Tony1

I've misunderstood the discussion here. The BT4000 is a landline type phone, right? What I was hoping was that you could use an adaptor to connect an android smartphone to a wifi router, so that the router would use the smartphone's SIM. I suspect the OP is ideally looking for something that saves him having to swap his SIM from the wifi router into his smartphone every time he leave the boat. It would be a very handy feature for a lot of people, I bet.

This could be really handy for me - I could use my EE SIM without having to take it out of the phone, in those places where the normal O2 SIM has no signal. The idea of simply plugging the phone into the router and then using the phone SIM is great. Do you need an adaptor for the phone? Presumably it would be micro USB or maybe type C at the phone end, with an RJ11 plug on the other end to plug into the router?

My boat came with one of those signal boosters (repeaters?) on a 3 foot mast, and tbh I wasn't all that impressed by the performance of it in poor signal areas. It sort of worked, but I was never really convinced it was as good as it was supposed to be. I understand that they are not legal on boats, as john said above. If I remember correctly, it was said on here (by someone who knows their electronics) that they can interfere with the signal of other phone users nearby. I spent last summer using it on the Llangollen and it did enough to sort of get by in most places, but in a few places it was little or no help. Last winter I ditched the booster and got an external (Poynting) antenna, that is connected to a wifi router indoors. I mounted the Poynting on a 6ft mast, and so far its given me as good performance as the booster thingy, although it was just as poor as the booster was when I tried it in that dead spot just east of Beeston Stone lock). But I think the real test is still to come, because I'm back on the Llangollen, and I will be assessing the antenna performance against the booster performance by mooring in the same spots. The first real test will come as I travel south from Whitchurch to Whixall in about a week, because I remember from last year there were some really poor signal spots along that route (near Platt Lane bridge I just couldnt get any usable signal on either of my SIMs, for example), and I'll make a point of pulling over and trying out the signal strength in the spots where the booster struggled. I don't suppose you'll ever get caught or punished for using a non-legal system, but if there is a legal alternative, and if it does work as well, then it makes sense to use it. Unfortunately, I don't know yet how well the mast mounted antenna works in comparison to the booster, when used in the really bad spots.

To be fair I've got a damn cheek taking the mick out of hirers. I did the Grindley Brook flight last week, and there was a crew behind me on a hire boat who were absolutely first class. I'm not sure how many of them there were- they seemed as numerous as an army of Orcs (but much better looking). Pairs of them went on ahead to all the locks, and started really getting things moving- they had the queue through there several times faster than would otherwise have been possible. I had one in attendance upon me at all times, and often two. In fact I barely got off the boat the whole time, which in fairness was probably safest for all concerned. Not only did they do all of the work I should have done, but they did it faster, and they were laughing and joking with me the whole way. Of course I still hit every lock wall on the way through like the eternal amateur I am, but this time I laughed gaily as I did it. I considered kidnapping a few of them to use on the lift bridges further on, but they were vodka drinkers and would have cleaned me out of booze within hours.

The brompton website seems to advertise their bike hire from £5 a day, so maybe £35 for a week on the Llangollen, plus a few quid petrol to go and pick up the bike (depending on where you are/where you passing). But what use does a hirer have for a bike? One of the unwritten rules of hiring is that the boat must never stop moving during daylight hours. But for those hirers who break the rule, £35 seems pretty decent to get a bike for a week.

But my dear fellow, the OP will by now have long ago hired his bike, completed his cruise, and ridden off into the sunset. In the meantime, the thread has morphed into one of those 'perfect boating bike' threads. But it weren't my fault, guvnor. It was like that when I got here. 😁

And in my case, you pays yer money twice! I felt I had to have two bikes, but that's a personal choice of course. I couldn't really do without the brompton- as you say it can go on trains even when all the official bike spaces are taken, and its super helpful that you can take it on local buses too. I had to make a 7 mile trip to Oswestry and it rained most of the day, so I saved a thorough drenching by taking the brompton on a local bus. When you want to get some exercise, you can switch off the brompton motor and ride it as a normal bike- its an amazing little machine really. But I did have a few close calls getting my full size bike onto trains at predictably busy periods such as school holidays etc. And sometimes you get get caught out by the trains being busy, as I did when I travelled during freshers week this Autumn. Sometimes it'll be a local event that you know nothing about (something at the NEC for example), and it will cause a few trains to be jam packed. So I find it takes the stress out of planning when I know that no matter how busy the train is, I'll be able to get the bike on board. And nothing beats the brompton for that. But as a full time liveaboard and CCer, you also come across stretches where there is half a mile of stony, bumpy and muddy towpath, and I don't enjoy riding the brompton there. Don't get me wrong, people have done world tours on bromptons, so you can ride them in rough terrain, but I don't like doing it, and in mud it feels riskier than I would like, so I have the other folder specifically for winter, or for muddy conditions during summer. If I had to choose just one, I would probably go for a 20 inch folding ebike (2 inch tyres), with as compact a fold as possible- that way it could fit on a train as luggage (perhaps in a carry bag), and maybe even on a bus if you ask nicely. I would look for one that was still rideable without the motor, to get a bit of exercise. You would also want it to weigh less than Jupiter, which would rule a few of them out. It's a tall order, innit?

