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From: C. Marin Faure (no email)
Date: Sun Dec 07 2003 - 01:39:28 EST
From: "Philip J. Rosch" <>
Subject: TWL: RE: response on MARINE GRADE stoves
>If insurance companies won't pay claims on boats that don't meet all the
ABYC standards, there are a lot of cruisers in deep trouble.
I can't speak for insurance policies other than the one we have, but we get
our insurance through a broker. The broker has a questionaire they want
filled in before they will shop around for the best policy. One of the
questions asks if the stove/oven burners are equipped with safety
shut-offs. So while it may be that some insurance companies don't care,
the fact that the insurance broker asks this on their basic questionaire
about the boat would indicate that some insurance companies do care.
>If I can add thermocouples to a commodity stove, I'd certainly look into
>doing it, but I won't pay $1,500 for a stove I can buy for $500.
I suspect adding the thermocouples is the easy part. Based on my
examination of the construction of our Force 10, it appears that it's just
a matter of drilling a hole in the correct spot to insert a thermocouple so
the tip is in the flame of the burner. The tricky bit would be to add the
solenoid valves that the thermocouples actuate. These are mounted on the
gas supply manifold, and I don't know what's involved in installing them.
Obvously their mounting has to be leakproof. The Force 10 burner solenoids
are incorporated into the burner control valves on the manifold. The
oven/broiler control valve does not have a built-in solenoid. Instead, the
safety solenoid for the oven and broiler burners is mounted to the gas
manifold a few inches upstream of the control valve.
But I'd want to be pretty sure of what I was doing before I started
drilling holes in the gas manifold of a propane stove to install the
shut-off solenoids. Unless one was experienced at working with gas piping
and hardware, it might be a job for a professional. The parts are probably
not too expensive, but the labor cost could start the total price creeping
on up there toward the purchase price of a purpose-made marine stove.
But as long as insurance issues don't preclude the use of a "non-marine"
propane stove, as long as the stove is well made and the propane system
feeding it is designed for maximum safety- bottle mounted to where leaks
will vent overboard, shutoff valve between the bottle and appliance(s),
etc.-, and as long as you operate the propane system and stove with a fair
degree of common sense, then I don't see a problem with using an RV-type
stove on a boat.
Our boat was 25 years old when we bought it and it had a Magic Chef
4-burner stove/oven installed. I'm guessing it was the original unit on
the boat, but I could be wrong. We discovered the first time we used it
that some of the burner valves had worn to the point of leaking even when
they were turned off. Not leaking a lot, but leaking nevertheless. Since
parts for this long-out-of-production stove were extremely difficult to
get, and since the stove had to be removed to fix it anyway, it was a
pretty easy choice to simply replace it. If the Magic Chef had not had the
leaky valve problem, we would have continued to use it. But we don't
regret at all our decision to replace it with a new Force 10. The fact
that this stove has a safety shutoff system is a nice bonus, although we
take the attitude that the system won't work when it's actually needed, so
we operate the stove accordingly which among other things means we never
leave it on without one of us in the cabin with it.
_______________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, WA
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