Living afloat

The story of the Luxe Motor MS Watergeus and how to convert a Dutch barge into a houseboat

Engine room

• See also: DAF 1160
• See also: Barges & their engine room

Description

Accessible through a trunk from starboard side deck is the engine compartment, containing the main and auxiliary machinery, fuel and domestic water tanks and electrical equipment.

The main engine is a DAF 1160. At each side of this engine, their is a domestic water tank and an fuel tank. Every of the four tanks have capacity of 1000 liters.

At port side, their is the heater for the central heating used in the back accommodation.

Central heating of the brand BOL

At starboard side is the water & bilge pump, an compressor and the battery charger. Behind the stairs you can locate the fuel pomp and the air blow for the horn.

Engine room with view on fundaments of original engine

In the engine room, you can still see the big fundaments of the original engine, a Climax Ruwolie 2 cylinder. Where the fundaments go bigger, as can be seen on the picture here above, the fly wheel was located.

On portside, a small workbench is mounted on the side of the fuel tank.

Extended engine room

The old engine room bulkhead was removed when she was used as a water supply vessel. I kept this and built an new bulkhead a bit further, extending the engine room with two meters. In that new space, I put my generator and two dirty water tanks. The cooling system of my engine room also located in this small area.

Cooling of the engine, picture taken before the new bulkhead was placed

The generator used to be in the same corner of my engine cooling system, as can be seen on the following picture, taken on 27th December 2006:

The old generator, water cooled...

Since that generator was broken (had been underwater for over two years), I bought another generator, an 1 cylinder Petter.

Electricity

The fuse box for the back accommodation and wheelhouse is also located in the engine room. They are connected to the main fuse box in the front cabin by a three phase power cable.

A new fuse box will be placed in May 2007 for the new 220v sockets in the back accommodation and wheelhouse.