Boat Heat

Pentargon came with a useless heater which worked off the on-board gas but gave no discernible heat so it was removed, pipes and all. and dumped, allowing me to go ecofriendly and economical with the boat's heating and a blank canvas to work with. My surveyor had recommended solid fuel heating and I agreed ... but ...

"How DO I keep warm in winter?"

What would keep me warm in bed when a real winter called by as in 2018 or in Feb 2021 when the OAT dropped to -4ºC on the Lea at my Ponders End site and the lock and the adjacent water froze solid and stayed that way for days?

The lovely snowy photo of our house was taken on 5th Feb. 2012. I'd driven down from Rugby from the unheated boat, where the overnight cabin temperature registered -6C. I had 'slept' through it in my Atlantic gear. I also had got frostbite. The tips of my fingers still really hurt if exposed to cold.

I had a new heater ordered for collection in Portsmouth and was about to drive to get a bespoke charcoal heater fashioned by a master ... I now own two one never yet used.

Bill Baird was an artisan of the first class and this page is dedicated to Bill and his ilk and to his "Hampshire Heater" which ensured I was never again cold on Pentargon, surviving even the Beast of the East. As far as I know, Bill spent his working life as an engineer in and about Portsmouth which has been a centre of marine industry since Tudor times and for all I know a thousand years before that. He had 'retired' to develop a very old idea, which had been in vogue there for over a century, for heating the cabins of the boats of the real sailors. I was in need of a heat source to address present urgent needs and future environmental challenges.

I was aware that my off-grid lifestyle would entail long periods on board in winter, in Central London or elsewhere, in libraries not far removed from the canal system. I have lived a dozen years in my steel tank in all weathers and all seasons and use it as an office, a home, a workshop and a research and development laboratory. I am aware that night time temperatures in the centre of the island can drop seriously into deep freeze. My gauges recorded -10ºC in Banbury during February 2016 but, in the interests of full disclosure admit I left the boat in a frozen canal and had gone home to that nice snowy house you saw at the top of the article

... What is it about February? ...

The Hampshire uses lumpwood charcoal (2020-05-24 13.10.18) in a steel chamber encased in a steel jacket. Hot air trapped between the skins convects upwards.

Husqvarna used warm air to heat Irish houses in the 60s by putting a heater in a contained space. I could see that the concept was transferrable to my boat

Hampshires radiate measurable infra-red which is absorbed by the surroundings within the area of influence. In later years I boxed mine in with marble slabs copying the Husqvarna idea and incorporating an aluminium apron to contain the hot air!

Precious little heat escapes up the flue. The internal bore is not much more than an inch and has a distinct temperature gradient along its length. The whole flue is inside the cabin and makes for a lovely adjunct to wet-shaving in the brrrrr months.

By the time the warm air has climbed that 'chimney', it has neither heat nor impetus left and only barely enough energy to be exhausted through the roof.

Because the Hampshire emits no smoke at all when working, the picture above shows the outside part of the flue shortly after fire-up during a midsummer test. The picture below shows the device being shoe-horned into the utility area on a home-made rig.

Pentargon has two cabins, separated by bulkheads and a door. The forward cabin contains bunks, an under-bed water-tank, a utility area, wardrobes and some storage.

The after-cabin contains a galley and dining area. Could I warm the forward cabin and its contents with the device you see above? It looks huge due to the camera position, but is the size of a shop fire-extinguisher.

The tiniest conventional wood burners are rated at about 2kw and the largest at 6kw.

That shiny tiny Hampshire is rated at 750w. The cabin is maybe 16cu.m which is less than a bathroom in a terraced house in a Midlands canal town.

This space contains beds and bedding, a 200L water tank, a wardrobe and shelving stuffed with all the sort of 'stuff' you might have expected to be essential for tiny living ... on board ... off grid ... in all weathers ... and in all seasons and locations

That picture above was snapped the first day the unit went to the boat bolted to a jig to allow it to be lit in what was then the 'toilet' area. This was the first Hampshire ever fitted on a canal boat and would take some time to perfect. With the 2012 freeze outside, heat came before style. That first night, 14th February 2012, it warmed the cabin and I slept like a baby with the cut all iced over.

