Cooking and heating fuels?

[ANDY_W]

I'm fitting out an old Westerly Tiger ( 25ft ) to sail solo in retirement.I plan to get the value out of the boat by using it so am not too worried about resale values in say 20 yrs time.This gives me a free hand about the internal arrangements.
The over riding principle in the fit out and equipment will be KISS ( keep it simple stupid )
For long term liveaboard use, which is the best cooking and heating fuel to go for, in terms of cost and availability?
The possible sailing areas would be UK/Med.
The choice would appear to be from diesel, gas, paraffin or ( for cooking ) methylated spirits.
Your opinons, being based on actual experience, would be much appreciated.

 

[ccscott49]

You will hear a bunch of different opinions here, but for me gas, for cooking, thats based on 14 yeras of liveaboard in UK/MED.

 

[robind]

Look up a copy of the Cost Concious Cruiser written by the Pardeys (Lin and Larry)
(ISBN 0-9646036-5-9) Or altermatively have a look at www.onpassage.com check out "cruisers own websites" under "Atom" where James Baldwin shows us his developed Parrafin stove and gimbals etc. its clearly set out on his site on the front page in the grey panel. Hope this helps
Rob

 

[Abigail]

We bought deisel on KISS principle. There is only one deisel gimballed cooker on the (UK) market, or there was then (a new check might reveal something else.) It's a great cooker to use, cooks beautifully etc.

BUT -
(i) v v dear. There are savings in deisel vs gas, and no gas alarms, but piffling compared to the original layout
(ii) actually not KISS. It's a sophisticated bit of kit with lots of computer electronics in, and other stuff. In our view, after three years with it, it is too complex for a liveaboard cruising yacht, and the service network is not quite strong enough to make up for this problem.

We are keeping ours for now but not for ever, and would then probably revert to gas (seasicknes is bad enough without adding paraffin), and would love Blakes to bring out a gas version of their splendidly solid cooker. The cooker we have will then be for sale, but we would target canal boaters or people who are very gentle sailors.

HTH

 

[Poignard]

[ QUOTE ]
.. and would love Blakes to bring out a gas version of their splendidly solid cooker.

[/ QUOTE ]

They did, a friend of mine has one, but I believe it never went into full scale production because it couldn't be made at a competitive price. Might be some around secondhand but easier to find hens' teeth

 

[Blueboatman]

Re: Don\'t try this !

One for the Health and Safety boys to play with on their boats-not
Mate of mine had a brass Taylors cooker with oven and finding it more and more difficult to obtain high grade Paraffin in the Med,experimented with attaching a camping Gaz cylinder to the cooker,bipassing the paraffin tank,changed nothing.else,not even the jets afaik..
Result? Two years later when we sailed together the Taylors was still running on gas,but less powerful flame than with paraffin.How crazy is that?

 

[Blueboatman]

Funnily enough,theres a 'condemned'(!)Taylors Gas cooker on ebay right now,auction ends this afternoon

 

[Wansworth]

There is plenty of paraffin where I live as they are selling paraffin heaters about 26 euro for 20 litres.Only problem with paraffin I found was the cost of spares,if they go well they give off good heat.For a small boat say up tp 30ft a tilly lamp on the cabin sloe gives good heat,and light.

 

[Blueboatman]

Agreed ,I never had a problem in Spain or Portugal .I had(and have kept ) a 2burner Optimus paraffin stove. It cost more to preheat than to burn paraffin for a cuppa or so it seemed.Often on damp days I just used to leave the stove on all day,hatch open 2-3 inches of course to ventilate the vapour out,and on really chilly evenings the trusty terracotta flowerpot would sit inverted on the stove top.Warm as toast in the cabin and frost on the tiller!

 

[charles_reed]

Really four factors, cost - capital and running, efficiency and availability of fuel.

Diesel stoves are expensive to buy and install, cheap to run, most who owned them wouldn't repeat the experience and the fuel is universally available. The drip-feed dual fuel heaters are rather more effective than the cookers.

Paraffin stoves are mid-priced, fuel is usually quite cheap (unless you are forced to buy deodorised when it becomes the most expensive) fuel availability is highly variable (there are some parts of Spain where it's unobtainable) and they cook well even if lighting them can be a chore.

