advice on heating my boat please

dylanwinter said:
I have burned all my tealights and put all flower pots and bread tins in the recycling bin.
Click to expand...

It's known as the placebo warmth effect, and is commonly experienced in the Antarctic winter when there is no daylight at all. When the sky is clear and the moon is out the landscape is surprisingly bright because of the white landscape and clear air. It feels considerably warmer than when there is no moonlight. The heating effect of the moonlight is negligible, but it doesn't feel that way. It's a strange psychological effect that originates in our evolution. Humans have poor night vision. We are not designed to cope well in the dark and in pre-history we were at risk from predators that could see us much better than we could see them. When it's too dark to see well our brain makes us feel cooler, which encourages us to find warmth, shelter and safety.

If 4 candles giving off a warm glow makes a boat occupant feel warmer, even if there is negligible temperature rise, then why not?
 
Last edited:
Nobody (as far as I have discovered) has mentioned the idea of using engine heat. It heats calorifier water very happily and, like in a vehicle, the engine water could be circulated through a vehicle fan heater. Although you wouldn't want to sleep with a running engine, some of the heat so distributed would presumably remain in the cabin.

As a further step, heating pipes or hoses could be run through lockers.

I can't do the sums but I hate waste.
 
a Golgafrincham supreme commander, and Archimandrite of the Great Circling Poets of Arium writes...


I am glad to hear you are a fine swinger, though your videos give the alternative message of a man at peace with himself and the maritime world, especially when looking at wild birds.

No-one can hold a candle to your ambitions to raise your world's temperature single handed, and we hope that your time in court will enable your core body heat to reach normal for your world's inhabitants. We note that you endorse the heating design and installation services from Messrs Eber & Websasto, and I have passed this information on to the Editor of YellowPages (Galactic Edition) as I know that they are anxious to feature products recommended by famous magazine writers.

We have a proverb on my planet, which in signing off, I commend to you.

"Let there be Light (and Heat), OK ?"





This email has been tested by the Golgafrincham IT section and is guaranteed to be free of irony, sarcasm, zuegma, alliteration, cataphora, and hyperbole at the point and time of despatch. It is intended for the named recipient only. Should you have received this by accident, please print it out and eat it to destroy the paper trail. Questions of interpretation of cultural clashes, syntactic alienation, and failure to achieve syllogistic harmony between disparate national and world groups is all a matter of personal exegesis ,and no persons living or dead were specifically implied in this reply. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
 
Graham_Wright said:
Nobody (as far as I have discovered) has mentioned the idea of using engine heat. It heats calorifier water very happily and, like in a vehicle, the engine water could be circulated through a vehicle fan heater. Although you wouldn't want to sleep with a running engine, some of the heat so distributed would presumably remain in the cabin.

As a further step, heating pipes or hoses could be run through lockers.

I can't do the sums but I hate waste.
Click to expand...

I don't mention it, because I tried it and it was not very good.
The engine only heats the calorifier when it is under a reasonable load.
Idling, it produces very little.
I tried it with a VW polo heater on a yanmar 3GM30.

It would be OK if you run your engine under load for decent periods, but my typical 20 minutes of in/out of harbour is just enough to heat a normal size calorifier.
Losing heat to the Polo heater stopped the water getting hot enough for washing up.

I'd be interested in any other experiences?

Life would be different for a motor-sailor.

Some sort of CHP set up, using a small generator to produce a mixture of electric and water heat would be nice, if you could make it as quiet as an eberbasto.
 
dylanwinter said:
...
I do love it when people would prefer to apply pseudo maths and deeply held beliefs rather than trying the simple experiment for themselves.

the war department suggested using a similar system for taking the chill off anderson shelters - different times of course. However, clearly they knew nothing either.

...
Click to expand...

Just simple arithmetic. Did you perhaps mean to write ‘pseudo physics’? If so, I (i) said what I had done (for a ‘pseudo boat’, certainly :)) and gave a link to methodology and data, (ii) pointed out that it was crude and that I might have made an error and (iii) invited people to check my figures and if possible provide better estimates. So far as I can see Sarabande, too, provided everything needed to ‘check his workings’.