Charcoal is a solid fuel ... My surveyor was sceptical that this gismo could keep me warm but it proved itself the very first time it was used and only got better as it became integrated into the fabric of the boat. Charcoal is 'carbon neutral' when properly used and is totally consumed. Incomplete combustion would result in dangerous levels of Carbon Monoxide. A state of the art CO monitor/alarm was fitted before the heater went into the boat. In a picture above you saw the Hampshire on a jury rig, after it went on board and before its final position evolved. Over the years, I formed a close relationship with my Hampshire and came to terms with how to get the best from it in all conditions.

Charcoal as a fuel does not burn as such.

Charcoal smoulders.

Having checked that hyperlink you realise that 'Condensed Matter Physics' is Real Rocket Science, applied in practice by a simple device on a simple narrowboat, keeping a simple skipper from being cold in the colder months of an off grid tiny life.

The Hampshire extracts every last therm out of a solid fuel, achieves total combustion and leaves behind a pure potash residue.

This potash is purer than bought stuff and is recycled along with the produce of the Air Head composter to produce a powerfully fecund soil additive with a potent ability to enrichen my natural environment.

Over the years others have marvelled at how Pentargon works as a floating man-cave, but no-one on any other boat on the cut, other than two friends of mine, has been smart enough to think 'outside the box' or 'inside the tank' and move away from "tried and tested" technologies.

Boaters just copy previous mistakes and often develop those previous mistakes to ridiculous ends. I don't copy; I innovate.

The "start-up procedure" for a Hampshire heater causes a wisp of [white] smoke (photo location 2020-01-19 14.56.28) to be generated for about ten minutes on start-up and after that none at all (photo location 2020-01-21 13.04.08)... as in none at all.

Hampshires totally consume  charcoal, leaving potash as a valuable residue. Eco-friendly, efficient, economical, compact, pleasing to look at, totally safe, perfect for restricted space and I believe they will be able to get under the radar in built-up areas when the air pollution football kicks off.

Having experienced at first hand just how cold it was on board with no heat during that vicious cold snap in early 2012, the Hampshire was acquired at once and trialled at home while my doctor tried to minimize the frostbite damage with dressings and painkillers.

I read the published methodology for firing it up and keeping it going and took it to the boat, where it kept hypothermia at bay with outside temps as low as -6ºC on the run-up to Valentine's Day 2012. All it needed, according to the instructions was a slug of meths and a 'handful' of start-up charge.

According to the instructions, this was not to be added to until the initial charge was red-hot and smoke free. Then and only then the hopper could be topped up with about 1kg ... which would keep it going for hours. I soon found that adding a charge over red-hot coals caused dust to be deposited in the proximity of the heater and out into the cabins.

Cleaning up the mess in June was a house keeping nightmare. Every surface the dust could fall on was covered with a thin black coating of "soot" and potash ... During the cold season, this had been suspected but not the extent to which the dust and ash permeated every corner.

Charcoal poured onto hot coals produced an updraught while the top was off. The dust was propelled into the air, up to the roof and carried all over the boat.   Even the spider's webs were black.

It was nowhere as bad as my 'coal n wood burning' friends have to contend with: aromatic oils from half-burned wood, coal tar, useless ash and unwanted dust.

Pentargon stays clean in those respects as a function of ... The Hampshire Method.

It took time.

THE HAMPSHIRE METHOD

Next 'season', I tried containing the charge within paper bags in an effort to cut down the fine dust and ash. Waste of time. Next I tried to grade the charcoal by nugget size, removing as much dust as possible in the process OUTSIDE the boat and without any help from the published instructions.

Terminology was developed. Nuggets became raisins, grapes, lemons, oranges, melons and pomelos to reflect different sizes. Grading by size also allowed me to decide how hot a charge might burn at, or how long it might last.

By the end of 2013, I could eke a charge out to 10hrs. Going to bed at 8pm and waking for the shipping forecast at 5.20am allowed two birds to be dealt with using one missile and I could go back to sleep if I wanted, knowing the cabin would stay warm til mid-day. The sleeping cabin could be maintained at 14º to 18ºC on demand.

Summer Sailors have no idea how cold it can be in an unheated steel canal boat on the cut when it is proper cold in the middle of the night in the middle of England.

It never came to ice inside the windows, but that was down more to the extraordinary dryness of Pentargon rather than any other factor. Keeping the boat dry inside became a mission which has never since let up.

The Hampshire kept the front cabin as cosy and warm as an eider duck's rear end and performed admirably on lumpwood.

At first, the cost was considerable for someone planning to live off the fat of the land and off-grid.   I'd bought the first few bags £1.70 a kilo in a local garden centre but when I went back in March, the new stock was £2.

