IanD

I'd say the opposite -- being off-grid, fossil-free and not burning stuff is *way* easier in a suitably-built house than on a boat, especially a narrowboat. Far easier to insulate and keep warm (e.g. Passivhaus), far easier to get lots of solar on the roof, far easier to use a heat pump (air or ground source). Nothing wrong with trying to do it on a boat, but the numbers are heavily stacked against you without *some* energy source like HVO -- unless you're plugged in and in a marina all the time, which isn't really boating... 😉

Which is where I'd like to go, if only HVO was easily available on the canals -- which it might be in future, but isn't right now... 😞 Still means "burning stuff" though, with a generator and CH boiler fuelled by HVO, which was what the OP was trying to avoid -- but realistically can't... 😉

Narrowboat double-glazing will be nowhere near as good as household, the space between the panes is much smaller and the frames are less well insulated even with a thermal break. You'd need at least two of those heatpumps for a narrowboat, and possibly three -- note that they'll be less efficient when it's cold outside (measured at +7C) which is when you really need them for heating. And I don't think those noise levels count as "silent", similar ones I've heard make a fair bit of noise especially on full power -- which again, is what you need when it's cold. And the problem remains that -- like the Frigomar marine one I mentioned -- they consume about 1kW when they're running, which would be a lot of the time when it's cold, so at least 10kWh/day and could be double that when it's really cold. You're not going to get this power from solar panels even in summer (maybe 5kWh/day average on a 45' boat) and almost nothing in winter (<<1kWh/day) so where is the power going to come from? Not to mention what you'll need to run the other appliances on board, including electric cooking if you go gas-free. Idle power consumption of everything on an all-electric boat like mine (including inverter, MPPTs, DC-DC, Cerbo, router...) is typically around 100W (2.4kWh/day) when moored/plugged-in *and doing nothing* like it is now, and you have to add whatever energy you use when on board (cooking, fridge, lights, TV, laptop, washer, kettle, toaster, microwave...) on top of this. Even if you're not moving at all, this could easily double the energy use, obviously this depends on what you do but another 100W average isn't that much. So solar in summer will just about keep up with domestic power use and a bit of cruising, depending on size of boat -- your problem is that a 45' narrowboat has limited roof space, about half what a full-length boat has. In winter, no chance. Unless you spend most of your time plugged in with battery bank power used for short cruises (up to 2 days?) or only use the boat in summer and don't move much, you're going to need an onboard generator, which means burning fuel. That's not just me saying that, it's the finding of pretty much everyone with an electric/hybrid boat.

IIRC my boat is 6'1"/185cm wide internally (not onboard so can't measure it), and has a couple of inches of sprayfoam insulation. As you say there are other less-well-insulated areas like floor, portholes/windows, and then there are draughts through the free-air ventilation required by BSS regulations -- so halving the heat conduction through the walls/roof won't halve the energy needed to keep the boat warm. The basic problem is that narrowboats are smaller/longer/thinner (bigger surface/volume ratio) and more poorly insulated than houses, have great difficulty using heat pumps, don't have as much roof area for solar panels, and aren't always plugged in to (partly-renewable) mains power -- and none of this is going to change any time soon, or indeed ever. Which means that though it is perfectly possible to live in a well-designed house without burning anything, it's not possible on a narrowboat out on the cut except in restricted circumstances (e.g. summer, not cruising much, in a marina), and certainly not all year round unless plugged in.

The key point seems to be that unless you're going to have some kind of frost protection heating on your boat overwinter, you should drain as much as possible down because freezing can cause all sorts of damage -- at least, drain down all the exposed pipes and fittings, water tanks sitting on the baseplate or built-in to the hull are unlikely to freeze because they're next to water above freezing point, and neither are any closed cooling/heating systems with antifreeze in.

