Fire lit yet

[Annie cariad]

Sat here in fleece assuring my good lady it's not time to light the fire yet.  mid October is about right .... Anyone else about to join me wimp out err what date is it fire lighting moment..,... 

[Rob-M]

There are a few smoking chimneys around us but not lit ours yet.

[PCSB]

I'm tempted tbh. Blowing a hooley and hosing down ... the thought of a nice, warming and cosy fire is getting very hard to resist.

 

Now hailing too!!

[LadyG]

I'm too hot, when I lit it the rain was pitter patter, but the main thing is it's cheery as the nights drawing, plus it dries your socks and T shirts .

And ad lib warm water from back boiler

Edited September 18, 2023 by LadyG

[pearley]

Put the heating on for an hour ready for our  shower. 

[mrsmelly]

Heating is on in my hovel this evening, I dont do cold.

[LadyG]

Just now, mrsmelly said:

Heating is on in my hovel this evening, I dont do cold.

Yes, bt it will take two months to heat up those three foot thick stone walls and corrugated iron roof. Boat is toasty now, and will be for next six months!

[Feeby100]

Not yet but was just saying to the other half won’t be long 

[Hudds Lad]

We went to the boat at the weekend with intentions of doing a few jobs, one of which was rubbing down and painting the fire and then running it to bake off the paint as required. Fire got painted but it was too blinking warm to even entertain lighting it  

Did manage to sand and revarnish the porthole liners and attended the marina BBQ so it wasn’t a total loss  

[magnetman]

I've been lighting the fire regularly all summer. 

 

Not got back in yet so may be a morning thing as not really worth it at this time of day when it isn't in fact cold. 

[john6767]

We are at home tonight, central heating going like the clappers.  Back to the boat tomorrow, perhaps an hour of central heating, but not going to light the fire.

[sigsegv]

Probably didn't need to but to be honest I just fancied the comfort of a nice warm fire. Plus I've got an excess of wood from a downed tree near New Mills from this May (or was it June) that was just begging to be tested for dryness. It was already dead (hence them chopping it down), so has dried out fantastically. Plus the missus is away for the week so I've gotta do something to occupy my time that's not the pub.

 

 

[magnetman]

Burning wood is always good. 

[Wanderer Vagabond]

If it gets  a bit chillier I might fire up the Eberspacher for an hour or so, but it needs to get a lot chillier to light the fire 'cos it makes it too d*mn hot. It's kind of like the conversation you always get with people on the towpath which starts with the line,"I bet it gets chilly in there in the winter" which I usually correct them with,"Nope, the fire is rated at about 5Kw and its not a big area to heat. Do you have to leave your door open in the middle of winter? 'cos I often do"

[Puffling]

In August I swept my flue, took the baffle plate and firebricks out of the stove and gave it a good rake and scrape out. I've yet to clean it externally and slap some stove paint on the outside, though.

 

I'm using that as my holdback on lighting a fire. Given that I was burning my last logs in late May, it would be a mere flicker of milder weather living to admit defeat and sit by the stove again so soon. One or two chimneys smoking around me, saw some even going in July at another mooring.

[blackrose]

It's 18 degrees C in my boat now without any heating. No way am I lighting the fire. Webasto might go on for an hour in the morning but that's all I need. 

[magnetman]

One of the mistakes on boats with relatively small accomodation space is to have oversized fires with fire brick linings. This is overkill. 

 

What you really want is just a plain steel fire which heats up and cools down fast. 

 

Both my boats have custom made fires which I do know is unusual but I am surprised a market has not developed for a properly designed fire for a canal boat. 

 

 

 

 

I've had quite a few fires over the yars on various boats including a Rayburn I put in a narrow boat with central heating and hot water. That was nice to be fair but nothing compares to a good small fire with proper preheated secondary burn tubes. It just works so well and is efficient and once you let it go out its not overheating the boat. 

 

Stays in all day or night on coal if thats what you want. 

