/ News & Press / Video / 22. Central Heating on my Narrowboat, Webasto Boiler

22. Central Heating on my Narrowboat, Webasto Boiler

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Hello how you doing? So my knee's
completely fine now. I've had my stitches
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taken out, healing up quite nicely. It did
incapacitate me a little bit, probably
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for about four maybe five days, hence why
I didn't release a video last week.
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The last thing you want to see is me sat
in the boat watching television! I have
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got on with a couple of jobs though. I
have installed two more radiators, I've
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done the pipe work right to the very
bow of the boat round the end and back.
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It's in the bedroom and in the bathroom,
Back in February when I got to King's
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Lock along with the multi-fuel stove the
guys there also fitted a Webasto
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boiler. I wanted both as I didn't want to
run the engine to heat my water and it's
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nice to pop the heating on for a short
period of time, without lighting a full
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blown fire. It's a Thermo Top C boiler
and runs off 12 volts and the same red
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diesel as the boats engine. As I have
lots of space in the engine bay, we
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decided to fit it to the bulkhead
between the cabin and the stern. It's
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simply screwed onto some marine ply. Next
to it, is the header tank that allows the
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water to expand and you can also fill
and top up the system with it. Two holes
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have been drilled in the hull.
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A larger one for the exhaust and a
smaller one for the hot water tanks
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pressure release. Although there was a
tap already fitted to the diesel tank,
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this is not the correct location as per
recent regulations, so the engineer
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needed to tap and install a new one.
Before that though we needed to suck all
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the diesel out of the tank, to reduce a
fire risk. A new hole was tapped, all be it
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at a slight angle and a new master tap
was added. Copper piping was then clipped
00:02:01.740 --> 00:02:07.020
to the engine bays cable and pipe runs,
that were welded in place when Alice was
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made. The first item in line is a heating
oil filter from FAG. It also has a
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safety shutoff valve. Between the filter
and the boiler is a 12-volt pump. You may
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notice the in pipe and the out pipe are
opposite 90-degree angles and also
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connected to the pump via rubber hoses.
This is said to drastically reduce any
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vibration and noise, through the boat. On
the other side of the bulkhead, I have a
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75 litre hot water tank or as they're
called on boats, a Calorifier. Made by
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Surejust, it has two separate coils, the
bottom coil is fed by heavy-duty
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flexible hoses from the engine. When the
engine runs, heat is dissipated through
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the coil, heating up the water. The manual
indicates the distance from engine to
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coil, should be no more than three metres,
to get the best energy transfer. All the
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pipe work on Alice is plastic Speedfit.
I've used it before and as long as
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connections are secure and cut correctly,
there shouldn't really be any issues. The
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boiler pushes hot water through the feed
pipe and pulls it back in a circular
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motion, through the return pipe. Both of
these are 22 millimetres in diameter and
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all radiator and water tank feeds are
reduced to 15 millimetres. The top coil
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in the Calorifier uses the central
heating feed in return.
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I've added gate valves to both pipes, so I
can isolate the tank. I've also added
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gate valves to the 22 millimetre pipes.
Cold water is fed into the calorifier at
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the bottom connection but then also at
the top, via a non-return connection on a
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thermostatic mixing valve. The engine can
heat the water to dangerously high
00:04:00.090 --> 00:04:07.430
levels, so this valve mixes cold and hot
water to a maximum of 60 degrees celsius.
00:04:07.430 --> 00:04:14.280
When hot water heats up it expands, this
can be a significant reason why calorifiers
00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:20.579
fail, because the copper tank
expands and contracts daily. To alleviate
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this, I've installed an expansion bottle.
This has a bladder in it that fills with
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water and hydrogen gas is added between
the bladder and the bottle, to form a
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small amount of pressure.
I needed to release some of the gas in
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the bottle, until the gush of hot water
at the tap, after heating reduced. The
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final connection to the calorifier is a
pressure release valve. This is connected
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to the smaller hole drilled in the hull
and is a safety feature. When I initially
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turned on the system, the first radiator
in the line was really hot and the
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bathroom, which is the last radiator was
really cold. So I adjusted the regulator
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with an Allen key (Hex Key), until each radiator
gave the same, even amount of heat. So
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today I'm at Brooks Brothers on Lenton
Lane in Nottingham.
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I'm planning to do loads and loads of
wood inside obviously as a typical
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narrowboat, and they supply loads and loads of
MDF, they've got oak-faced ply, they've
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got beech-faced ply. Very, very well-known
wood yard and it's right next to the
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canal. So I can literally take 8x4'
sheets, which are rather heavy, right next
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to the bridge, down straight onto Alice.
So I basically need to get a list
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together of all the different sheets of
wood, the different types of trim and
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come moor up on the canal here and do a
create big shop, all in one! I can come
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back and forth once I've got an account.
They knew all about boaters, they
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knew the fact that, you've got a boat, you
will need quite a lot of wood and they
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were quite happy to accommodate. It's not
a trade only and once you've got an
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account you can just come in and buy
bits and pieces. So I bet some of you
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have been thinking why on earth is he
fitted the radiators and he hasn't even
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fitted the lining yet? Well I've done
that because of two reasons really.
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One it's September and every so often it
gets a little bit cold in the evenings
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and cold in the mornings, so it's quite
nice to pop a bit of central heating on.
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Not for very long, because it's not a big
boat to heat up to be fair and the
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second thing, more important thing really,
is I needed to measure the amount of
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water that the whole system holds. That's
because just like a car, or a motorhome,
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or an RV, boats with their central
heating, has water in it and therefore it
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needs antifreeze and antifreeze is added
to a system as a percentage of the
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overall water. So I've got 16 litres of
water in my system, so and I'm going to
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add a round about,
probably 40% will be antifreeze and that
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will allow the water and the surrounding
area to get down to around about sort of
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minus 22 degrees celsius, without any
problems. Now remember that's external
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temperature and not necessarily inside a
boat, or an engine bay and at minus 22
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it's more than likely that I'll be on
board with the heating on full time
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anyway, because that is rather cold. So I
think the antifreeze will be sorted. Now I
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don't know if you know but antifreeze is
really poisonous. Even the newer glycol
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types. It's a bright pink colour, so it's
attractive to children. It's got a bit of
00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:14.410
a sweet taste, so it is attractive to
wildlife, pets, cats, dogs that sort of
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thing.
Now, with me with Molly, I needed to drain
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some of the antifreeze out of the system
for me to add more radiators and I
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needed to be really careful with what I
did with it.
00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:32.860
There's no point me just chucking it
into a bucket and leaving it on board,
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because madam would find it and drink it
and it's extremely poisonous. It affects
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the heart, the lungs, the brain and the
kidneys and it's a horrible slow and
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painful death for any pets and wildlife.
So I've removed that from the boat, I put
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it in a bucket in the actual engine bay,
so I could seal it off and then when I
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was next near a like a waste recycling
centre, I put it in one of those massive
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containers that they usually put oil and
things in. Because I can't throw it in
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the canal, because that will kill the
fish, I can't throw it in a hedgerow, because
00:09:16.300 --> 00:09:21.760
that will kill the wildlife. So I've got
rid of what I did have, responsibly
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and also looked after Molly. So, once I
have got the panels in place and
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everything's painted, I will then re add
all four radiators, 16 litres of water
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although 40% of it will be antifreeze as
I said, and I'll be fine
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and tickety boo. So next plan of
action is to measure up the boat and see
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how much wood I need. So if you liked
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00:09:53.050 --> 00:09:59.139
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00:10:29.829 --> 00:10:33.250
couple of weeks, so that sort of feature
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00:10:33.250 --> 00:10:38.819
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