I think this is mine, and it works very well: https://www.screwfix.com/p/mira-atom-ev-rear-fed-exposed-chrome-thermostatic-mixer-shower/325fr

If you read the actual report on the CART website which showed lots of data, you'd see that 16% preferred option 1 (flat increases) which means 84% didn't, compared to 40% who preferred option 2 (CC surcharge) which means 60% didn't. That's 5:1 against option 1 vs. 3:2 against option 2. How on earth you can interpret this as boaters being in favour of a flat increase escapes me...

Yes, I used to have one back in the early 1980s. Can't remember the cost, it was something dirt cheap like £1 a year. I suspect hardly anyone cycling on the towpath bothered, IIRC they were quite surprised when I turned up to the BW office (at Little Venice?) to buy one. Of course there was no enforcement or checking, in a couple of years of cycling from Wembley into South Ken (about 20 miles a day on the towpath) I wasn't ever asked to present it -- which is the problem with any scheme like this, without enforcement/checking (which needs a lot of people and would probably cost more money than it would collect -- and what happens if someone hasn't got one or refuses to say, CART can't arrest them) it's useless... 😞 To collect a fee or license you really need a scheme which difficult to evade and cheap and easy to run, which usually means it's linked to something big and difficult to hide like a boat or a house. Which is why council tax and CRT license fees work, but most of the ideas for collecting money from cyclists or walkers or fishermen are pretty much impractical, however much (comparitively) easy-to-catch boaters would like to see them pay instead... 😉 At the risk of repeating what was already said, CRT said that they were trying to find the least unpopular way to increase license fees, the CC surcharge came first in this particular race and a flat percentage increase on all boaters came last, with a bigger surcharge for wideboats in between. So however you view it, the mandate to CRT to surcharge was stronger than the mandate to up all fees equally -- even though nothing had an overall majority, for the simple reason that people generally don't want to pay more. What do *you* think CRT should have done -- not put the fees up at all (not an option, because CRT need more money), or put them all up equally (the least popular option)?

I suspect your numbers are rather optimistic for real narrowboats in real life... There was discussion in another thread about the power needed for frost protection: https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/120178-overwintering-heating-control/page/3/#comment-3009651 "To give some numbers on how much heat/power is needed for frost protection, in the last week the diesel boiler on my boat (set to come on at 4.5C) has run for a total of 6 hours (it comes on in bursts about 20mins long each); working back from the amount of fuel used, the average electrical heater power needed would have been something like 500W (12kWh/day). But that's the average over a week, the coldest day it ran for 1 3/4 hours which was about double that (1kW average=24kWh/day). This suggests that if you want to put electric heaters in for frost protection, you need at least 1kW, probably more if you want to protect against exceptionally cold weather. The dual 750W heaters used by @cuthound look about right... 🙂 " That's just to keep the internal temperature at 4.5C, which turned out to be about 1kW average on a cold November day (subzero outside), and would need to be maybe 1.5kW on an exceptionally cold day, which suggests you need about 1kW to maintain a 5C temperature difference between inside and outside -- as I said, this is on a 60' boat which is probably as well insulated and draught-free with as little free ventilation as is practical (gas-free). Which means you need heating rated at something like 4kW to keep it warm in the middle of winter, which not coincidentally is the kind of CH/stove rating which is normally recommended for a narrowboat this size.

The buck stops with the source of the funding for UK infrastructure, or lack of it. Richard Parry or anyone else can't maintain the canals without this. Sacking him might make some people happy, but whoever took over from him would have exactly the same problems for the same reasons. It's the same problem as railways, or water/sewage, or the NHS, or social services -- the markets and the private sector can't solve problems where the cost is high and the requirement is to provide a service or pay for expensive infrastructure, not make a profit... 😞

Same problem as burst pipes in unheated empty houses then, no surprise there... 😞

Pull the other one... 😉

Were these on boats with frost protection heating?

It's not politics, it's actual facts about CART finances and who bears the responsibility for the mess they are in today. You can deny the facts and try and divert attention away from them -- and where the blame lies -- all you want, but it won't change them.

So, as usual no actual numbers to back up your "Huge cost!!!" claim then. Why am I not surprised? 😉