Mitchell's Principle Church Heating in St. Mary's, Priors Hardwick*
Most responses to my questions about diesel heating on a narrowboat - and thank you to everyone who has offered an opinion - have been in favour of it. But there have been some negative points raised too.
Pros
- Cheaper to run than gas (at least three people have said this)
- Can be controlled from a timer
- Can be noisy (but some types quieter)
- Consumes electricity
- Can be temperamental
- Needs a separate diesel tank (no-one mentioned this, but it must be true!)
Probably.
*An internet search failed to throw any light on this heating system. It's unlikely to be suitable for a boat.
5 comments:
There's no practical reason why it would require a separate tank, and lots of people don't have one. But given that heating fuel is subject to less tax/duty than propulsion, many people are now specifying separate tanks to more easily prove to HRMC that they are using that proportion for heating. But there are also many tales of heating systems - particularly Eberspacher - not liking red diesel anyway and coking up. Perhaps you should brave Canalworld where there has been much discussion of this topic over the years!
Very few boats with diesel heating have a separate tank, and it's certainly not a necessity.
On the electricity issue, it's true that diesel boilers need a decent charge to get them going. OwnerShips fitted a basic volt metre to boats with Webastos, and owners were told that if it read less than 10v, the heating wouldn't start. However, if your batters are giving less than 10v, there's probably something wrong.
Also, even a gas boiler will have an electric pump -- how else will the hot water be fed to the radiators?
We have a separate tank for the Webasto and the diesel stove, but it's not neccessary. When we were designing Windsong we didn't know what was going to happen about the duty, with domestic and propulsion, so we made the decision to have a separate tank. Had we known that self-declaration would become the norm we wouldn't have bothered, just had a larger main tank. The Webasto uses so little fuel that we juat lump it all together when we pay anyway. The Bubble diesel stove is also very economical, we wouldn't change it for a multi-fuel stove for anything, the thought of having to worry about coal or wood fills us with horror!!
Pip & Roger
Sarah, thanks for this. I'd assumed, wrongly, that a separate tank was always used. Ooh - CWF? I don't know ... I might get sucked in ...
Adam, I thank you, too. Yes, gas CH systems use an electric pump, but, as far as I am aware, and judging from my experience on Shadow, the pump uses only a little current and will work on a low battery voltage.
Pip & Roger, like Nev I just love playing with fire, so the multifuel stove is an essential!
We don't have a separate tank for the heating - I assume that it's not essential - it wasn't mentioned during the BSS :-)
Sue, nb Indigo Dream
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