HAMPSHIRE HEATING:
Charcoal Heats the Sailor's Bunk
HEATING BY CHARCOAL:
Portsmouth Engineer develops
Bronze Age Heating Technology
BOAT HEAT:
Pentargon's Solid Fuel Heating
puts the charcoal under the bed
Charcoal Heats the Sailor's Bunk
HEATING BY CHARCOAL:
Portsmouth Engineer develops
Bronze Age Heating Technology
BOAT HEAT:
Pentargon's Solid Fuel Heating
puts the charcoal under the bed
Pitched to Canal Boat via Martin Lulgate.
dispatched 22.20 22/12/21 along with the contents of CANAL BOAT STORE FOLDER Published Mar 2022
Published in the April issue
The commonest solid fuels on the cut are 'coal' and wood. Coal is expensive, dirty, cumbersome, prone to theft and a damn nuisance in every way. Its derivatives (real and imagined) generate unusable non-recyclable ash and ensure a permanently filthy boat ... quite apart from the bothers of storing and stealing. Raw timber has a similar charge-sheet except, I suppose, you could harvest your own if you knew what you were about. The harvesting, seasoning and storing of timber is an art-form and totally impractical on a narrow-boat.
Nevertheless timber is almost universal in use, as a starter if not as a primary fuel.
I first came across the 'Hampshire' ... []2[] ... on a canal forum, some time before buying my boat. The moderator wondered what anyone thought of the idea. There was no reaction from some 400 members but I was immediately interested and got in touch with the principal. It took five minutes to be convinced that this product would be an ideal space heater for a cabin and within days of taking the boat I was on the blower to Mr. Baird who, by a stroke of luck, had a unit in stock and ready to go.
My Hampshire uses lumpwood charcoal in a steel firing-chamber encased in a steel jacket. Hot air trapped between the skins flows upward by convection ... []4[] ... The Hampshire also radiates measurable infra-red which is absorbed by the surroundings within its area of influence. Precious little heat escapes up the flue, the internal bore of which is only an inch ... []5[] ... and which has a distinct temperature gradient along the exposed 72" of 'chimney' almost all of which is inside the boat and in yer face.
By the time the warm air has climbed that 'chimney', it has neither heat nor impetus left and has only barely enough energy to exhaust through the roof []7[] Because the Hampshire emits no smoke at all when working, I show the flue operation shortly after fire-up during a pre-winter test. []8[]
Pentargon has two cabins, separated by bulkheads and a door. The forward cabin contains bunks, a water-tank, a utility area and some storage.
Could I warm the forward cabin and its contents with the Hampshire which is no larger than a big shop fire-extinguisher ... []9[] ... The cabin is 16cu.m in volume, less than a bathroom in a "two-up-two-down" terraced in a Midlands canal town!
The tiniest conventional wood burners are rated about 2.5kw and the largest exceed 6.6kw. That tiny Hampshire ...[]10[] ... comes in at a whopping 750watts.
The unit was fitted temporarily. Getting heat was an urgent priority so it was fired up in the then 'toilet' area ... []12[] ... It was the first Hampshire ever on a canal boat in England and would take some time to tune because I had nothing to go by and no one to copy. With the freezing cold outside, heat came before style. That night I slept like a baby with the cut iced over ... []13[] ... and the OAT at -6ºC.
Charcoal is a solid fuel ... My surveyor was sceptical that this little gismo could keep me warm but it proved itself the first time it was used and only got better as it became integrated with the fabric of the boat.
Charcoal is 'carbon neutral' when properly used being totally consumed leaving pure potash (K2CO3) as residue ... []16[] ...
Charcoal as a fuel smoulders rather than burns and herein lies its wicked secret.
Smouldering is proper rocket science with practical application in a simple device in a simple narrowboat to keep a simple skipper from getting his tootsies cold in bed. The Hampshire extracts every last therm out of the lumpwood, achieving total combustion indicated by a white deposit on the insides of the unit after use ... []14[] ...