Anderson shelters were 1.4m wide, 2m long and 1.8m tall and could hold 6 people. They were buried >1 metre in the ground and covered with a thick layer of soil and turf. I think that the insulation provided by the earth would have been considerably more than that of the GRP or wood of an equivalently-sized boat. Not to mention that the ground itself would be relatively warm when the surface was frozen – e.g. that's why water pipes are recommended to be laid at >75cm depth.

There was also the heat output of the occupants – ronsurf’s 100W per person. That’s 600W for a fully occupied Anderson shelter, with a volume per person ratio much smaller than in any small cruising boat that I can imagine.

I do not think that the UK WWII war department ‘knew nothing’. But whatever they knew about heating, I’m sure they also knew very well the psychological value of a warm glow to those sitting in a dark, cramped corrugated box dug into the garden hoping that none of the bombs had their name on it.

Finally, I hope that in replying to Mrs Trellis, you meant that you had given yourself a swingeing fine. Capital punishment seems harsh for an H&S offence, and since the Criminal Damage Act of 1971 you wouldn’t even get it for er ... lighting a candle in Her Majesty’s dockyards. But perhaps as Master and Commander aboard, you apply a harsher code.:)
 
sarabande said:
... I am beginning to believe that some people enjoy breathing in nano-particles and noxious gases....
Click to expand...

We certainly have enjoyed the two oil lamps that adorn the saloon bulkhead - 10 years ago our only source of heat and a valuable addition to light, but now a very occasional indulgence indeed. We prefer paraffin to lamp oil for the odour (of nostalgia, perhaps, though we don't remember paraffin lamps even from our distant yoof) but I imagine it's almost as bad for nano-particles and noxious gases.

I imagine that the heat output is pretty small (one could work it out I guess, but I don't know the fuel consumption rate), but it did seem to make a bit of difference. Come to think of it, perhaps the odour from paraffin is a significant factor in the psychological aspect of the warmth ...
 
lw395 said:
I don't mention it, because I tried it and it was not very good.
The engine only heats the calorifier when it is under a reasonable load.
Idling, it produces very little.
I tried it with a VW polo heater on a yanmar 3GM30.

It would be OK if you run your engine under load for decent periods, but my typical 20 minutes of in/out of harbour is just enough to heat a normal size calorifier.
Losing heat to the Polo heater stopped the water getting hot enough for washing up.

I'd be interested in any other experiences?

Life would be different for a motor-sailor.

Some sort of CHP set up, using a small generator to produce a mixture of electric and water heat would be nice, if you could make it as quiet as an eberbasto.
Click to expand...

the old volvo (10hp single cyclinder) in the slug (18 feet long) - did a pretty good job of heating the inside of the boat

I reckon it kept the inside of the cabin fairly toasty for the first two hours after stopping for the night. Running it for ten minutes was enough to get it up to temperature.

Winter sailing in Katie L is a different kettle of fish - an outboard in a well (that will never work surely) so no engine heat to keep the cabin warm.

After that I would cook supper - another extremely dangerous activity involving naked flames, boiling water and unpeirced cans

(I would welcome some input from Golgfrincham ex pats on this matter)

Please tell Mrs Trellis that she should never boil cans as they might explode and will invalidate her insurance

after that it was candles - which as we now know - have a purely psychological effect on the perception of warmth. They now they count as weapons of mass destruction

I am amazed that I am still alive after all this dangerous activity.

I have decided to throw in the towell, stop sailing entirely and dedicate myself 24/7 to issueing warnings on forums.
 
I've just had an insurance quote that didn't cover the boat the moment it started to get cold. It's only insured if I get it out of the water and somewhere where it can't be sailed. Obviously this company know all about the risks of trying to heat a boat.

Roll on the day when nuclear fission's perfected, then we can all have heat and power without the hydrocarbons killing us all....
 
dylanwinter said:
after that it was candles - which as we now know - have a purely psychological effect on the perception of warmth.
Click to expand...

