How much will your heating cost you this winter?

[jellyellie]

People often ask how much it costs me to keep the boat warm in the cold UK winter, and I'd be interested to know myself, so I'm going to use this thread to keep a little log of whenever I top up my Eberspacher's diesel tank and how much it costs me, how often I have the heating on, etc.

Feel free to join in and do the same - it'd be interesting to see what people spend on heating, and how different types of heating cost more/less. Of course there will be huge variables given how often we run the heating, but it could be interesting nonetheless.

So, I'll kick off:

I live aboard full-time on my Colvic Victor 34 sailing ketch on the south coast of the UK. I heat my boat primarily with a diesel-fuelled Eberspacher D3L. (When it breaks down I'll use a fan heater/oil radiator - note when it breaks down, not if!)

I have just spent £87 on parts to service my Eberspacher with the help of a friend; this should (touch wood) see it through the winter.

I am still running on a tank of about 30L of diesel that was added up a month ago. I have used the heater for about 10 hours a week on average since then, but I am now using it for about 3 hours a day on average. Last night I bought 25L of red diesel at a cost of £20. I'll let you know when I top that up and how long it lasts for. (I don't have a tank gauge.)

 

[daveyw]

There's an article in this months PBO about servicing an Eber'

 

[chinita]

Oh, I feel for you.

Here in Portugal it is a little chilly tonight and we have the fan heater on. But power is included in the charges. When it gets really chilly we splash out and put the Taylors drip feed diesel heater on - much nicer atmosphere.

Back in UK on the wooden boat we have just a simple Vapalux lantern which throws out a lovely light along with about 1kw of heat supplemented by a few glasses of Laphroaig.

I had an Eber on a previous boat but much prefer the Taylors.

 

[sarabande]

5 years ago in a very cold and chilly inland marina, using electricity, it cost me about £5 a week for a 16 ton boat a bit longer than yours. One person, using shore showers.

I'd really be reluctant to go through a winter relying on an Ebersplutter as the primary heat source. Can you use lecky first, and the Eber as a back up in case of mains power issues?

 

[Zanziba]

My marina has free electricity so I ermmmm... never turn the heat blower off day or night, onboard or otherwise...

The heater has a button on the bottom which turns it off if it falls over, I make sure nothing can fall on it while I am away from the yacht.

It's toasty warm.

 

[V1701]

I wouldn't have another warm air heater, I don't think they're suitable for FT liveaboard use, mine really didn't like at all being run for extended periods on low heat using red diesel (Eber, new unit properly installed). I'd have a drip feed diesel on a boat your size, mine's a bit too small for one. Using a 1.5kw oil-filled radiator at the moment, easily enough heat for my Vega. I think it would be max of about a pound a day but that would be on all day, a few hours in the evening 25p but I'll try to get a more exact figure. Also tried a fan heater but didn't like it, noise and going cold when it cycles off...

 

[SparkySailor]

Hi There, I live on my Hanse 341 in Denmark, running a webasto 5KW hot air heater when onboard. Last winter on the coldest week ( -10 to 18 drg C ) it used 8 liters of disel a day, making it nice comfy 20 drg C inside, despite of me beeing too lazy og busy at work to do any serius insulation of the cabins.
Electric heaters isn't an option for me as i pay the marina a horrible fee of 2,6 Ddk a KwH
Btw. the webasto been running troublefree since i bought the boat in 2008 (touch wood)

 

[trevorr]

Last Winter, (01 Nov to 31 Mar) bearing in mind how cold it got, 37ft yacht, 3.5KW Webasto the only source of heating, used 500lts of Diesel @ 80ppl.

Trev

 

[concentrik]

A good deal less than it cost to heat my house........

 

[wazza]

Has anybody (I know some people have) thought about a solid fuel burner/heater, what a cosy feeling as well as wonderful heat..
Depending on where you livaboard wood that would be used can almost be free!
Here in Sweden I know someone who has one on their boat.. well toasty & cosy.. am really seriously considering one for us..

 

[Ninpo]

My marina has free electricity so I ermmmm... never turn the heat blower off day or night, onboard or otherwise...

The heater has a button on the bottom which turns it off if it falls over, I make sure nothing can fall on it while I am away from the yacht.

It's toasty warm.

Free Lekky! Can we run some extension cables from your marina to my flat please?

Last Winter, (01 Nov to 31 Mar) bearing in mind how cold it got, 37ft yacht, 3.5KW Webasto the only source of heating, used 500lts of Diesel @ 80ppl.

Trev

£400 for that amount of time is golden!

 

[duncan99210]

Last year, free electricity so used a fan heater more or less all the time when it got cold. The previous year in Barcelona, we used the Eber. We used a total of about 150 litres at the then price of just over a €1 per litre. This year in Messi, we're running the Eber for about 2 hours a day so i reckon it's going to cost us about €20 - 30 per month if we can hold it down to that. Will post again in Jan/Feb time when we've had time to see how cold it get round here....

 

[Simes]

Our Dickinson Adriatic runs 24/7 and will cost around £800.00 for the whole winter. But for that we also get all of our cooking and all of our hot water.
If it gets really cold (or we want to run around in our undies) we have a second Dickinson heater that we can use. Each stove / heater can put out 11kW. But normally run around the 4kW point.

Simes

 

[Blueboatman]

Last winter, Uk and snowy decks for a wee while( extra insulation and character innit) used exactly one whole tankfull of diesel@36ft, Taylors dripfeed, so 185litres.. Taylors ran 24/7 when onboard.

AND a thermostatically controlled ( set low) tiny oil-filled radiator up front, sometimes on as well, say £10month for 6 months.

Interestingly ( well perhaps), that compared not v well to heating a south facing townhouse by up to date condensing boiler.

BTW I ripped out an Eber installation when I bought this boat and in went the Taylors. Chalk and cheese in the 'feel' aboard. I quite dislike blown air and all the space robbing tubing and spares..but each to their own.

 

[V1701]

Depending on what sort of winter we have (south coast UK) it'll be up to a maximum of about £150 for the winter (Oct-Mar inc.), that's for the 1.5kw electric rad and the electric blanket (uses very little), based on 60 hours max p/w with the radiator on which will cost between 5p & 10p/min depending how cold outside and how high heat setting is. The marina charges 12p per unit for leccy...

 

[Talulah]

I switched from an ok sleeping bag to a Down quilt of higher Tog value.
Saved a fortune in Eber running costs.

 

[nrbx]

Eberspacher works out only just cheaper than electric here, so I try to use both at present. But typically winter hurts to about £400/mo average on a 52ft with 2x d5's.

But then i do like to still think it's summer inside!

(about 10p per kwh by eber with servicing costs, and 12.5p on elec!)

 

[Mr Cassandra]

Has anyone used, or know how good / bad a Kerosun wc105 is? Also known as Kerosene.

 

[Csail]

No idea on cost but the Webasto keeps the boat like a sauna. guess about 20 quid a week.
Best i saw was a barge with log burner....nice dry heat.

 

[JerryHawkins]

Red Vs. white for Ebers

We are part-time liveaboards (Plymouth) spending 4/5 days a week on the boat. Having become extremely skilled at dismantling/cleaning my Eber (Hydronic D5), I decided to see what happened if I ran it on white, road diesel. I have to say, that it does indeed seem to run cleaner, at least I would have had to strip/clean/rebuild probably twice now if I'd stayed with red. However, it is a balance between the quite considerable extra cost of white compared with the hassle of doing the fix every few months! Still, it hasn't been too cold yet (that's tempting fate!), but if it does get cold we have a big drip-feed Refleks heater as well as the fall-back electric fan heater to use!

Stay warm...