In message ,
"BigWallop" wrote:



Or how about a submersible heater like they put in fish tanks only on a
bigger scale.



Reminds me of the tricks people used to get up to in order to warm the
water in our church baptistry. My earliest memory is of a device about
4ft tall (the electrical connection box was just out of the water) which
stood on the baptistry floor like a tubular metal foot. The church we
borrowed it from had 15A round pin plugs, and we had to put a 13A square
pin on for it to work - the plug used to get very hot but the fuse never
blew.

Then someone had a bright idea. They bought two galvanised metal buckets
and fitted a standard immersion heater in each - the idea being to
float the buckets on the water. Even at 12 I could see that that was a
bit dodgy.

When I was baptised the water was more-or-less cold straight from the
tap (via a hose) though we did fill it up the previous day and leave the
feeble church heating on. When my sister was baptised, all three of the
aforementioned heating devices were used and it was like a sauna.

Several times I, personally, spent hours in the church boiling and
re-boiling the tea urn and kettles to try to take the edge off the cold.

Nowadays, of course, it's been plumbed up with a cold tap and hot water
through the hall's combi boiler. It doesn't exactly fill quickly (I'd
say it is about 8ft by 5ft by 4ft deep, ignoring steps) but now that
it's been GRP lined it fills slightly more quickly than it used to. Just
before the decision was made to line it, it would lose 6" in about an
hour.

Hwyl!

M.

--
Martin Angove (it's Cornish for "Smith") - ARM/Digital SA110 RPC
See the Aber Valley -- http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/abervalley.html
.... When you're 70 tomorrow's yesterday before you know it was today.