My Sailaway Decisions - Good & Bad

[PD1964]

Is that the place you put your fire?

Did you put the PO discharge through the roof?

[system 4-50]

26 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

Is that the place you put your fire?

Did you put the PO discharge through the roof?

Stove - dead centre widthways and also lengthways approx.

PO discharge through the gunnel.

[PD1964]

17 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

Stove - dead centre widthways and also lengthways approx.

Seen this on widebeams, where you can still have a safe walkway to side, but I doubt I would recommend it for a narrow, especially with a single skin flue.

Maybe could be a bit tight if on the big size and a bit care needed if fire blazing.

  Would you still do the same or maybe move to the side gunnel, giving wider passage past?
 
 

[system 4-50]

11 hours ago, PD1964 said:

Seen this on widebeams, where you can still have a safe walkway to side, but I doubt I would recommend it for a narrow, especially with a single skin flue.

Maybe could be a bit tight if on the big size and a bit care needed if fire blazing.

  Would you still do the same or maybe move to the side gunnel, giving wider passage past?
 
 

Not yet shown 'cos I haven't found a picture is a substantial "cage" made out of 2 wire fireguards that made it safe with small children present.  It would not have been sufficient for older mentally impaired children who could make a deliberate effort to reach the flue higher up, but I wouldn't have such children on a boat.  The stove was relatively small as stoves go.  I would do the same again in the same circumstances, but (spoiler alert!) the circumstances changed and I later got rid of the stove.

[Puffling]

2 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

[...] the circumstances changed and I later got rid of the stove.

I just hope you found your Puffin a good home. Every puffin deserves dignity in their later years ☺️

[system 4-50]

Decision 044.  Heating 2.  GOOD.

Time passed and things changed.  My interest was now in providing holidays for my 2 granddaughters and their parents and myself and my wife.  We needed more beds.  I decided to install a sofa in the saloon that converted into bunk beds.  With considerable research I came up with a design that made for a really comfortable sofa whose back folded up to make the beds.  They were a bit on the narrow side and the top bunk was decidedly narrow, almost hireboat small!,

but they were ideal for the girls aged 3 and 5.  I was lucky that a reinforcing angle in the cabin wall provided a rock-solid fixture in exactly the right place for the top bunk hinge.

This construction required the removal of the stove from its central location.  After many years of useful service I had lost enthusiasm for it.  It did do heating very well, but:

1.  It took far too long to heat up.  After 2 hours after being lit it had just about heated itself up.  To get the whole boat cosy in cold weather it took a good 24 hours, and this was too long when my typical visits were about 5 days.

2.  it was too difficult for a novice eg a visitor to control well.

3.  It was a lot of work to faff around with sacks of smokeless fuel.  They were dropped on the deck by the fuel boats which was great, but the sacks were 25Kg each and I had to rebag them to about 8Kg to be able to manage them in the boat.  I mostly kept them in the bow locker.

I therefore needed a replacement heating system and I went for a Webasto Thermotop C.  

I booked an installation by Steve Wedgewood and a few days before it was due, the Middlewich collapse occured.  I had to move the boat from Nantwich, south round via Autherly Junction to Middlewich in double quick time and it was on this trip that I did my best single-handed trip of 27 (narrow) locks and 10 miles in one day.  My thanks to a few people who helped, but my greatest thanks go to the people who came through the locks in the opposite direction at exactly the right time!

Steve did an excellent job of installing the device but I did the radiators & pipework.  

I used JG plastic for the pipework but the first time I ran the system it expanded all over the place so I replaced it with 22mm copper Tectite pushfit, which incident I have described previously on this forum.

I installed 5Kw worth of 3 radiators with NO valves of any kind.

It was a revelation!  It heated the boat cosy warm in under 2 hours (when the outside temp was ??)!  The boiler noise in the engine bay was not a problem.

I didn't get to fully understand how it worked with full power, half-power, self-shutdown etc before I sold the boat.

Regaining the central saloon space was useful, as you would expect.

Revisiting, I would definitely want to look at the latest Webasto offering which is supposed to handle throttling down without coking.  The stove was great in its day but I'm too old for it now.  If I was living aboard the cost issues of diesel heating would be a bigger factor than it was.

[system 4-50]

Dinette with FF in background.

 

[PD1964]

7 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

Dinette with FF in background.

 

Are those bars on the window to keep people out or people in? 😂 

[PD1964]

To save time there’s a Youtube Vid showing your finished boat. If anyone wants to view.

 

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by PD1964

[system 4-50]

 

40 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

To save time there’s a Youtube Vid showing your finished boat. If anyone wants to view.

Excellent! I don't remember seeing that!  Only about 4 errors in the description, and it looks much better in the vid than in the flesh!  I'll buy it!  Thank you very much for finding that.

1 hour ago, PD1964 said:

Are those bars on the window to keep people out or people in? 😂

Out.  I got tired of coming back to the boat and finding fresh screwdriver marks on the hatch.  With so many big windows it was just a matter of time.

[PD1964]

2 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

 

Excellent! I don't remember seeing that!  Only about 4 errors in the description, and it looks much better in the vid than in the flesh!  I'll buy it!  Thank you very much for finding that.

Sorry I should of asked before posting it, as you may of wanted to add at the end.

Edited February 12, 2023 by PD1964

[PD1964]

8 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

 

Excellent! I don't remember seeing that!  Only about 4 errors in the description, and it looks much better in the vid than in the flesh!  I'll buy it!  Thank you very much for finding that.

Out.  I got tired of coming back to the boat and finding fresh screwdriver marks on the hatch.  With so many big windows it was just a matter of time.

Seriously? I thought it was maybe a weird window concept you were trying out, something like small cottage window look viewed from outside.

Edited February 11, 2023 by PD1964

[system 4-50]

11 hours ago, PD1964 said:

Seriously? I thought it was maybe a weird window concept you were trying out, something like small cottage window look viewed from outside.

Nope.  For quite a while I had expensive stuff sitting about not fitted, inadequate curtains, and a boat in the neighbourhood being stripped.  The worst loss I had was vandalism to my car parked adjacent to my boat at Blackhorse moorings.  I took them off later when the boat was more complete and the tools had been removed.  They were included in the boat sale and would be ideal if the boat ended up in London.

[system 4-50]

Decision 045. Security.  Unfinished.

Security on the boat was always a problem.

The bow had a pair of steel doors with a solid welded overlap.  I fitted a pair of the garage-type bolts with coachbuilding(?) boltheads and I was confident that these would hold against most attacks.  The problem here was that there was no way of shutting the doors without locking them.

The stern had a pair of steel doors under a standard steel hatch running on brass rollers.  At various times I had wooden bars across the insides of the doors, a pair of padlocks on the steel doors, a padlock preventing the hatch running backwards, and 4 substantial bolts running sideways through the hatch into the runners.  This did provide a shut-from-inside capability, but also meant that the boat always had to be left by the bow.  Marks and dents showed they were tested from time to time.

The hatch was unsatisfactory, and as I've said, drained rain back along the runners into the boat, probably bacause of my requirement that the boat be straight not banana shaped. 

Revisiting I would want a much better security solution but I have no idea what that would look like.  I would want the hatch runners to be angled downwards towards the bow.

The windows were also a big risk, so many and so big.  I got steel grilles made by Crewe Engineering and they were excellent, obstructing the view very little.  I should have spent more time planning how they would be incorporated into the window frames.  My intention was that they would be in runners and be capable of being lifted out, so that they would mostly be fitted when the boat was not in use in winter.  

The deck board had a simple lock that was good for preventing access by casual thieves.