If you do stump up the cash for a folder, I would advise caution. I used my brompton as shopping transport for much of this year, but in the last couple of weeks I'm finding it feels a bit sketchy riding through muddy stretches of towpath on those rock hard thin tyres. And the dimensions of the brompton are so precise and so constraining that you can't fit fat tyres on in for winter, at least not without doing some surgery. Last winter I did very little cycling on muddy towpaths, circumstances meant I was able to reach surfaced roads easily. BUt I'm on the Llangollen at the moment, and I've come across a couple of stretches where it felt a bit sketchy trying to ride the brompton. For those areas I keep a second bike, again a folder, but its an ebike with 24 inch wheels and 2 inch wide tyres, so it feels much safer on rough or muddy towpaths, as well as on rutted rural lanes in wet conditions. If I had to choose one bike for all conditions, I would go with something that has at least 20 inch wheel, and that will allow you to fit 2 inch tyres for the winter, if like me you have to tackle muddy stretches of towpath. In fairness you can always wheel a bike through a few hundred yards of mud, but the 20 or 24 inch tyres will also allow a lower pressure than 16 inch brompton tyres, so they are more comfortable to ride even on a dry towpath. But all of that said, bike preference are a very individual thing.

Just some random thoughts from my (very limited) experiences with alternators: I think when you see 70 amps rating for an alternator, you can probably assume that is its maximum, and it probably wont be able to charge at that level continuously without it overheating. It might put out 60 or 70 amps for 5 or 10 minutes, but as I understand it (from the expert folks here), a lead acid battery then starts to resist the charging, and that reduces the current being put out by the alternator (and that seems to act as a sort of fail safe against overheating the alternator). If you can borrow one of those clamp meters (instructions for use will be all over youtube), or better still get a battery monitor as Tony suggests, you'll be able to see how much current is being put into the batteries. I bet you'll find it starts charging at about 60 amps and very quickly starts to drop towards 30 amps. If I'm right and you're getting about 30 amps of charge on average, then if you use 90Ah in a day, it means you'll have to run the engine for 3 hours per day, I dont see any other option without changing the hardware. My alternators are the ordinary V belt type, and so I am limited to how much current they can generate. If you have the poly V type of alternator belt then it might not be too difficult to fit a bigger and better quality alternator. But again, look it up on youtube and you'll see examples- so you can tell what type you have. How much money it could save you (if any) depends on how many days of the year you need engine charging (eg do you have solar panels to use in summer/autumn, in which case you might only be talking about using the engine on say 100 days of the year- and that will affect the money calculations. If you are calculating whether a new alternator will eventually pay for itself in saved diesel fuel, take into account servicing costs and potentially extra repair bills that might result from doing a lot more engine running hours. But on the other hand, a bigger alternator might also require some kind of alternator regulator system or device, so there might be a cost there, but that might depend on what you already have in place as part of the charging system. Also, a battery monitor will guide you as to how much charge you use in a day, and that will help you decide how big an alternator you want/need. I use about 140Ah per day, but that seems to be a lot. If you dont run the fridge you might take 40 off of that, just to give one example. ETA- there is always the option to buy a petrol generator for use in winter when you need more charging hours, as long as you dont mind fetching 10 litres of petrol from a garage every 5 days or so.

If you had over say 1000 watts of panels, I don't think it would be very expensive to set up a direct feed from the MPPTs into the immersion heater, without using the batteries or inverter, and that would probably get you hot water on most days during roughly one third of the year. Hopefully someone who knows their stuff will set up a 'how to' thread or guide about it, but as a first stab I would guess you need say a 1000 watt 12v immersion element, plus some electrical component to limit the current from the MPPTs to say 80 amps, so as not to damage the element, plus a thermostat control to automatically switch off the current when the water is heated to the desired temp (maybe the existing 240v thermostat could be used or adapted in some way to work with 12v and much thicker cabling), plus maybe a controlling switch (?thermistor) to control how much current gets fed into the immersion element. There are enough unanswered questions in there for me that I wouldn't even attempt it, and I bet many of the normal narrowboat electricians would have to think about it a fair bit (because it will be a fairly unusual request), but I wonder if the time is coming when these sorts of systems, like lithium batteries and multiple solar panels, will become much more common.

