Guinea pigs onboard

[Stilllearning]

I began boating in the 1980s, total about 15 years living aboard. Please note my nick...

There's a lot of sense been given to you, good luck.

[HanaE]

1 minute ago, Stilllearning said:

I began boating in the 1980s, total about 15 years living aboard. Please note my nick...

There's a lot of sense been given to you, good luck.

Thank you 😊 

[Crewcut]

I think even without the guinea pigs if you're doing 3 or more x 12hr shifts plus travel time per week in the "winter" then it will be very miserable trying to CC. So for "winter" I would definitely want somewhere with shore power available which would mean heating/guinea pigs would no longer be an issue. If necessary doing an extra shift per week to pay for a marina berth say October to March would be less onerous than trying to CC through winter. As Tony & others have pointed out you will only be using some form of electric heating if shore power is available, for practical purposes solar and batteries are not up to being used for heating. For what it's worth I did bank HCAing for about 5 years & at the time had a sailboat in Greece. I'd absolutely cane it through October-March and work loads less April-September with plenty of weeks in Greece. Good luck with it all...

[LadyG]

PS.  I m not convinced the guinea pigs will suffer from cold, I think they originate from Peru, and have thick coats, I'd be more concerned about overheating in summer.

 

[ditchcrawler]

1 minute ago, LadyG said:

PS.  I m not convinced the guinea pigs will suffer from cold, I think they originate from Peru, and have thick coats, I'd be more concerned about overheating in summer.

 

Exactly. Some good bedding and they will be fine

[GUMPY]

13 minutes ago, LadyG said:

PS.  I m not convinced the guinea pigs will suffer from cold, I think they originate from Peru, 

 

What they are is a delicious delicacy, best served with potatoes and salsa. A traditional Peruvian dish, Guinea pig (called cuy in Peru) has been served whole on special occasions since Inca times. 

[LadyG]

10 hours ago, HanaE said:

 

How long roughly will the battery last once powered to full and with only a low volt fridge/freezer and low volt heater? 

The domestic/leisure batteries will be linked together to form your battery bank, so two 110amp hours form one 220 ah leisure bank. They will normally be 12 volt, most of the boat will be running on 12v.

Mains electric is 230/240 volts in the UK domestic "mains".

To use any 240v appliance you will need an inverter,  to convert 12v to 240v.

Fridges may be 12 v (expensive), or 240v which is fed through an inverter ( it is not that simple)

That's as much as I dare contribute on electricity, except that it has to be managed forensically!

Fridges, even modern Fridges will be the main drain on your batteries

You must keep your batteries topped up, there is no question of draining them on a regular basis, or even once or twice, they will need to be topped up regularly.

5 minutes ago, GUMPY said:

What they are is a delicious delicacy, best served with potatoes and salsa. A traditional Peruvian dish, Guinea pig (called cuy in Peru) has been served whole on special occasions since Inca times. 

I specifically avoided mentioning that gŕrrrrrr

Edited August 11, 2023 by LadyG

[Jae]

Hi,

Welcome to boats to yourself and your furry lads/ladettes!

 

I liveaboard without shore power with two guinea pigs myself. Guinea pigs can handle a bit of a chill so long as they have plenty of fleece/hay/etc to snuggle up in, what you need to be mindful of is them overheating during the summer.

 

Insulation is 100% the backbone of my temperature strategy. Good insulation means the internal temps will be more stable and will therefore require less active management while you're out.

The one big no power thing I do for the pigs in different seasons is make use of the steep temp gradient in a boat. It is always going to be notably cooler at the bottom of the cabin than near the ceiling. In the summer I'll move them onto the floor of the cabin with some usb 5v fans running off of power packs to keep the cooler air moving.

Keeping the sun out is another no power help, I use foil car sunshades on the outside of my south facing windows. If you can, tape them to the outside the night before it's due to be hot.

Puppy self cooling gel mats are a no freezer alternative to ice bottles, though admittedly not as effective.

 

Hope some of that's useful!

 

[MtB]

10 hours ago, HanaE said:

I have lots to look forward to then 😅

 

The old cliché applies...

 

The more you learn about a subject, the more you understand how much you don't understand.

 

That's how it works for me anyway!! 

 

 

[zerozog]

Hey, you will work it out! Let us know how you are getting on xo

 

[blackrose]

On 11/08/2023 at 13:22, LadyG said:

A modern narrowboat should be foam insulated which will prevent overheating

 

Only it doesn't.

 

How many posts on here complaining about the unbearable heat inside modern sprayfoamed narrow boats during hot summer days does it take to make some people understand?

 

The laws of thermodynamics dictate that no matter how good insulation is eventually heat transfer will occur. Insulation cannot prevent heat transfer, it can only retard it to a point. This is especially true when you're inside a steel box with the sun beating down on it.

 

The other misconception that a lot of boaters have about insulation is that it works equally well in both directions. It doesn't. This is because the entire cross section of the steel/foam/air/wood works much better at preventing heat loss in winter than it does at preventing heat gain in summer. If you think about it it's obvious: The steel is bonded to the foam (or vice versa) so in summer you have very hot metal in direct contact with the foam transmitting heat to it/through it. The foam can't cope with that amount of heat so it gets hot in the boat. In winter you have warm air against the foam and the foam copes pretty well at keeping that heat in. So it doesn't work equally well in both directions because it's not a symmetrical cross section.