Other than two friends of mine, no-one on any other boat on the cut has thought to move away from tried, tested and obsolete technologies. Boaters and builders copy previous mistakes and develop previous mistakes to exquisite ends.
"Start-up" for my Hampshire causes a wisp of [white] smoke to be generated for five minutes on start-up and after that none at all ... as in none at all. Hampshires totally consume the lumpwood converting it to heat and potash. Eco-friendly, efficient, economical, compact, pleasing to look at, totally safe, perfect for restricted space.
I believe the Hampshire will get under the radar when the air-pollution football kicks off in built-up areas. I dallied at Islington eco-moorings this years and my neighbours could not believe I had a warm cabin until I brought one of them into it and showed him the thermometer reading 22ºC inside and 9ºC out ... []21[] ... ENDS
BREAK ... The following paragraphs are padding ... or a new article
Having experienced just how cold it was on board with no heat during that vicious cold snap in early 2012, the Hampshire was trialed at home while my doctor tried to minimize the frostbite damage to my fingers with dressings and painkillers.
I had read the published advice for firing it up and keeping it going before taking it to the boat, where it kept hypothermia at bay with temperatures as low as -6ºC on the run-up to Valentine's Day 2012.
All it needed, according to the instructions, was a slug of methylated and a 'handful' of grape-sized nuggets as a 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 should be topped up with about 1kg which would run it hours
I 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 it permeated every nook. Charcoal poured over the hot coals produced an up-draught while the top was off and the dust was propelled into the air, up to the roof and all over the boat. Even the spider's webs were black. Admittedly, it was nowhere like as bad as what my 'coal n wood burning' friends have to contend with: aromatic oils from half-burned wood, coal tar, useless ash and unwanted dust. I have since sorted the housekeeping out and have a constantly clean boat these days . ENDS
BREAK
Pentargon stays clean nowadays. It took time to develop, but its lessons could possibly be applied to existing stoves.
I tried containing the charge within paper bags. Waste of time. Next I graded the charcoal by nugget size and outside the boat [] and this removed much of the dust and without any published advice.
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 me to top up the hopper on top of a few glowing embers and go back to sleep, knowing the cabin would then stay warm til mid-day.
The cabin could be maintained at 14º to 18ºC all day, which turned out to be a good idea as the fabric of the cabin soaked in the spare heat and retained it.
Summer Sailors have no idea how cold it can be in an unheated steel canal boat 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's rear end and performed admirably on lumpwood.
KEEPING COSTS IN CHECK
At first, the cost of fuel was considerable.
For someone planning to live off-grid, 3kg for 24hrs would be £35 for seven days.
I'd bought the first bags at £1.70 a kilo in a local garden centre but when I went back in March, the new stock was £2.
The wholesalers were located but had no 3kg bags in stock nor would have for many weeks ... 3kg. were admirable 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 [] being the driest place on the boat. Safety-wise it's ok to store lumpwood under yer bed. There's plenty space. 3kg bags are light, easy to move and 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 the ship.
Research took me and my wagon [] to a yard in Liverpool where I got 200kg in 5kg bags at 92p per kilo. That was quite a saving. The packaging was shoddy, but I could cope with that. [PHOTO]
The boat now had an assured on-board supply to cover 150 days of exceptional non-stop cold. It is no credit to "Rip-off Britain" that the original charcoal (produced in Norfolk) was put out at £2 per kg while the 90p alternative came from Paraguay AND was a better product.
It was cleaner-burning, easier to light, longer-lasting and, I found out later, less likely to produce CO while in the early stages of ignition.
I'm saddened by the ability of home suppliers to price themselves out of my market. But! Paraguay is a poor country. GB is filthy rich so I get to eke out my [euro] pension more easily and an able to support a needy South American economy.
There was a sequel. Sainsburys had a pallet of "lumpwood charcoal" in 5kg bags for £1/kg in 2013. Hello? It's over £2 in the garden centre? There had to be a catch.
It contained paraffin accelerator, smoked like fcuk, stank the boat and gave me headaches! Now I know what my stovey friends have to put up with.
During 2013, the boat came south, during which no further huge improvements were made regarding the dirt and the dust.
