i'm not sure if the guys that kings lock chandlery took pity on me, or saw the desperate look on my face. however they sprung into action, built and installed my first source of heat. i chose a morso squirrel 14-10. it's a multi fuel stove which gives me the option to burn wood, briquettes and coal. it's one of the biggest sellers on the inland waterways
at the moment, and has had the same design for some 40 years. as my layout inside was reverse-flow, with the bedroom at the bow and galley kitchen at the stern, i worked out the best spot for it. in front of my temporary tent bedroom no less. latest safety standards means i require a double skinned flue and unlike a house i needed a hearth. the guy's
custom made me one. {stephen} we can't actually use the same rules that you'd use with household installations. so because the hearth is shorter than arguably it could be ,you put an up stand around it, so if anything falls out of the stove, it effectively just gets contained within hearth. so there's no risk of burning carpets and so on, so if this is
installed to the british standards as opposed to heatas which is the house regulations. {jono} with the stove in place and marked out on the floor, i opted for a straight flue. a pilot hole was drilled through the roof, and then out came the plasma cutter. {stephen} you alright tig? {tig} eye. the flue was lined with insulation and
with a dirty great hole in the roof, there's no turning back. the stove was fitted onto the hearth and everything lined up. the flue fitting through the roof was sealed and i was on my way to having heat. not bad for four hours work, well done guys! the stove has a grate that can be riddled, allowing the fire to remain lit
for weeks if not months at a time. the ash falls into a tray that can be removed. to stop coal sitting on the small side ledges of the stove, i purchase what's called coal savers. they're basically two pieces of angled iron, that sit either side of the grate, letting gravity move all the coal towards the centre. with a narrowboat
being long and thin, i also purchased an ecofan to circulate the heat around the cabin. through the magic of heat changes across two different semiconductors, electricity is produced, which in turn power a small fan. it's really quiet and runs purely from the stoves heat. and it doesn't half push the heat around the cabin. a very good buy .
in the next episode i battle storm doris down the trent and mersey canal, and forced to stop for a few days, and travel for over three-quarters of an hour through a dark and damp harecastlee tunnel. click subscribe now if you want to follow my journey. see you next time.