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Morso v The Rest


The Grumpy Triker

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Beats me how the Squirrel became Defra approved, the only decent part about them is the door, loads of old cracked up bits of them around here, folk seem to keep the doors for some strange reason though, you pay an extra premium for that Squirrel on the sides.  Welded steel stoves are the way to go. Or check out the cheap Chinese stoves, cast iron but excellent. Many don't have a back boiler or provision to fit one though.

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1 hour ago, The Grumpy Triker said:

(snip)

But what makes a squirrel a squirrel....and no not a bushy tailed motif :).....what is it that makes them so good.....or perceived to be so much better than the rest?

 

Compared with our current Villager : On the Squirrel, you can open up the bottom air vent plus the ash pan door to get a really good draught going when lighting. The Villager has a one piece door, and four rather small holes for a bottom vent, so lighting and control is a lot trickier. The Villager has been known to go out with fuel remaining in it, while the Squirrel would never do that unless you meant it to (i.e. shut everything) It's actually very hard to get a good fire going in the Villager. It can be done, but takes a lot of nursing in the early stages, and it's easy to loose it if the stove is unattended for a couple of hours, when it'll take another couple of hours to revive it. With the Squirrel, a fire that has been let go until it's only a slight glow can be blazing in minutes. The Villager controls are a top and bottom slide; fine adjustment is not easy and there isn't enough of it. The Squirrel, OTOH, can be adjusted by quarter turns on the bottom and top wheels, and the fire can be a blazing furnace or a gentle glow as the operator desires.

With the Squirrel, an Ecofan worked : with the Villager, it's a bit of a triumph to get the thing to go round.

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The top plates of the Squirrel is a horridly almost waferthin cast iron thing and it is almost impossible to remove the weight of the flue pipe resting on it and retain the slight sliding movement needed at the roof collar. Very difficult to fit stout and solid supporting clamp brackets to the flue pipe and side wall of the boat to take the weight off the stove top without welding or bolting them right through the side of the boat.

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3 minutes ago, bizzard said:

The top plates of the Squirrel is a horridly almost waferthin cast iron thing and it is almost impossible to remove the weight of the flue pipe resting on it and retain the slight sliding movement needed at the roof collar. Very difficult to fit stout and solid supporting clamp brackets to the flue pipe and side wall of the boat to take the weight off the stove top without welding or bolting them right through the side of the boat.

Our waferthin toplate is coming up to 19 years old. 

Edited by rusty69
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I had to smile at Iain s s comments on our Villager or whatever it is. It has to be said that I am the main fire attender in the family and when I got the hang of the Villager and the right fuel, it gets the Ecofan to work quite often :-) One thing in it's favour, it used a heck of  a lot less fuel than the Squirrel. OK it would take a long time to boil a kettle on top of it  but treated well and spoken to in the right tone of voice, it keeps the boat warm. It took me a while to get the hang of it and it has to be said that I was all for having it replaced with a squirrel but I have sort of gone off the idea. It stays in over night and is easy to get going in the morning  - Iain wouldn't know about that bit :-) 

haggis

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The Squirrel like most small stove have very shallow and squiddy ash pan compartments and shallow ashpans which usually need emptying at least twice a day. For the sake of a couple more inches in height of the stove to increase this depth, at the prices of some stoves you'd think this would be so. Fire bars burn out quickly if hot ash builds up and encroaches on the fire grate.

6 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

As is @Neil2

 That's two. :P:)

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2 minutes ago, bizzard said:

The Squirrel like most small stove have very shallow and squiddy ash pan compartments and shallow ashpans which usually need emptying at least twice a day.

Depends wot you burn. Burning smokeless, ours will need emptying every 24hrs.Burning decent seasoned wood, it will go for days. 

4 minutes ago, bizzard said:

That's two

Two out of how many who have commented on this thread? :)

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3 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Depends wot you burn. Burning smokeless, ours will need emptying every 24hrs.Burning decent seasoned wood, it will go for days. 

Two out of how many who have commented on this thread? :)

On tickover most of the time they'll probably go for 24 hours without emptying but I doubt if burning brightly and hot. :)

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26 minutes ago, haggis said:

I had to smile at Iain s s comments on our Villager or whatever it is. It has to be said that I am the main fire attender in the family and when I got the hang of the Villager and the right fuel, it gets the Ecofan to work quite often :-) One thing in it's favour, it used a heck of  a lot less fuel than the Squirrel. OK it would take a long time to boil a kettle on top of it  but treated well and spoken to in the right tone of voice, it keeps the boat warm. It took me a while to get the hang of it and it has to be said that I was all for having it replaced with a squirrel but I have sort of gone off the idea. It stays in over night and is easy to get going in the morning  - Iain wouldn't know about that bit :-) 

haggis

I use the Morso coal inserts to reduce the size of the firebox. They also create an excellent funnel for ash and riddling. They're not cheap (cc £36 + for two lumps of metal) but worth having.

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To stop the top cracking on cast iron stoves, I fix the flue at the top in th roof collar with silicone so that the flue hangs with a few mm of clearance inside the stove top collar.  Then push fire rope into the gap to centre it and finish with high temperature silicone.  This allows the flue to expand without putting undue pressure on the top plate of the stove.

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6 minutes ago, Cheshire cat said:

That sounds like a good idea dor. I'm installing one next weekend and I think I will try that approach. My last one was solid and as well as cracking the top the pressure cracked the tiles the stove was sat on.   

I linked to this earlier: http://www.soliftec.com/Boat Stoves 1-page.pdf

I found it very helpful

Richard

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10 hours ago, dor said:

To stop the top cracking on cast iron stoves, I fix the flue at the top in th roof collar with silicone so that the flue hangs with a few mm of clearance inside the stove top collar.  Then push fire rope into the gap to centre it and finish with high temperature silicone.  This allows the flue to expand without putting undue pressure on the top plate of the stove.

With the weight of a heavy steel flue pipe dor, I doubt if silicone, not being terrible sticky and remaining fairly flexible would suspend a heavy flue pipe, unless you ram oversize rope really really, tightly around it in the roof collar.

A couple of nuts and bolts through the sides of the collar and flue pipe with spacers between collar and pipe would hold it up, until the bolts corroded through anyway.

Edited by bizzard
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