gary955

Now that we've made our tug fit for navigation and completed a coastal cruise from Southampton to Henley on Thames, it's time to make it more habitable. We need a generator as a back up for battery charging (as we're going electric for the fridge) as well as a power boost for doing things like washing and hovering. This Kipor looks like it might just fit the bill, as well as being portable so that we can take it to the narrowboat if necessary. the importer thinks that it should just about run a washing machine. Our washer will be an old hot and cold fill model with a clockwork programmer so not too demanding. But I've been wondering........might it run a standard domestic electric oven? most single ovens seem to have an element of 1800w to 2000w which suggests it should be OK and am I right in thinking that a heating element is a resistive load that wont have a big in-rush current?

Yes absolutely. All LED lighting and gas fridge. So really just the water pump and bath gulper, plus the inverter for occasional music telly and brief hair drying for the other half when away from shore power.

I replaced my 3x 110ah bank with a 3x 125ah battery’s 17 months ago. I don’t have a sophisticated charging regime and I’m not very good at remembering to top them up, so I decided that I would buy budget sealed batteries and treat them as consumables. I bought Hankook battery’s from Battery Megastore in Tewksbury, paying less than £230 for the three. They were fitted at the beginning of Nov 2015 and have never seen a charger since. They’re connected to a single 80w solar panel and occasionally get a boost from the alternator through an Adverc charge controller. During a quick check before going for a cruise for a few days I noticed that the battery in the middle of the bank was showing a white “replace battery” indicator. It was still showing white after a six hour cruise so although the bank was showing over 13v I took it out in case it damaged its neighbours. Remembering the two year warranty I put it in the van and popped into Tewksbury on the way home. The staff at Battery Megastore asked me to draw a diagram of the way the bank is wired up, which they agreed was correct, they explained that they could not entertain a warranty claim without seeing the original invoice (which I didn’t have with me) but said that they would charge and carry out a full test on the battery if I left it with them. The battery was oddly now displaying a green indicator and measuring 13v on a multimeter! Two days later they’ve called me and told me the battery has 95% of its rated capacity, it seems possible that a bubble got on top of the indicator ball giving a false reading. The battery is fine. So this is a shout out for both for Hankook batteries which seem to be performing admirably considering they cost £76ea and for the customer care of Battery Megastore who were prepared to replace a budget battery a year and a half after it was bought. It seems budget leisure batteries are not always a false economy and expensive chargers are not always a necessity.

excellent, cheers, I'll check it out.

Remote monitoring? Tell me more. She has 3 120ah batteries replaced last year. they're kept topped up by an 80w solar panel. I wouldn't want any shore power plugged in while away as a defence against any galvanic corrosion. Would that solar panel and battery set up keep up with the transmit demands of any remote monitoring do you think? I wouldn't leave it plugged in while afloat so a dehumidifier is out. But in the six years that I've owned her, sometimes living aboard summer and winter, sometimes leaving her for weeks or months at a time, she's been a remarkably dry boat.

Thank you for the compliment. She's a very dry boat and suffers very little from condensation. I won't be disappointed to keep her but am conscious of mrsmellys valid remarks and hope that she'd be the same boat on our return. I've already followed up on some of the suggestions for storage ashore kindly given by forum members and find that my current marina fees are as cheap. I think my marina has no connection fee's as well so perhaps I won't need to licence.

I'm in the very lucky position of going off to cruise the continent for a couple of years, and in the even luckier position of not having to sell my narrowboat to raise funds for the cruise. I like my narrowboat, she suits me and my partner perfectly in terms of size, accommodation, style and frugal demands of electricity, fuel and coal. But she'll be expensive to keep idle for a couple of years and possibly worrysome if left in the water. What are my options? should I sell her, find a marina for her of have her stored ashore? has the forum any recommendations for economical marina's hopefully where the boat doesn't have to be licenced or storage facilitys on land? Or perhaps I should let her go. She's a 55ft Trad with central engine room. I've put a little information about her on the boats for sale section of the forum.

Thanks for the replies. The pump draws 2.5amps and is about 3m from a switched feed fed by a cable as bigger than my thumb. An online cable calculator suggests 0.5mm for that duty! The speaker cable is very flexible (being 79 strand copper) and abrasion resistance would not be an issue at it's location....Just a thought as I already have it.