Experimenting with nuggets of different sizes improved the heat control to a stage where I could gauge exactly how much fuel and what order of nugget size would give fast heating of the cabin when I'd return after a few day's shore leave, or the low overnight heating which would last for long periods without attention, when I might be aboard for days on end.
My onboard living pattern is quite unlike that of London liveaboards, who either go out to work in the morning and return to a cold boat, or skulk on board all day over their hot computers.
My pattern has always tended to follow a four days on four days off sequence, due to domestic responsibilities on land and my on-going research in far-flung libraries.
For 2014, cowling and ducting was added, [PHOTO] to channel heat under the bed and act like an non-electric blanket!
Excess heat warmed the water tank 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, [PHOTO] fashioned at an East Ham monumental masonry, to act as heat sinks with an aluminium apron ducting warmed air. I even have a stainless steel tray under the heater to collect stray dust.
My 200kg from Liverpool lasted quite well. The 2014 winter was not cold anyway. It was a winter of wind and piss I managed to find a 'local' source of lumpwood, on befriending a Turkish restaurateur.
The new supply came in clean, substantial 12kg bags at £12 a throw but by buying ten at a time, it was discounted to 89p a kilo. This price has not changed much in years due to market forces and an explosion of pizza ovens.
AND.
The supply side is canal side; I literally drive up in my boat, park outside the warehouse door. They load it onto the deck. I chug off
2015 also 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. Once a "grape" layer was laid down at the bottom, lemons and oranges could then fill the hopper and a layer of the smallest bits (known on board as cornflakes!) could also be stacked in.
BEFORE the fire was started at all.
Fire-up information is commercially sensitive. There is more to it than admitted but the grading process is so refined now that it COULD be done INSIDE the rear cabin without generating any discernable dust.
Air vents are closed sharply once the 'grape' layer is well under way and the flue is warm to the touch all the way up. The winters of 2016 and 2017 gave a much cleaner boat and experiments were on-going into 2019. Updating to Dec 2021 , due to a seven day cold snap spent on board at Yiewsley, I can now tell you that the cabin can be maintained at NHS recommended temperatures H24D7. 2022 brought an exceptionally mild Easter which I spent in Camden before moving on to KingsX
The boat is clean and the spiders webs are clean too. I do not have the opinions of the spiders to hand
dispatched 22.20 22/12/21 along with the contents of CANAL BOAT STORE FOLDER Published Mar 2022
Published in the April issue
The commonest solid fuels on the cut are 'coal' and wood. Coal is expensive, dirty, cumbersome, prone to theft and a damn nuisance in every way. Its derivatives (real and imagined) generate unusable non-recyclable ash and ensure a permanently filthy boat ... quite apart from the bothers of storing and stealing. Raw timber has a similar charge-sheet except, I suppose, you could harvest your own if you knew what you were about. The harvesting, seasoning and storing of timber is an art-form and totally impractical on a narrow-boat.
Nevertheless timber is almost universal in use, as a starter if not as a primary fuel.
I first came across the 'Hampshire' ... []2[] ... on a canal forum, some time before buying my boat. The moderator wondered what anyone thought of the idea. There was no reaction from some 400 members but I was immediately interested and got in touch with the principal. It took five minutes to be convinced that this product would be an ideal space heater for a cabin and within days of taking the boat I was on the blower to Mr. Baird who, by a stroke of luck, had a unit in stock and ready to go.
My Hampshire uses lumpwood charcoal in a steel firing-chamber encased in a steel jacket. Hot air trapped between the skins flows upward by convection ... []4[] ... The Hampshire also radiates measurable infra-red which is absorbed by the surroundings within its area of influence. Precious little heat escapes up the flue, the internal bore of which is only an inch ... []5[] ... and which has a distinct temperature gradient along the exposed 72" of 'chimney' almost all of which is inside the boat and in yer face.