I have, I will confess, a phobia about alcohol stoves having once owned a boat with an Origo. They do have the merit of having a relatively low capital cost, but for anything else are at the nadir of desirability.

LPG stoves are cheap to buy, work well but the obtaining of supplies is made needlessly tedious by the policies of the local bottlers. Camping gaz, whilst being pretty well universally available is an expensive method of buying butane. Of the two, propane gasifies at lower temperatures and operates at higher pressure. Otherwise they are interchangeable providing you use the correct regulator.

For my part I use LPG for cooking, and electric fan heater for keeping warm (most spend cold weather in marinas) - as i change from country to country I convert the regulator to the local LPG supplier keeping 1 Gaz bottle for emergency backup.

I had an Eberspacher warm air heater - troublesome and expensive to service so not again. The Eberspacher hot water heater is definitely vastly superior (providing it's installed well) but in a different price bracket.
I'd avoid LPG space heating, very expensive fuel when used in that way.
If moving out of civilised (electrified) areas I'd fit an all-fuel stove - providing you have a mounting point and can fit the flue effectively they're magic. The paraffin/diesel pot-heaters are a viable alternative, providing you can prevent them getting carboned up. Tilley/Aladdin pressure lanterns are OK for space-heating as well as light, but lack of regular use makes them cranky and the scent of paraffin you always get with them is undesirable. I took mine back to the UK for use during power-cuts.

I prefer, however, to sail in areas where winter heating is unneccessary.

 

[trouville]

In France parafin has been de taxed and 20 liters costs 16 euros at Le Clearc for example.

I used a tilly pressure lamp this summer in Sweden to light and one night to walm.I fell asleep (it was midnight) two hours later i woke up with white parafin vapor every where on spark and the boat would have exploaded, as it was it choked me and the cabin stank for weeks after.

I cook with propane now ive found that "Le Cube" have propane everywhere.Just take care and alway turn the tap off on the bottle.

Parafin disapears in spring!! other than 1 liter or some times 5 liters which costs about 1.20 liter

Alcohol seems to work very well!! i was told that by adding a little water it dosent smell! Funny stuff though it blows up if you light it when walm!!!!

Depends how much you want to spend how much room you want to allow the cooker ofcoure diesle cookers have a very loyal following but wouldent fit my boat so i cant coment!!

Gas is universal inexpensive, if the cooker goes wrong (very rare) just put it overboard and buy a new one from a very wide chosie

 

[ANDY_W]

Very many thanks for all your informative replies.
It appears that the simplest and cheapest options would appear to be gas or paraffin, especially when considering hardware costs.

On my present boat, a 22 footer, I cook on a twin burner gas stove, the one with the bottle attached underneath.For heating, I use a circular wick paraffin stove of which the tank holds just over 5 litres.That lasts about 17 hours and gives out enough heat to boil a kettle.The rate of consumption is comparable to that of a Taylors but without all the plumbing.
Provided the wick is kept trimmed, the smell is very slight
and one becomes unaware of it.As for maintenance, the stove is on its 2nd wick in five years and apart from the occasional wipe over, that's it.

After I posed the question, I searched the web and came up with www.hurricanelamps.co.uk who can supply various sizes of paraffin stoves including one with two burners for cooking.I think that it was under £100.

The problems with gas are safe stowage and, nowadays, all the pipework, together with the maintenance requirements.

For me at least, it seems that unpressurised paraffin is most likely to meet the criteria of low cost and low maintenance.It also seems that fuel is cheaper further south!

I needed to decide which fuel to use when planning how to arrange the galley, which, in turn, will have a knock on effect on the rest of the saloon interior-why is it that you can never alter anything on a boat without effecting everything else!

Once again, many thanks to all those who replied.

Andy

 

[DistantDrum]

We have been live aboards since 2004 (currently in Gibraltar) and have a Taylors parrafin cooker on board. It would not be our choice now. It is slow to light, flare ups can be dangerous and parraffin is not that readily available. Gas on the other hand, is available everywhere although you may need to change fittings between countries.