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