----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Skolnick" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 5:21 AM Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] Wintering aboard
> Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 16:29:24 -0700 > From: <[email protected]> > However diesel > fired heaters will become expensive to operate. > Depending on how much fuel costs escalate it could be double or triple > the cost of heating electrically. Can you substantiate those numbers? My experience is quite different. REPLY Yes. I got the numbed from one of my customers. He lives aboard in Vancouver. Electricity cost 8 cents per kilowatt. Diesel fuel in this area is now $1.05 per liter so its up there at around $4 per gallon. Last year it was even more. Peaked at $1.50 / liter Going back over the past five years it has been close to a dollar a liter. Electric heat is way cheaper here. I realize some areas on the eastern seaboard have higher electricity rates, so the cost comparison is going to be different. When I back east, con edison was charging around $0.15 per kilowatt hour. Not sure what it is now. I also hear some marinas are surcharging beyond what the utility companies charge. Obviously a careful cost analysis is needed for each locality. Secondly fuel prices tend to be more volatile than electricity prices. On the subject of needing more than a 30A shore power outlet. 30 A at 120V is still 3600 watts. I managed to heat 1100 square feet of poorly insulated mobile home with less than 2000 watts of oil filled heaters and have sufficient power left over for electric cooking etc. Don't see why 3600 watts is not enough for a typical boat under 50 foot that has half as much (or less) floor space. Diesel fired heaters must use the highest grade diesel fuel available due to the fine nozzles required for the burner. Where I lived back east I normally used #2 furnace oil but the fuel supplier had to substitute #1 diesel during the coldest part of winter because otherwise it gelled in the outdoor tank or filter. Get any sort of particles into the burner nozzle and you have a stoppage. Secondly anything but #1 grade will produce more soot. this in turn also increases maintenance. Many boaters have discovered that when they fuelled their diesel fired heaters with summer weight fuel in their main tanks. the recommnedation is to have a seperate smaller tank with #1 fuel for the furnace. If the DC power supply to the controller drops off such as when the battery slowly discharges you get the occasional misfire which further increases the sooting problem. So buying cheap fuel oil is a mistake. Which means you end up buying the more expensive diesel. My worst fuel consumption over the last three winters was only about 40 gallons. I can't do an apples-to-apples comparison with electricity since I have other significant electrical consumers (water heater, battery charger, TVs, computers, etc). REPLY Places like Annapolis are much warmer than upstate NY. regardless of the fact water temps are not supposedly going to drop below 39 F the air temp will drop much further. Locations cloer to the ocean will remain warmer on average due to the heat sink effect of the ocean. Inland and upwind of the ocean air temps get a lot cooler. This is where the greatest heat loss occurs. Wind chill is also a factor. continued winds at cold air temps wil strip away much of the heat being lost though cabin sides and portholes. To get a comparison going try converting both diesel and electric into BTU then see what the consumption rate and cost becomes. Arild _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