Edited October 29, 2023 by blackrose

[PeterF]

3 hours ago, blackrose said:

 

Only it doesn't.

 

How many posts on here complaining about the unbearable heat inside modern sprayfoamed narrow boats during hot summer days does it take to make some people understand?

 

The laws of thermodynamics dictate that no matter how good insulation is eventually heat transfer will occur. Insulation cannot prevent heat transfer, it can only retard it to a point. This is especially true when you're inside a steel box with the sun beating down on it.

 

The other misconception that a lot of boaters have about insulation is that it works equally well in both directions. It doesn't. This is because the entire cross section of the steel/foam/air/wood works much better at preventing heat loss in winter than it does at preventing heat gain in summer. If you think about it it's obvious: The steel is bonded to the foam (or vice versa) so in summer you have very hot metal in direct contact with the foam transmitting heat to it/through it. The foam can't cope with that amount of heat so it gets hot in the boat. In winter you have warm air against the foam and the foam copes pretty well at keeping that heat in. So it doesn't work equally well in both directions because it's not a symmetrical cross section.

That is an interesting note that got me thinking and I agree completely, putting it in different words.

 

In winter you have the inside of the boat at 22degC, the outside air temperature is 0degC and the steel will need to be a few degC above zero to dissipate the heat by convection, say 3degC. The temperature difference that the foam is dealing with is 19degC and lets say the heat flow out of the boat is X kW.

 

In the worst of summer, the outside air may be at 30degC, but the solar heating of the steel means that it is much hotter, a dark boat may be 60degC and the inside is 22degC, a difference of 38degC, twice the winter difference so the heat flow into the boat will be 2 time X kW. This is why light colours are preferred for boat cabins / roofs as the solar heating is less.

[Tony Brooks]

I would add that on our boat with expanded polystyrene (foam) insulation on a hos summer day you could feel heat radiating from the 10mm solid wood cabin lining on the side facing the sun. Please, for the sake of the livestock, ignore the post about insulation stopping the cabin getting overly hot.

[IanD]

5 hours ago, blackrose said:

 

Only it doesn't.

 

How many posts on here complaining about the unbearable heat inside modern sprayfoamed narrow boats during hot summer days does it take to make some people understand?

 

The laws of thermodynamics dictate that no matter how good insulation is eventually heat transfer will occur. Insulation cannot prevent heat transfer, it can only retard it to a point. This is especially true when you're inside a steel box with the sun beating down on it.

 

The other misconception that a lot of boaters have about insulation is that it works equally well in both directions. It doesn't. This is because the entire cross section of the steel/foam/air/wood works much better at preventing heat loss in winter than it does at preventing heat gain in summer. If you think about it it's obvious: The steel is bonded to the foam (or vice versa) so in summer you have very hot metal in direct contact with the foam transmitting heat to it/through it. The foam can't cope with that amount of heat so it gets hot in the boat. In winter you have warm air against the foam and the foam copes pretty well at keeping that heat in. So it doesn't work equally well in both directions because it's not a symmetrical cross section.

If you think that heat conduction/insulation works differently in the two directions then I suggest you patent this pretty damn quick, it'll make you very rich 🙂

 

(I'm not diagreeing with your statement that insulation only slows down heating/cooling, just the bit about it working differently in the two directions)

 

There is a difference in the heat flow rates if the inside-outside temperature difference is bigger (e.g. hot steel in the sun) but this is nothing to do with the insulation being more effective one way than the other.

 

Since nights are usually cooler than days, good insulation reduces the maximum daytime temperature inside the boat, so long as windows are kept closed to keep hot air out. Then when it's cooler outside than inside at night you can open the windows to let cooler air in. Now you've made yourself a heat rectifier which *does* keep the inside of the boat cooler -- like Maxwell's Demon but much bigger... 🙂

 

Even sprayfoamed boats can still get pretty damn hot though... 😞

Edited October 29, 2023 by IanD

[Ac sparky]

Hi

 

We cruise for up to 6 weeks with our 3 indoor guineapigs on board.  It is possible but you need to plan.

 

As mentioned above, temperature control is important.  It can get very hot on board in the summer even with the doors and windows open and we've had a couple of instances of heat exhaustion.  Fans pointing directly at the cage are not recommended so it is cooled bottles of water wrapped in towels and seeking shade.

 

Conversely, too cold is a problem.  Their hutch is on the floor below the waterline so we have a Celotex pad, slightly smaller than the hutch underneath.  We have a padded curtain to insulate the hutch at night and if particularly cold we lift them onto the table, bearing in mind that the draught from the door vents can cause a problem when they're on the floor.

 

If very cold or very hot, my partner gets up in the night to check they are OK!

 

You need space to store the hay although if you have access to a car (which I think you might as a working CC), that may not be so much of a problem.  Similarly, access to fresh veg is difficult sometimes when in the middle of nowhere. 

 

Finally, it can be dusty on board and that can cause respiratory problems.  Ours run freely on the carpet so a bit more insulation but won't venture onto the wood surfaces.

 

Hope this helps.

 

On behalf of Daphne, Mimi and Florence.