The weight of heat

Hello! Happy Sunday :)

After laying that smidge of underfloor heating last week, I needed to suss out the hearth area. I was looking for 20mm-thick slate hexagon tiles to put on top, and went to ChatGPT for a second opinion (it's fantastic for DIY). When I mentioned this, well...

ya, tiling straight over retrofit ufh boards + plonking a CAST-IRON STOVE on it is a NO from me. two issues: load + regs.

don’t trust a foam ufh board to carry a stove just bc you slapped “something 10mm” on it. you need a DENSE, non-combustible layer that bypasses the foam and spreads point loads.

That changes things. So new plan: cut out the boards for that area, then do a layer of self-levelling compound before tiling on top. That'll wait for now, and in the meantime I made a little jig so I could get the floorboards right:

I just love the Steiner angles, I can't help myself. Then underlay + floorboards!

With that done, the boat needed a re-jig... I moved unused stuff to storage, and used the new floors to clear the rest of the living area:

And today, I did the insulation boards and heating pipe:

I was hoping to do the floorboards, but alas ran out of time. And I'm away for the next 2 weeks, but luckily when I'm back a fun job awaits. I'm off hot air ballooning in Denmark, and I'll find at least one boat to include next week...