Mostly, not purely. There will be a small temperature raise in your boat from the 100W of you and 200W of candle power. This psychological effect is most apparent in the example environment I gave - moonlight in an Antarctic winter, where the temperature change is immeasurably small, but the psychological effect great.
 
Is Mrs Trellis related to Dr Spacely-Trellis I wonder? Forgive the drift, but I believe he was a progressive - no candle burning for him, I'm fairly sure. :)
 
AngusMcDoon said:
Mostly, not purely. There will be a small temperature raise in your boat from the 100W of you and 200W of candle power. This psychological effect is most apparent in the example environment I gave - moonlight in an Antarctic winter, where the temperature change is immeasurably small, but the psychological effect great.
Click to expand...

That's not fork handles, that is seven ! Is there something you know about Dylan that we don't ? Is he secretly working to a different mathematical base number in his calculations ?

I concur with the psy effect btw. Heaty is in the eye of the beholder ?
 
dylanwinter said:
the old volvo (10hp single cyclinder) in the slug (18 feet long) - did a pretty good job of heating the inside of the boat

I reckon it kept the inside of the cabin fairly toasty for the first two hours after stopping for the night. Running it for ten minutes was enough to get it up to temperature.

.....
Click to expand...

I agree the engine heat is useful, when I fitted a hydronic eber, the engine behaved as a big storage heater.
Not sure about ten minutes running, it's a bit like my diesel car, you seem to need to go up a hill before much heat comes out the demister. Just ticking over, or pottering through the village, the needle stays down. I guess with a 3GM in an ex-racing boat, it was not working ever so hard.

I will admit to being a bit sensitive about CO, as two of my mates at uni came a little too close to killing themselves with a mixture of calor gas heating and sense dulled by cheap cider.
Also, I'm not fond of the smell of candles and stuff.

For my next boat, I am seriously looking into the generator CHP malarkey.
Or I will buy one with a well sorted eber/basto system and save the effort.
 
dylanwinter said:
...I have burned all my tealights and put all flower pots and bread tins in the recycling bin

D
Click to expand...


Glad to hear of it.

Get yourself a decent heater, I can't be doing with nano-particles

On the pilot cutter the Rippingille Prefect has given years of sovereign service. Off Vardo last Easter I was so toasty I was twice down to my underpinnings, even with both butterflies open. The late Mr Trellis would have laughed.

Come to think of it it's a bit warm in here now, still soldier on.

Mrs Trellis (Bethesda)
 
KevB said:
you can't beat a nice warm boat in the winter. Stop being a skin flint and part with £440 and buy one of these. The cheapest proper way to heat your boat when you're away from shore power.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PROPEX-HEATSOURCE-HS2000-BLOW-AIR-HEATER-MOTORHOME-CAMPER-BOAT-CARAVAN-GAS-12V-/231375585737?pt=UK_Campervan_Caravan_Accessories&hash=item35df0f41c9
Click to expand...

Propex? Proper? and you call others skinflints, they have one advantage which is capital cost and why they are favored by skinflints./
 
doug748 said:
Glad to hear of it.

Get yourself a decent heater, I can't be doing with nano-particles

On the pilot cutter the Rippingille Prefect has given years of sovereign service. Off Vardo last Easter I was so toasty I was twice down to my underpinnings, even with both butterflies open. The late Mr Trellis would have laughed.

Come to think of it it's a bit warm in here now, still soldier on.

Mrs Trellis (Bethesda)
Click to expand...

Rippingille? Are they still around, Carruthers?
 
View attachment 46820View attachment 46821

This heater takes gas canisters (camping type) it is catalytic, has oxygen depletion valve, tilt cut-off valve and produces approx 1.8kw. The gas canisters cost approx £1 each and can last a few hours each. It is used by lorry drivers to heat their cabin.

I know there will be a lot of people coming back with comments such as carbon monoxide and condensation; it is catalytic hence the risk is low although if I am to use it while asleep, I make sure there is ventilation; I have never noticed any condensation and I have been using it for a few years. Cost ~£80. Be careful, there are many gas heaters on the market but not all are catalytic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top