I located their wholesalers in Tottenham Hale but they had no 3kg bags in stock and would not have for many weeks ... 3kg.were crucial for storage and use on board.

Lumpwood charcoal has almost zero water content and must be kept dry, in a warm cabin really. Under the bed is the driest site on the boat. Safety-wise it's ok to store lumpwood under the bed.

There's plenty space. The bags are light, easy to move and they are clean. There is no fire hazard: a risk assessment determined that charcoal is slow to anger and if you get a fire on board which lights it, that fire has already destroyed the boat and you have already abandoned ship.

Remember, I am near Rugby reasonably in the centre of the land mass. Research got me and my wagon to a yard in Liverpool where I found 200kg in 5kg bags for 92p per kilo including collection, M6 tolls and even a meal break at Norton Canes. That was quite a saving, but the packaging was shitty, although I coped with it.

The boat now had an assured on-board supply to cover 150 days of exceptional cold. It is no credit to "Rip-off Britain" that the original charcoal (produced in Norfolk) was put on the retail market at £2 per kg. while the 90p alternative came from Paraguay AND was a better product.

Cleaner-burning, faster-lighting, longer-lasting and, I found out later, less likely to produce CO during early ignition.

I mean there is no comparison and I'm kinda sad about the ability of the 'home' suppliers to price themselves out of my market.   Paraguay is a poor country and GB is filthy rich. My [euro] pension ekes well and I get to support a needy South American economy.

There was a sequel. Sainsburys had a pallet of "lumpwood charcoal" in 5kg bags selling at £1/kg in 2013. Hello! It's over £2 in the garden centre? There had to be a catch. There was! It contained paraffin accelerator, smoked like fcuk, stank the boat and gave me headache! But at least now I know what my stovey friends have to put up with for the whole long winter.

During 2013, the boat came south, during which no further huge improvements were made re dirt and dust. Experimenting with nuggets of different sizes improved heat control, to a stage where I could gauge exactly how much fuel and in what order of nugget size would give high fast heat for heating up the boat when I'd been away for a few days, or long overnight low heat to last for long periods without attention, when I might be on board for days on end.

My onboard living pattern is quite unlike London live-aboards.   They either go out to work in the morning and return to a cold boat, or they skulk on board all day over their computers. My pattern has always tended to follow a sort of 'three days on three days off' sequence, due to domestic responsibilities in muggles-ville and on-going research in distant libraries.

edited to here 2022/12/1
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For 2014, cowling and ducting was added to channel heat under the bed by convection and act like an non-electric blanket! Excess heat warmed the large black plastic water tank under the bunk causing it to act like a storage heater. No more heat went to the roof and out the mushrooms. The 'cowling' consisted of 19mm marble slabs, designed on board and fashioned at an East Ham monumental masonry, to act as heat sinks and used an an aluminium apron made in Limehouse for ducting hot air. I even had a stainless steel tray underneath the heater.

Hard to describe ... but those who've seen it have been intrigued by the simplicity, efficiency and total silence.

My 200kg from Liverpool lasted quite well. The 2014 winter was not cold anyway; a winter of wind and piss ... it was also when I found a 'local' source of wholesale lumpwood, after befriending a Turkish restaurateur. It came in clean and substantial 12kg bags at £12 a bag but discounting for ten bags brought it down to 80p a kilo which has not changed in five years due to market forces, 'Just Eat' and an explosion of pizza ovens. AND. It is canal side.

2015 brought a 'eureka' moment, the published instructions were giving bad advice which was the REAL cause of the layers of ash and dust. I discovered how to load the hopper to the top before lighting it. Once a "grape" layer was laid down at the bottom of the hopper, lemons and oranges could then fill the hopper and a layer of smallest bits (known on board as cornflakes!) stacked in . . . BEFORE the fire was started at all. Actual fire up information is commercially sensitive and will be passed on to the next owner during the hand over period. The grading process is now so refined it can be done INSIDE the rear cabin with almost no carbon dust discernible.

Air vents on the unit are closed progressively once the 'grape' layer is well under way and the flue is warm to the touch at the top where it exits the roof. Remember what you read about the temperature gradient of the flue further up? The winters of 2016 and 2017 gave a much cleaner boat and experiments were on-going in 2019 AND STILL ARE IN 2022. This article is also on-going, readers ...

BOAT HEAT