cheap and safe way to heat cabin area

anyone got any ideas on how to heat cabin area without having to run your engine all the time, i have seen the gas heaters but dont like the thought of my boat burning to smitheens if something covered it by accident, diesel heaters? dont really want to spend 2k on a underfloor heater and the setup of ducting

 

You need to get the energy from somewhere and gas is the easiest and simplest there are some nice gas bulkhead mount heaters with flu. The diesel heaters are complex but work well. Kerosine heaters work too.

You using this on Lake Taupo?

 

Passive solar heating can be cheap and easy depending.

What are your heating requirements/conditions.

-Tom

 

Go sail in tropical waters...

 

basically heating a area of 5 metres by 6 metres, just dont like the un flud gas heaters from there smell, there are some diesel style heater on the market second hand classed as marine style with flu but how are they to use, like do they put out enough heat?>

 

Yep same principle as a "pulse-jet' engine like a 'rasberry' sound in the background but give plenty of heat... Same system used in a "swing-fog" to fog up a 'mortein' insecticide mix... make a really big one and you have the old "doodle-bug" bombs used to attack UK during the early blitz of London in WWII....

 

My vote to Refleks..
http://www.refleks-olieovne.dk/default.asp?pagenumber=1561

 

A 3 or 4 Killowatt diesel/kerosene heater will be more than enough for that space. There are basicly four types of heater you can get.

The common continuous burning pot burner, the fuel simply flows from a regulator, it must be a non spilling marine type, into the hot pot where it evaporates to burn.

The Taylors marine heater type that uses a pump up pressure system, usually a lower output.

The Eberspacher/Webasto type that uses a fan and glow plug to ignite the fuel.

The much more efficient pressure jet burner that mixes fuel under high pressure with forced air same as domestic oil furnaces, usually more suitable for a wet system.

There will be others and variations but all need a flue of some sort for the exhaust gasses.

A good secondhand blown air Eberspacher with all the controls would probably be the most suitable, easy to use, safe and compact for occasional use but they do use battery power and can be noisey. I have an Eberspacher on one of my boats and it works well enough although I do intend at some point installing a small domestic furnace for radiator and hot water use and powered from the inverter as on my barge. I do a lot of work on barges and domestic oil boiler/furnaces and even range cooker/boilers are now the preferred choice for liveaboards for reliability, efficiency and cost.

A small coal/wood burning stove is also reliable and well worth considering but the safe installation can be a problem on small boats where potentially very high radiated heat needs confining in a small space plus of course the flue outlet needs heat insulation and special consideration to work properly but ideal if you have the space or can build a brick or fireproof enclosure with a double skinned air cooled inset stove.

Whatever you do it will not be very cheap and as you are aware you do need to consider the safety aspect, too many are badly installed.

 

Graviton Polarity Generator

The easist way would be to hook up a storage tank to a heat exchanger with fan and connect to your engine coolant antifreeze.

Then when you run the boat the tank retains the heat with its thermal mass. You could even incorporate this into your keel as a liquard ballast system

 

Looks like a Ridgid thread die holder! And how can anyone have legs that big? Nice idea but I doubt it could retain or disipate enough heat or water to keep going for long enough. It certainly would keep the chill off for a while though but those cool mornings....

 

The nice thing about that model it could accommodate different size pipe with just a twist.....


the pipe threader could do the same without changing the dies.

 

I once had a boat with warp drive, Delithiam crystals throw out a good bit of heat and a handful would last for light years.

 

BioMass Heat

Just had a great idea.

In order to run Bio-Fuel in your Diesil it must be kept at a temp of at least 180 degress to be fluid enough for proper combustion. Therfore Heated storage tanks are a must. Using proper neat Diesil for startups and run-down and valving over to Bio-Fuel provides the oerational parmeters required.

So... Take the wast heat from the engine and use it to heat the Bio-Fuel Tanks that are placed in the Cabin compartment and insulated extreamly well with foam.

Then use a valve system to route the Biofuel thru the heat exchanger/fan cabin heater and a grid of plastic heating coils under the deck & bunks and the potable hot water system. A Anti-Ice coil could even be incorporated for vessels left at the dock in ice prone areas.

Solar collection of course would lend itself nicely to the design.

See Liquard Cooling is a Very Good Idea!

 

A watercooled machine gun would make a good heater and repel boarders at the same time, why didn't I think of that?