Hi I need to add or modify some of the low voltage circuits on my little tugboat. All the DC is 24v and I've got some 79 strand speaker cable from B&Q The conductor is copper and looks to be about 1.5mm section (perhaps more) with very flexible plastic insulation, it's not marked for polarity but I could soon determine that. The packaging does state that it's not suitable for 240v mains use but would it be OK on 24V for lighting and a black water discharge pump? I can't find normal 2 core flex any bigger than 1mm section.

Cheers. a good resource but that seems much too short for the massive filter housings

Don't s'pose anyone knows the oil filter element code for a Rolls Royce 220 c engine?

Not as bad as you might think. Don't worry folks I don't need to rebuild the engine! But if it turns out to be linked to the boat historically I might clean it up and keep it aboard as an "objet d'art" A clue for the type of engine, it may be American.

Along with a tonne of rusty chain, some ingots and various bits of plate and bar I found an old cylinder head and cylinder serving duty as ballast in the forward bilge of my new boat! Anyone recognise it? The boat originally used to have a generator in the forward part of the engine room, and I wonder if it was from this. The casting is too corroded to see any makers name but the injector is mounted horizontally in the head if that helps.

We're spending the rest of the year in the UK before leaving for the continent next year with our ( not a nb!) new boat, The previous owner has kindly agreed to give us some hand holding while we get used to handling her in the Solent for a couple of months or so, then we were intending to book a RYA instructor to do our day-skipper tickets on passage to the Thames. We were intending to overwinter on the river before setting off for the Continent next spring. But would the broads be a better home over winter? What is the average depth? We draw 1.5m (with a lot of dead rise to the profile) with an air draft of about 3.5m (mast down) If suitable, even if we don't overwinter there, are the Broads worth a visit while we're in the area?

Ah Ha! Great.........I'm not far away in Bristol, would it be possible to take a look sometime?

It is a 3000rpm very small cocooned genverter, recently introduced by whisperpower and even more recently available with closed circuit cooling. I'm trying to avoid additional through hull fittings partly for safety, in that the boat will spend part of it's life at sea, and partly for practicality in that the boat will spend the other part of it's life on potentially rubbish strewn inland waterways. I'm hoping to fit the generator in the lazzerette. The freeboard is particularly low at the stern so both the below waterline inlet and the above waterline exhaust might present a potential flooding hazard in the event of a skin fitting failure.

In this case the makers fitting instructions are for closed circuit cooling via skin tank or keel cooler...........

I've been looking at diesel generators. Keen to avoid any extra hull penetrations below the waterline I've found one that can be cooled via skin tank, The tank would be separate from the main engine cooling which is keel cooled. In the absence the normal cooling via raw water/oil heat exchange it would have to have a dry exhaust which perhaps would be noisier. Anyone have any experience of such an installation and the relative noise of wet or dry exhaust?

Thanks for this. We were aware of the Dutch love of tugs and vaguely aware of the festival, but we had no idea what it was called or where it was. We are going to try to get there with Steadfast next year.

Well it's been a long search with many blind alleys and false starts but it looks like me and Jenny have found our next boat. Not quite the type of tug many on here will be used to.......but I'm sure they'd approve. She's called Steadfast a 1951 ex US army service tug. We have it under offer and are just waiting for the official survey report but having spent the day of the survey with the surveyor I'm pretty sure it's a thumbs up! I think she deserves a blog to document us getting her and ourselves ready for a couple of years cruising the inland waterways of Europe but I'm not very I.T savvy so any help and advice on doing that and making it interesting will be welcome. For the meantime I've opened a facebook page "Steadfast. Vintage afloat" Any advice from those used to more lumpy water will be appreciated, I've joined the DBA but advice on selection of navigation instrumentation or essential lumpy water equipment will be useful. The previous owner has agreed to give us some hand holding while we get used to handling her and we're going to undertake some RYA instruction on her to hopefully gain our Dayskipper tickets. Wish us luck!

I've just returned home and put a wash on. My machine (Hotpoint Aquarius 1000 WM62) does a hot fill on the 40 degree cycle. Happy days! perfect for the boat.

A quick google of washing machine heater elements would suggest that most are in the 1700w to 1950w range so I guess that a normal wash cycle would be beyond the capability of my inverter. With a hot fill at 40 degrees though it should be fine with the alternator easily keeping pace with the power consumption. have I got that right?