Here lies the secret of why it does not ever have to be cold in a narrowboat. The 2nd commonest question asked of boaters by towpath strollers? ... "Is it cold in Winter"
You've come here to learn how these hardy 'canal people' live and breed ... so straight away, let me tell you that, for the majority of hardies living on steel boats, warmth in Winter is of minor consequence
The housekeeping of staying warm is huge
Hardy boaters may spend the hours of one day in every six dealing with the combined chores of staying warm on board in Winter.
Apart from one friend in a Thames marina, who has the same heating as Pentargon in his ever so flash mancave, I have NEVER seen a narrowboat without a substantial coal/wood burner as a primary fitting.
As of 2022 there are joke boats fitted out to run purely on electricity which do not have fossil fuel on board but they are a joke to someone like me who lives off grid and all through the year.
Solid fuel stoves may well be death traps. Some of them are, but they provide heat. Most provide either too much or too little depending on the day that's in it.
Quite commonly, I see narrowboats cheerily belching out steamy smoke and solid particulates while the red-nosed inhabitants within hunch in front of a miserable fire wrapped in swaddling.
On others, I have heard raucous laughter where every aperture on the boat is flung wide open with the chimney churning out fire and brimstone while the acrid stink of burning paint permeates the area about.
Generally these boaters will be scavengers who have spent not quite enough time in the scouts as youths but are consummate dumpster-divers bringing home window sashes and painted carpentry along with chipboard and wet timber.
The prosperous, in their flash wide beams, have built-in oil fired heating and radiators, because they believe that is a way to stay warm on a boat. In general narrowboat owners have an uneasy relationship with [flash wide beams]
There are [flash narrow beams] too with all sorts of fancy heating systems but the basic premise remains valid: narrowboats burn copious amounts of fossil fuel in 'stoves'.
They contribute to pollution, particularly in 'canyons' in those parts of cities where a canal is cut deep into the topography.
Here is an interesting LINK to a newspaper article about wood-burning stoves in city environs for those conspiracy theorists.
Heating facilities on most narrowboats have a downside for the boaters themselves
It contributes perhaps three quarters of the 'housekeeping' time-allocation between October and March (The Dark Half of The Year) and maybe half the 'housekeeping' time-budget between April and September (The Light Half of The Year) trying to clean off the deprivations of the previous winter.
Storing fuel and maintaining a fire is a dirty, expensive, tiring activity and a reason why full-time boaters are visually and nasally identifiable by soot, ashes, unkempt hair, dried-in mud, dirty nails and that's just those who make an effort to look smart!
Not for Pentargon. Not for me ... CLICK
There had to be a better way and when I was filling my Wish List for a floating man-cave this was addressed. My surveyor had advised that dry heat was the only choice for a steel narrowboat and dry heat would be provided by solid fuel.
I got my stoking experience on bigger ships and this needed to be teased out. I got lucky! A nice man named Bill Baird, of Portsmouth, had launched a new version of a very old principle, a heater which used lumpwood charcoal. Baird developed a massively updated stove based on earlier models which had been fitted in upper-end leisure boats for almost a hundred years.
Although it seemed that this was a mass-produced product, it transpired that Mr. Baird was actually turning them out in small batches in his garage! A true artisan then.
Baird chose his components from a thriving artisan commune based in the Portsmouth area and using processes systems which would have been instantly recognised and readily understood over a century ago by The Old Wheelwright of Farnham.
Bill hand-made a bespoke unit for me which has now served me for ten winters.
You'll hear more about it elsewhere
You've come here to learn how these hardy 'canal people' live and breed ... so straight away, let me tell you that, for the majority of hardies living on steel boats, warmth in Winter is of minor consequence
The housekeeping of staying warm is huge
Hardy boaters may spend the hours of one day in every six dealing with the combined chores of staying warm on board in Winter.
Apart from one friend in a Thames marina, who has the same heating as Pentargon in his ever so flash mancave, I have NEVER seen a narrowboat without a substantial coal/wood burner as a primary fitting.
As of 2022 there are joke boats fitted out to run purely on electricity which do not have fossil fuel on board but they are a joke to someone like me who lives off grid and all through the year.
Solid fuel stoves may well be death traps. Some of them are, but they provide heat. Most provide either too much or too little depending on the day that's in it.
Quite commonly, I see narrowboats cheerily belching out steamy smoke and solid particulates while the red-nosed inhabitants within hunch in front of a miserable fire wrapped in swaddling.
On others, I have heard raucous laughter where every aperture on the boat is flung wide open with the chimney churning out fire and brimstone while the acrid stink of burning paint permeates the area about.
Generally these boaters will be scavengers who have spent not quite enough time in the scouts as youths but are consummate dumpster-divers bringing home window sashes and painted carpentry along with chipboard and wet timber.
The prosperous, in their flash wide beams, have built-in oil fired heating and radiators, because they believe that is a way to stay warm on a boat. In general narrowboat owners have an uneasy relationship with [flash wide beams]
There are [flash narrow beams] too with all sorts of fancy heating systems but the basic premise remains valid: narrowboats burn copious amounts of fossil fuel in 'stoves'.
They contribute to pollution, particularly in 'canyons' in those parts of cities where a canal is cut deep into the topography.
Here is an interesting LINK to a newspaper article about wood-burning stoves in city environs for those conspiracy theorists.
Heating facilities on most narrowboats have a downside for the boaters themselves
It contributes perhaps three quarters of the 'housekeeping' time-allocation between October and March (The Dark Half of The Year) and maybe half the 'housekeeping' time-budget between April and September (The Light Half of The Year) trying to clean off the deprivations of the previous winter.
Storing fuel and maintaining a fire is a dirty, expensive, tiring activity and a reason why full-time boaters are visually and nasally identifiable by soot, ashes, unkempt hair, dried-in mud, dirty nails and that's just those who make an effort to look smart!
Not for Pentargon. Not for me ... CLICK
There had to be a better way and when I was filling my Wish List for a floating man-cave this was addressed. My surveyor had advised that dry heat was the only choice for a steel narrowboat and dry heat would be provided by solid fuel.
I got my stoking experience on bigger ships and this needed to be teased out. I got lucky! A nice man named Bill Baird, of Portsmouth, had launched a new version of a very old principle, a heater which used lumpwood charcoal. Baird developed a massively updated stove based on earlier models which had been fitted in upper-end leisure boats for almost a hundred years.
Although it seemed that this was a mass-produced product, it transpired that Mr. Baird was actually turning them out in small batches in his garage! A true artisan then.
Baird chose his components from a thriving artisan commune based in the Portsmouth area and using processes systems which would have been instantly recognised and readily understood over a century ago by The Old Wheelwright of Farnham.
Bill hand-made a bespoke unit for me which has now served me for ten winters.
You'll hear more about it elsewhere