By the time the warm air has climbed that 'chimney', it has neither heat nor impetus left and has only barely enough energy to exhaust through the roof []7[] Because the Hampshire emits no smoke at all when working, I show the flue operation shortly after fire-up during a pre-winter test. []8[]
Pentargon has two cabins, separated by bulkheads and a door. The forward cabin contains bunks, a water-tank, a utility area and some storage.
Could I warm the forward cabin and its contents with the Hampshire which is no larger than a big shop fire-extinguisher ... []9[] ... The cabin is 16cu.m in volume, less than a bathroom in a "two-up-two-down" terraced in a Midlands canal town!
The tiniest conventional wood burners are rated about 2.5kw and the largest exceed 6.6kw. That tiny Hampshire ...[]10[] ... comes in at a whopping 750watts.
The unit was fitted temporarily. Getting heat was an urgent priority so it was fired up in the then 'toilet' area ... []12[] ... It was the first Hampshire ever on a canal boat in England and would take some time to tune because I had nothing to go by and no one to copy. With the freezing cold outside, heat came before style. That night I slept like a baby with the cut iced over ... []13[] ... and the OAT at -6ºC.
Charcoal is a solid fuel ... My surveyor was sceptical that this little gismo could keep me warm but it proved itself the first time it was used and only got better as it became integrated with the fabric of the boat.
Charcoal is 'carbon neutral' when properly used being totally consumed leaving pure potash (K2CO3) as residue ... []16[] ...
Charcoal as a fuel smoulders rather than burns and herein lies its wicked secret.
Smouldering is proper rocket science with practical application in a simple device in a simple narrowboat to keep a simple skipper from getting his tootsies cold in bed. The Hampshire extracts every last therm out of the lumpwood, achieving total combustion indicated by a white deposit on the insides of the unit after use ... []14[] ...
Other than two friends of mine, no-one on any other boat on the cut has thought to move away from tried, tested and obsolete technologies. Boaters and builders copy previous mistakes and develop previous mistakes to exquisite ends.
"Start-up" for my Hampshire causes a wisp of [white] smoke to be generated for five minutes on start-up and after that none at all ... as in none at all. Hampshires totally consume the lumpwood converting it to heat and potash. Eco-friendly, efficient, economical, compact, pleasing to look at, totally safe, perfect for restricted space.
I believe the Hampshire will get under the radar when the air-pollution football kicks off in built-up areas. I dallied at Islington eco-moorings this years and my neighbours could not believe I had a warm cabin until I brought one of them into it and showed him the thermometer reading 22ºC inside and 9ºC out ... []21[] ... ENDS
BREAK ... The following paragraphs are padding ... or a new article
Having experienced just how cold it was on board with no heat during that vicious cold snap in early 2012, the Hampshire was trialed at home while my doctor tried to minimize the frostbite damage to my fingers with dressings and painkillers.
I had read the published advice for firing it up and keeping it going before taking it to the boat, where it kept hypothermia at bay with temperatures as low as -6ºC on the run-up to Valentine's Day 2012.
All it needed, according to the instructions, was a slug of methylated and a 'handful' of grape-sized nuggets as a 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 should be topped up with about 1kg which would run it hours
I 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 it permeated every nook. Charcoal poured over the hot coals produced an up-draught while the top was off and the dust was propelled into the air, up to the roof and all over the boat. Even the spider's webs were black. Admittedly, it was nowhere like as bad as what my 'coal n wood burning' friends have to contend with: aromatic oils from half-burned wood, coal tar, useless ash and unwanted dust. I have since sorted the housekeeping out and have a constantly clean boat these days . ENDS
BREAK
Pentargon stays clean nowadays. It took time to develop, but its lessons could possibly be applied to existing stoves.
I tried containing the charge within paper bags. Waste of time. Next I graded the charcoal by nugget size and outside the boat [] and this removed much of the dust and without any published advice.
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 me to top up the hopper on top of a few glowing embers and go back to sleep, knowing the cabin would then stay warm til mid-day.
The cabin could be maintained at 14º to 18ºC all day, which turned out to be a good idea as the fabric of the cabin soaked in the spare heat and retained it.
Summer Sailors have no idea how cold it can be in an unheated steel canal boat 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's rear end and performed admirably on lumpwood.
