Heating a widebeam

[manxmike]

I spent winters at my grandmother's place on the south coast. She took in children needing holidays from deprived areas so we all slept in bunkhouses. On a really cold day there would be anything up to 1/2 inch of ice on the inside of the single glazed windows.

Even now I sleep with my bedroom window open in the winter (yes, yes, my wife does sleep in a separate room!). Having said which I always had the solid fuel stove going on my NB in the winter, getting cold is all very well and I'm sure it's good for health and character building (cold showers, cross country runs etc etc) but during the day I'd rather be warm, especially now I'm in my 70s. I used to burn a combination of logs and smokeless fuel, the coal was great for keeping the stove "in" at night.

[LadyG]

Yes @manxmike has had a similar upbringing, I had a NE bedroom in an uninsulated house, no central heating in those days, and a stone bottle which was supposed to keep the bed warm, or even dry.

I had constant colds and asthma which was not surprising. 

So my warm dry boat is absolute bliss. My days of sleeping in a tent are long gone.

[blackrose]

23 minutes ago, LadyG said:

Yes @manxmike has had a similar upbringing, I had a NE bedroom in an uninsulated house, no central heating in those days, and a stone bottle which was supposed to keep the bed warm, or even dry.

I had constant colds and asthma which was not surprising. 

So my warm dry boat is absolute bliss. My days of sleeping in a tent are long gone.

 

Luxury... We lived in shoebox in't middle of road.

Edited November 23, 2023 by blackrose

[mrsmelly]

4 hours ago, LadyG said:

Yes @manxmike has had a similar upbringing, I had a NE bedroom in an uninsulated house, no central heating in those days, and a stone bottle which was supposed to keep the bed warm, or even dry.

I had constant colds and asthma which was not surprising. 

So my warm dry boat is absolute bliss. My days of sleeping in a tent are long gone.

Did you live in one of those posh houses with a bathroom?

[magnetman]

I do have access to a country estate so lots of firewood. 

 

One thing which is interesting to note is IF the fire is correctly made and sized for the space being heated one can burn green or seasoned wood without any issues. The flue needs to be part of the stove design and correctly proportioned so that it stays very hot. A flue which is not very hot is the enemy rather than the wood moisture content. 

 

Of course most people live in houses and a chimney fire can be incredibly serious. My country estate boat fire has a 70mm flue 2 metres long. We made it from 8 inch box section steel 5mm wall no fire bricks. Heats up fast cools down fast. We put a grate in and it stays in overnight on coal if needed. 

 

Its the first fire I have had (I've had about 10 fires on boats) which is happy to burn anything once its hot. Freshly cut maple? No issues as long as the fire is running hot. 

 

I think the output is probably around 3-4kW. It is far better than I thought it was going to be. 

 

It even runs with the porthole open no smoke in boat. 

 

 

[David Mack]

36 minutes ago, magnetman said:

One thing which is interesting to note is IF the fire is correctly made and sized for the space being heated one can burn green or seasoned wood without any issues. The flue needs to be part of the stove design and correctly proportioned so that it stays very hot. A flue which is not very hot is the enemy rather than the wood moisture content. 

But if you are burning damp wood, part of the energy released by the combustion is used to heat the water content and turn it into steam (which goes up the flue with the other flue gases), and that reduces the useful heat output to the room. So better to let the wood dry first and burn it when the moisture content is low.

[magnetman]

1 hour ago, David Mack said:

But if you are burning damp wood, part of the energy released by the combustion is used to heat the water content and turn it into steam (which goes up the flue with the other flue gases), and that reduces the useful heat output to the room. So better to let the wood dry first and burn it when the moisture content is low.

 

The very odd thing about burning wet wood is that if the fire is going properly and there is no limit to the oxygen supply it actually burns hotter than dry wood. 

 

it is a curious thing but this is what happens. Small pieces of wood not large logs. 

 

It is possible that there is a default tendency to split green wood into smaller pieces than one does with seer wood so there is more surface area. 

 

It is interesting experimenting with wood burners which have proper firebox temperatures above 600 celsius because this is where secondary burn happens. 

 

 

 

 

[LadyG]

3 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Did you live in one of those posh houses with a bathroom?

I washed in the kitchen sink, taps always got in the way, I must have outgrown that so was bathed on a Friday night in the bathroom, there was a Valor paraffin "heater" a lot of steam, and sometimes large kettles to top up the water.

Thank goodness we weren't poor!

[mrsmelly]

Just now, LadyG said:

I washed in the kitchen sink, taps always got in the way, I must have outgrown that so was bathed on a Friday night in the bathroom, there was a Valor paraffin "heater" a lot of steam, and sometimes large kettles to top up the water.

Thank goodness we weren't poor!

The reason I ask is that my wife was brought up in a council house and she tells me they always had a bathroom and in the Railway house she also lived in. I was brought up in a 17th century cottage my Dad bought in a tumbledown condition, we had a tin bath but no bathroom until mains drainage was fitted into the village when I was about 8 years old lol. Toilet of course was down the garden and did not have a water flush. On winter mornings we used to scrape patterns with our fingernails on the inside of the bedroom windows, today we would be taken into care and our parents prosecuted for child cruelty 

[system 4-50]

7 hours ago, manxmike said:

I used to burn a combination of logs and smokeless fuel, the coal was great for keeping the stove "in" at night.

Combinations were popular for keeping warm in the late 18 hundreds, first patented in 1862.

[magnetman]

We had 4 floors and 28 rooms in the house that was excluding the gardeners cottage. The gardens were nice especially the orchard and the stables were well built. 

 

He was poor but we were honest isn't it a bloomin shame its the rich what gets the credit and the poor what gets the blame. 

 

 

 

2 outdoor lavatories in addition to the 5 indoor lavatories. 

 

The scullery was formerly another kitchen but we had no staff just lodgers in the 'flats' upstairs which of course were the former servants quarters. 

You put the servants up the top so if there is a fire in the night you get woken up by them scurrying down the stairs. 

[ditchcrawler]

23 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

  On winter mornings we used to scrape patterns with our fingernails on the inside of the bedroom windows, today we would be taken into care and our parents prosecuted for child cruelty 

I was lucky , mum and dad got a new council house when I came along. we had a bathroom and the fire had a back boiler that heated the water, but we also had the ice on the windows. There was an air brick in my bedroom. ice blasts in winter and flies in the spring.

[wakey_wake]

4 hours ago, magnetman said:

[...] IF the fire is correctly made and sized for the space being heated one can burn green or seasoned wood without any issues. The flue needs to be part of the stove design and correctly proportioned so that it stays very hot. A flue which is not very hot is the enemy rather than the wood moisture content. 

Right. Burning stuff of any kind can be OK, if you have the right kit to do it; and use it the right way.

 

Except it may be illegal for a good reason or not.

 

 

3 hours ago, David Mack said:

But if you are burning damp wood, part of the energy released by the combustion is used to heat the water content and turn it into steam (which goes up the flue with the other flue gases), and that reduces the useful heat output to the room. So better to let the wood dry first and burn it when the moisture content is low.

Again, with the right kit - why not?

But could I buy a Defra approved condensing multi-fuel stove? No. Well I didn't even bother to look actually.

 

(Coal doesn't benefit from condensing - no steam produced. Wood, especially green, would.)