Beginners Guide To Narrowboat Heating

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Even if you only cruise in the summer months you will still need some form of heating on your boat, even if it is just to take the chill off the boat on a chilly morning, or just used to dry clothes after being out in the rain.

Most boats are heated by solid fuel, gas or diesel, and sometimes you will find more than one  type of heating on a boat.
The purpose of this article is to give information on the various types of heaters and central heating systems  available for narrowboats, the pros and cons, not to recommend or dismiss any particular type. The choice of heater is yours entirely, but perhaps this article will help you come to a decision

Perhaps the most common and oldest by far type of heating on a boat is solid fuel, solid fuel stoves are made in many shapes and sizes and are multi-fuel, meaning they can burn wood, coal, coke etc. Some have back boilers which can be connected to a radiator system and also supply hot water through a calorifier. The top of the stove can also be used for boiling kettles etc. The problem with solid fuel stoves is that the heat generated from them is very high, but hard to control. This fact plus the clearing of ashes and the length of time it takes for the stove to get going, has meant that many boat owners are turning to a cleaner, easier method of heating the boat. 

One alternative to a solid fuel stove is a drip feed diesel stove, this is probably the cheapest alternative and some solid fuel stoves can be converted to run off diesel.
By having any form of diesel heating on your boat you will qualify for the 60/40 tax reduction when purchasing diesel if you only have the one tank to supply the stove and the engine. On most newer boats that rely on diesel heating a second tank is usually installed just to supply the heater. When installing this type of heater, good planning is essential, the diesel is fed by gravity, pumps cannot be used and therefore the outlet from the diesel tank must be higher than the regulator on the stove, and the pipe must have a continuous fall to the stove.
As the name suggests in this type of stove, diesel drip feeds in to the chamber of the stove, and it is usual to use a firelighter to warm up the diesel when lighting the stove,  when the diesel warms up it gives of a vapour which eventualy ignites. There are no moving parts on the stove, just a simple chamber and a regulator to control the amount of fuel that enters the chamber, the more fuel that is allowed into the chamber then the bigger the flame which means more heat. 
The only form of maintenance this stove needs is a regular decoke of the chamber, this is usualy done with a wire brush and scraper, and an old vacuum cleaner is ideal for sucking the loose carbon out of the chamber. Some stoves have a built in rod which is used to keep the diesel supply hole free of carbon by moving the rod in and out of the stove chamber every few days.
One problem that has happened very occasionally with these stoves is a sticking regulator, when this happens the diesel floods into the chamber with no control and causes a very intense uncontrollable fire in the stove; it is therefore very important that a cut off valve is fitted in the pipeline fairly close to the stove, in a place that can be easily reached.
With this type of heater there are no electrical parts at all, so even if you have an electrical failure the heater still works. It is also possible to get this type of heater where the lid incorporates a hotplate that can be used for heating a kettle or a pan.

There are two other types of diesel heating uses in narrowboats, both of them use a similar combustion chamber where fuel and air is mixed and ignited, the hot gasses then go through a heat exchanger and in one system the gasses are converted to hot air to warm the boat. In the other system the hot gasses go through a different type of heat exchanger, which heats up a water system which in turn feeds radiators and is also usually connected to a calorifier heating water for domestic purposes.
This type of heater has many advantages, perhaps the main one being the relatively small size, and the fact that the diesel is pump fed, means it can be mounted almost anywhere. But one thing that needs to be taken into consideration is the noise that is generated by the unit, silencers can be fitted to the units which help to reduce the noise but are usually supplied as an extra. So care must be taken in siting the unit in a place where the noise would be at a minimum. It must also be remembered that a good 12v (or 24v) electrical supply is needed to start and run these heaters.
The three most popular makes of this type of heater are Eberspächer, Mikuni and Webasto; all three systems are very similar and work on the same principles, and the prices are similar.
Just after this type of heater became popular for use on narrowboats, many owners found the units failing after just a short time if they were in regular use, some being repaired only to fail again after a few weeks. And the repairs to these units are not cheap, bills of several hundred pounds are quite common for replacement parts. This was a bit of a mystery as this type of heating had been used in commercial vehicles and foreign RV's for quite some time without any of these problems. In the end these breakdowns were attributed to the red diesel that is used in narrowboats, or rather the varying quality. The red diesel supplied at boatyards may contain water, ash and even traces of engine oil, and this can cause many of the problems, also red diesel contains a much higher level of sulphur than white diesel, which increases the build up of carbon within the unit. 
So it seems the only answer is to use white diesel (or kerosine) supplied from it's own separate tank, if you wish to avoid these problems.
There is another make of this type of heater called a Hurricane, this is only supplied by Calcutt Boats in the UK, a more expensive unit but owners report that the use of red diesel in this unit does not cause any problems.

The alternative form of heating to solid fuel and diesel is of course lpg. Firstly it is recommended that propane gas be used as opposed to butane, propane has a much higher heat output and can be used at a lot lower temperatures. The jets and regulator are different for each type of gas, so make sure that whatever you are using, be it a cooker, fridge or heating system that the jets are the correct ones. 

A very old gas heating system used on narrowboats consisted of a gas boiler that heated water in a tank that was then circulated through a 28mm pipe stretching the length of the boat, the pipe returning and feeding back into the water tank to be heated again, a header tank was incorporated in the system that needed regular topping up. I had this type of heating on one narrowboat that I owned, and all I can say is it is very inefficient, it uses a lot of gas and gives off very little heat. I dropped two small radiators from the pipe in mine, which gave off quite a lot more heat, but a lot of water was lost to evaporation and the radiators needed bleeding and the header tank topped up daily. Perhaps a better idea with this system would be to use finrads, although I have no idea if this would be successful or not.
Probably the best known name in gas heaters for boats is Alde, they have been around since the sixties, and although at one time the gas boilers used to take up quite a bit of valuable space and were quite expensive to run; the modern units are combi boilers and take up a lot less space and are naturally more efficient. This type of gas heater as well as heating the boat through radiators, will supply hot water either instantaneously or via a calorifier. You may also find that newer models also have 240v heating elements, this is aimed mainly at the caravan and motorhome market, who are now starting to use the more compact Alde unit. The latest Alde unit, the 3010 is claimed to be very efficient, but it has a problem; copper cannot be used anywhere in the system, so that rules out copper pipes and fittings and the normal copper calorifier, stainless steel being the expensive alternative.

I have mentioned calorifiers a couple of times in this article, and although they do not play any part in heating the boat, they are usually piped into the heating system. Calorifiers will be explained in detail in a future article 'Beginners Guide to Narrowboat Water Systems', but basicly it is an insulated hot water cylinder similar to the one you have in the house, it has two coils running through it, one piped to the heating system, the other piped to the engine cooling system, some also have a 240v immersion element. Basicly hot water runs through the coils inside the cylinder and heats the water up that is then piped to the taps and shower in the boat.

External links to manufacturers and suppliers websites are here External Links

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