. It was different when we were all paying for each minute and they could quantify what they would be loosing but now it's inclusive minutes and Gb it doesn't make any difference to their income so why would they rush?

I remember 20 odd years ago once they decided they wanted a site in a certain position they regarded it as "loosing" up to £18K per day until it was built. Fun times if you like working under time pressure.

When and where were you doing these installations? I know that some basestations do include LFP battery backup (and solar power) because I've seen the hardware, but don't know if these are installed in the UK or only other locations/countries with poorer mains power.

 

Mobile comms is becoming more and more essential in many places nowadays than it used to be, especially in many places which have no landlines, so it's more important to keep the networks up and running than it used to be.

[Slow and Steady]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

When and where were you doing these installations? I know that some basestations do include LFP battery backup (and solar power) because I've seen the hardware, but don't know if these are installed in the UK or only other locations/countries with poorer mains power.

 

Mobile comms is becoming more and more essential in many places nowadays than it used to be, especially in many places which have no landlines, so it's more important to keep the networks up and running than it used to be.

I started by chance in the 90's working for the Aerial Sites Dept and Philips in Cambridge who provided PMR to the emergency services and the armed forces. To provide their service of course they need a load of big hill top radio towers. When mobile phones started the operators needed somewhere to put their antennas and base stations so i was lucky and got in right at the start. I had to become a supplier of services during that time and escaped to work at home. When they went bust I worked directly for National Grid Transco (via working for Crown Castle (ITV) for a couple of years after they bought the sites) who got into the site proving business as they had a lot of vacant land around towns and cities when their gas supply method changed and of course all those HV pylons which were irresistible. I employed a surveyor and a couple of draughtsmen for 5-6 years but eventually stream-lined/standardised and programmed everything including the drawing to such an extent I could do the whole lot on my own. I got right into CAD programming, my best one would do 2 days work in 30 seconds and I had 200 to do - raking it in!

 

So, UK and I retired from that business around 2008 when the whole thing had become so standardised they could pay nuts to monkeys to get the job done - yep my last work was standardising myself out of a job! It was fun while it lasted. I designed installations for water towers, HV pylons, stand-alone tower sites, pole sites, leaky feeder systems (London underground stations after the Kings X fire for e.g.), point to point microwave data links in London for a year before the internet got fast, repeater stations in CCTV poles, all kinds of installations for emergency services as well as mobile phones. I was designing the installations rather than the nitty gritty of what was installed so it was supplies, concrete, fencing, access, cable gantries, bracketry to fit antennas, lightning protection and that kind of thing. Most if not all of the sites I was involved in were by far too power hungry to run on solar and batteries.

 

Then I semi-retired and welded classic vehicles for almost a decade as I was fed up with computer based office work and somewhat burnt out by the previous 20 years. I almost got into renewable energy site design but then I thought... nah, time to do something completely different.

 

Funny really, as per the apprentice thread I was another steered into education when really i wanted to work with my hands.

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Slow and Steady

[IanD]

On 14/02/2022 at 11:54, IanD said:

I asked Ricky if this is what he uses, and he just replied:

 

"It isn’t, but the burner head looks the same. There are 5 or so different variants on the market. Ours are made to our spec locally."

 

Like the custom motor/controller/BMS/battery setup, his approach seems to be "do it properly for the job in hand, don't bodge something which was designed for a different use".

A further bit of information from Ricky, for anyone still interested...

 

"The heating system we use has a body of water around the boiler, stored at around 80c. This is warmed using the 12kw burner. Then the thermal store is pumped around the calorifier and radiator loop."

 

When I spoke to him, he said that the boiler cycled on and off -- and was designed to do this without any problems, since the 12kW maximum output is more than a boat would need, especially a narrowboat -- and the local thermal store (heat exchanger + water) smooths out the temperature variations in the water pumped out to the heating system. The higher the average heat demand the more time the burner spends on and the shorter the time before it turns back on again. There's no minimum heat demand level, as this drops this just means longer gaps between burns.

 

All this relies on having a boiler/burner which is capable of turning on and off many times without any problems (in real life installed in boats, not just in theory...), which Webastos and Eberspachers aren't -- the "short cycling" problem.

Edited February 16, 2022 by IanD

[Ex Brummie]

The combined boiler/heatstore system would certainly overcome the failings of the Bubble PJ's I encountered in narrowboats. As the boiler uses generic parts, it should be as reliable as any domestic oil boiler, but still a little power hungry for off grid use.

[IanD]

24 minutes ago, Ex Brummie said:

The combined boiler/heatstore system would certainly overcome the failings of the Bubble PJ's I encountered in narrowboats. As the boiler uses generic parts, it should be as reliable as any domestic oil boiler, but still a little power hungry for off grid use.

 

I don't know what the power use is, but the average is probably not so high given that the burner is only running for a fraction of the time -- presumably about a third (4kW average) or less for a narrowboat. I wouldn't be surprised if the circulation pump (running all the time the heating is on) takes similar power on average, but this is true for any pumped heating system.

 

This is also targeted at modern "electric-heavy" boats -- not necessarily "gas-free" or hybrid/electric propulsion, but certainly ones with a big domestic battery bank and inverter (and often solar) and a fairly capable 230Vac supply, with much bigger average power users than the boiler. I don't know if Finesse are building anything other than series hybrid/electric boats today, I know they have an order book full of them so I suspect not...