KEEPING COSTS IN CHECK
At first, the cost of fuel was considerable.
For someone planning to live off-grid, 3kg for 24hrs would be £35 for seven days.
I'd bought the first bags at £1.70 a kilo in a local garden centre but when I went back in March, the new stock was £2.
The wholesalers were located but had no 3kg bags in stock nor would have for many weeks ... 3kg. were admirable 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 [] being the driest place on the boat. Safety-wise it's ok to store lumpwood under yer bed. There's plenty space. 3kg bags are light, easy to move and 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 the ship.
Research took me and my wagon [] to a yard in Liverpool where I got 200kg in 5kg bags at 92p per kilo. That was quite a saving. The packaging was shoddy, but I could cope with that. [PHOTO]
The boat now had an assured on-board supply to cover 150 days of exceptional non-stop cold. It is no credit to "Rip-off Britain" that the original charcoal (produced in Norfolk) was put out at £2 per kg while the 90p alternative came from Paraguay AND was a better product.
It was cleaner-burning, easier to light, longer-lasting and, I found out later, less likely to produce CO while in the early stages of ignition.
I'm saddened by the ability of home suppliers to price themselves out of my market. But! Paraguay is a poor country. GB is filthy rich so I get to eke out my [euro] pension more easily and an able to support a needy South American economy.
There was a sequel. Sainsburys had a pallet of "lumpwood charcoal" in 5kg bags for £1/kg in 2013. Hello? It's over £2 in the garden centre? There had to be a catch.
It contained paraffin accelerator, smoked like fcuk, stank the boat and gave me headaches! Now I know what my stovey friends have to put up with.
During 2013, the boat came south, during which no further huge improvements were made regarding the dirt and the dust.
Experimenting with nuggets of different sizes improved the heat control to a stage where I could gauge exactly how much fuel and what order of nugget size would give fast heating of the cabin when I'd return after a few day's shore leave, or the low overnight heating which would last for long periods without attention, when I might be aboard for days on end.
My onboard living pattern is quite unlike that of London liveaboards, who either go out to work in the morning and return to a cold boat, or skulk on board all day over their hot computers.
My pattern has always tended to follow a four days on four days off sequence, due to domestic responsibilities on land and my on-going research in far-flung libraries.
For 2014, cowling and ducting was added, [PHOTO] to channel heat under the bed and act like an non-electric blanket!
Excess heat warmed the water tank 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, [PHOTO] fashioned at an East Ham monumental masonry, to act as heat sinks with an aluminium apron ducting warmed air. I even have a stainless steel tray under the heater to collect stray dust.
My 200kg from Liverpool lasted quite well. The 2014 winter was not cold anyway. It was a winter of wind and piss I managed to find a 'local' source of lumpwood, on befriending a Turkish restaurateur.
The new supply came in clean, substantial 12kg bags at £12 a throw but by buying ten at a time, it was discounted to 89p a kilo. This price has not changed much in years due to market forces and an explosion of pizza ovens.
AND.
The supply side is canal side; I literally drive up in my boat, park outside the warehouse door. They load it onto the deck. I chug off
2015 also 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. Once a "grape" layer was laid down at the bottom, lemons and oranges could then fill the hopper and a layer of the smallest bits (known on board as cornflakes!) could also be stacked in.
BEFORE the fire was started at all.
Fire-up information is commercially sensitive. There is more to it than admitted but the grading process is so refined now that it COULD be done INSIDE the rear cabin without generating any discernable dust.
Air vents are closed sharply once the 'grape' layer is well under way and the flue is warm to the touch all the way up. The winters of 2016 and 2017 gave a much cleaner boat and experiments were on-going into 2019. Updating to Dec 2021 , due to a seven day cold snap spent on board at Yiewsley, I can now tell you that the cabin can be maintained at NHS recommended temperatures H24D7. 2022 brought an exceptionally mild Easter which I spent in Camden before moving on to KingsX
The boat is clean and the spiders webs are clean too. I do not have the opinions of the spiders to hand