 

 

[blackrose]

Just now, magnetman said:

What you really want is just a plain steel fire which heats up and cools down fast. 

 

That's not what I want. My big brick lined stove doesn't take that long to hear up and acts like a storage heater even when the fire has died down. It's not a mistake, it's exactly what I want.

35 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I've been lighting the fire regularly all summer. 

 

 

Why?

[magnetman]

1 minute ago, blackrose said:

 

That's not what I want. My big brick lined stove doesn't take that long to hear up and acts like a storage heater even when the fire has died down. It's not a mistake, it's exactly what I want.

 

Why?

 

Sometimes for cooking, burning the solids and for various territorial reasons. 

 

Also it was actually quite wet this summer and as I spend most of my time in the lounge chair which is an electric canoe with no shelter I do sometimes get a bit damp ! 

 

Do like a fire. 

 

[Wanderer Vagabond]

3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

One of the mistakes on boats with relatively small accomodation space is to have oversized fires with fire brick linings. This is overkill. 

 

What you really want is just a plain steel fire which heats up and cools down fast. 

 

Both my boats have custom made fires which I do know is unusual but I am surprised a market has not developed for a properly designed fire for a canal boat. 

 

 

 

 

Interesting one, I can't think of anywhere else I've seen a similar fire to mine, other than on another narrowboat. In the depths of a cold winter it is good to have one with a load of fire-bricks to retain the heat overnight with minimal fire burning (not good to wake up in the morning with frost on the inside of your windows) it just takes a bit of practice to get the fire burning just right. When you get it wrong, it means opening the doors🥵

[magnetman]

I've had half a dozen ordinary fires including the Heron, the Arctic, the Puffin, the Chelsea, a dutch stove and a Rayburn on narrow boats and always found there was a basic unsatisfactory situation about the boat getting too warm inside. 

 

 

Of course @blackrose is a reasonably large wide bean so would need a bigger fire but for a narrow boat or similar space most of the products available are too hot. 

 

I mean the energy they put into the boat. My fire is too hot to get close to when it is really going but it does not make the cabin uncomfortable.

 

 

 

 

It stays in no problem with smokeless coal. 

 

Fire bricks are a red herring. You can't get heat for free it comes from burning things. The key is to have effective flue and gas flow as well as proper combustion particularly if you are burning a lot of wood. 

 

 

 

 

[MoominPapa]

We're in the house. The heating had been on sporadically but not really doing much. Yesterday was a miserable wet day in Ireland so we used that as an excuse to try out the new batch of firewood that was delivered last week. The stove was lit with four logs at tea time and that was all we burned all evening.

 

MP.

 

[TheBiscuits]

I've never really understood this heating by calendar thing that some people do. If it's cold, warm the place up a bit.

 

Admittedly there are some who run heating/stove just to avoid putting a jumper on, but when you're considering salopettes it's not being a wuss to warm up!  You're not obliged to keep it in until April just because you lit it once.

 

I have seen some people stick a couple of large candles inside the stove to get the cheery flicker on a dank day.  I might have to try this to see if it fools me into thinking it's warmer ...

[magnetman]

You light the fire it you need heat and if not then you don't light it. 

 

It seems natural to do it like that. 

 

This is why, to me at least, it makes sense to have a fire which will provide heat fast when lit and lose the heat fast when you stop fueling it. 

 

Any other way of operating the appliance is liable to cause issues with being too warm or spending too much money on fuel which isn't needed. 

 

Maybe I am unusual in that I do actually like experiencing the cold and having a demand for heat and solving the heating problem. I would never be able to live in a place with automatic heating. It just seems wrong. 

 

 

[sigsegv]

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

Maybe I am unusual in that I do actually like experiencing the cold and having a demand for heat and solving the heating problem. I would never be able to live in a place with automatic heating. It just seems wrong. 

I see what you mean, and I don't think you're alone. There is a certain joy, maybe some type of base desire to feel the cold and do something about it thus becoming warm.