 

Probably not the right solution for a traditional 12V "electric-light" boat though... 😉

Edited February 16, 2022 by IanD

[IanD]

3 hours ago, Slow and Steady said:

 

So, UK and I retired from that business around 2008 when the whole thing had become so standardised they could pay nuts to monkeys to get the job done - yep my last work was standardising myself out of a job! It was fun while it lasted. I designed installations for water towers, HV pylons, stand-alone tower sites, pole sites, leaky feeder systems (London underground stations after the Kings X fire for e.g.), point to point microwave data links in London for a year before the internet got fast, repeater stations in CCTV poles, all kinds of installations for emergency services as well as mobile phones. I was designing the installations rather than the nitty gritty of what was installed so it was supplies, concrete, fencing, access, cable gantries, bracketry to fit antennas, lightning protection and that kind of thing. Most if not all of the sites I was involved in were by far too power hungry to run on solar and batteries.

 

 

That's changed in the last 15 years since the costs of solar and LFP batteries have dropped by maybe 10x -- even if the power isn't enough to run all the time (no incoming mains in remote rural areas), having enough energy storage to keep running for a power cut of a few hours or a day or so -- frequent in some places -- should be no problem. And yes I'm well aware of how much power basestations use, having designed components for them... 😉

 

Still don't know if new installations in the UK use batteries/solar (or even generators...) even though they technically could, because it probably doesn't make business sense (cost, availability and reliability of grid power) -- but for sure some elsewhere do 🙂

Edited February 16, 2022 by IanD

[Slow and Steady]

2 hours ago, IanD said:

 

That's changed in the last 15 years since the costs of solar and LFP batteries have dropped by maybe 10x -- even if the power isn't enough to run all the time (no incoming mains in remote rural areas), having enough energy storage to keep running for a power cut of a few hours or a day or so -- frequent in some places -- should be no problem. And yes I'm well aware of how much power basestations use, having designed components for them... 😉

 

Still don't know if new installations in the UK use batteries/solar (or even generators...) even though they technically could, because it probably doesn't make business sense (cost, availability and reliability of grid power) -- but for sure some elsewhere do 🙂

Material cost was right down on the list in the earlier days when I was active so I expect it was more of a practical consideration and we all know that solar is not much use in the winter in the UK. I agree - a couple of hours would cover most power outages though so I'm guessing that although the tech is better the fact that they don't really loose any money if a site goes off line as we're all on inclusive contracts there's not much point. That and the the fact people would almost certainly steal the panels - there was a huge problem back then with people stealing the lightning protection copper tape and even hacking out chunks of feeder cable in rural areas. Again, the material costs are minimal, but the labour cost of reinstating was high, particularly if some arze cut through every feeder cable.

 

When the power fails here in the sticks so does the mobile coverage - there is no discernible lag, so they're not even attempting to keep the service on line with battery back-up.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Slow and Steady

[IanD]

20 minutes ago, Slow and Steady said:

Material cost was right down on the list in the earlier days when I was active so I expect it was more of a practical consideration and we all know that solar is not much use in the winter in the UK. I agree - a couple of hours would cover most power outages though so I'm guessing that although the tech is better the fact that they don't really loose any money if a site goes off line as we're all on inclusive contracts there's not much point. That and the the fact people would almost certainly steal the panels - there was a huge problem back then with people stealing the lightning protection copper tape and even hacking out chunks of feeder cable in rural areas. Again, the material costs are minimal, but the labour cost of reinstating was high, particularly if some arze cut through every feeder cable.

 

When the power fails here in the sticks so does the mobile coverage - there is no discernible lag, so they're not even attempting to keep the service on line with battery back-up.

 

As I said, probably because they looked at the costs compared to the chances of a mains outage -- which are very small in the UK -- and concluded that it wasn't worth it, the benefits didn't justify the cost.

 

But this is a UK issue (mains, weather, vandalism...) not a technical/capacity one, in other places with much less reliable mains battery backup -- and solar! -- are possible now (and much cheaper than they used to be) and make much more sense.

 

I know we're in the UK so what happens here matters, but there's a lot of world outside the UK where things are rather different 😉

Edited February 16, 2022 by IanD

[Slow and Steady]

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

As I said, probably because they looked at the costs compared to the chances of a mains outage -- which are very small in the UK -- and concluded that it wasn't worth it, the benefits didn't justify the cost.

 

But this is a UK issue (mains, weather, vandalism...) not a technical one, in other places with much less reliable mains battery backup -- and solar! -- are technically possible now (and much cheaper than they used to be) and make sense.

It's so sad the way the inhabitants of the UK destroy the place as a matter of course. It could be so much nicer here.

Agreed, the UK is just not suitable for the reasons we've outlined. They add up.

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Slow and Steady said:

It's so sad the way the inhabitants of the UK destroy the place as a matter of course. It could be so much nicer here.

Agreed, the UK is just not suitable for the reasons we've outlined. They add up.

Of course we could also be grateful for the fact that mains power in the UK is generally so dependable that we don't need to take expensive precautions against it disappearing regularly... 😉

[MtB]

2 hours ago, IanD said:

I know we're in the UK so what happens here matters, but there's a lot of world outside the UK where things are rather different 😉

 

 

Eh? Are you kidding??!

 

Hey @mrsmelly, are you reading this??