The ability to walk the roof is an important point, and its only just workable in my case. I chose 1 metre wide panels, and I even tried out the 'walking width' before ordering them, by walking along the sides of the roof, with a rope laid out to indicate the width of roof that would be left for walking. What I didnt realise was that it is more tricky to walk within that space when the limiting line extends upwards 6 inches or more above the roof, as it limits foot movement more than I expected. Sometimes when the boat is rocking a bit in locks, I have to walk sideways along the roof side, tucking my toes in underneath the panel frames for a bit of extra stability- instead of pointing my feet forwards along the roof as you would normally do. Another issue is that the narrow gap that is now available has a centre line running down it, which makes the footing much more precarious as you can imagine. Stepping onto a rope which then rolls under your foot is the last thing you want to do in such a narrow space. Fortunately the boat is only 50ft, and I'm finding I can bring it far enough forwards in the locks that I can generally get the stern alongside the ladders, but walking the roof does feel a tad more precarious than it ought to, and I would advise any new panel buyers to think and plan carefully before getting 1 metre wide panels. If doing it again, I'd go for 80 cm panels, or 90cm if that was available. The reason I tentatively suggested the possibility of more panels in future was in fairness me projecting myself into that situation, but its worth bearing in mind that over 1000 watts of panels will allow you to heat up water on summer days. I got hot water from the panels on most days up till mid Sept if I recall correctly, so in my case its probably about 6 months of the year, and as a CCer getting hot water on days when the engine's not running (and saving on gas used to heat water) is quite a useful benefit, although there is the issue that in using the batteries and inverter to supply the immersion heater, I am cycling the batteries two or three times more intensively than I would otherwise, so that will shorten their life a fair bit I reckon. For those who look at solar hot water, the alternative method of diverting charge straight from the MPPT into the immersion will save your batteries some hard graft, but you will need a 12v element as someone pointed out, and I would want a proper expert to do that job.

If you get on well with the solar setup, it looks like you could mount another line of those panels, and have two lines of them side by side. One of the things I considered this summer was an aircon unit for the crazy hot days. It wasnt lack of power that stopped me, because on heatwave days my 1400w setup yields an almost constant 60-90 amps (at 12-13v that is), for much of the day. What put me off was the perennial problem of where do I store a heavy, fairly bulky unit that I will only use on say 30 days of the year? On your widebeam you could probably find a home for a compact aircon unit. They aren't cheap of course, but I bet they make life on board so much more pleasant in high summer, and you even have the shoreline hookup as a backup.

To be honest it was a quick check and it was a long time ago, but the roof does curve a fair bit. Its a Liverpool boat, perhaps its a feature with them? I'll check it properly tomorrow out of interest, and see if I was wrong- but either way there would be an issue with those mounts for me, because I wanted to almost fill the roof with panels and that meant placing panels over the roof vents- and covering those means extra height is needed, even if I replaced the mushroom vents with the flatter UFO type (which I also considered). I got away with drilling and tapping I think 16 holes for M8 machine screws in order to fit the rear set of panels, but generally speaking I am quite reluctant to do things that require drilling holes in the roof, as I'm such a poor DIYer. I tried drilling and tapping to fit the boat number plate, and the drill bit snapped off and I could get it out, despite using one of those bit remover things. I dread to think what I'd have done if my 8mm holes in the roof had gone wrong. It was near to the roof line, so perhaps I'd hit an extra thick or a folded layer of the steel, but I remember drilling in one particular place was a nightmare, even with good quality bits.

Thanks, yes I did look at this type, and I did have in mind that they offer a good amount of surface area, enabling sikaflex to hold them fast without needing bolts. For extra strength, I also considered using a wooden or aluminium sheet of about a foot square as an adhesive mounting plate (to give even more surface area), and bolting mounts like these onto the metal sheet. What put me off these was that I needed something else in order to elevate them. If I was to lay a 1m wide panel so that it rested on the centre line of the roof, the outer edge of its frame would be a couple of inches above the roof, because of the downward slope. So these mounts would probably be too 'low-lying', so to speak. So I was looking at ways of raising up mounts like this by an inch or two, and I didnt really find any solution that I liked. If I was doing it over again I'd probably use hardwood chocks of some sort to elevate the mounts. In fact for extra storage (which is a bigger priority than a few extra amp hours) I'd now consider constructing a roof box under each panel, with a maximum height set so that I could still go through places like Harecastle tunnel. The panels would tilt up on hinges attached to the roof box, and this would also allow easy access to the storage space. But to be fair, that approach might be because my boat is only 50ft long and doesnt have a lot of storage space. Someone living on a 60 or 70 footer might have a very different view.

I would add that I think there is a non-logical element within the discussion around tilting. I think some people might get a sense of pride and self-sufficiency from having managed to get through a winter without using the engine purely for generating charge. Looked at in purely financial terms, I'm not 100% convinced. The tilting mounts I have cost about £100 each (as opposed to say £30 for flat mounts), but it will take many years to pay that extra cost back, given the tilting is only used in those months when the generated power is getting a bit marginal anyway. I did look at flat mounts, but I was struggling to find mounts that would project a limb or bracket vertically upwards. The mounts I saw seemed to be designed for a completely flat roof, and when mounted on a narrowboat roof, because of the downward slope the mounting limb would not be pointing vertically upwards, but at say 20 degree away from vertical, and I wasn't sure how the panels would mount securely without some sort of metalworking or adaptation being involved. I considered using triangular wooden chocks placed under the mounts so that they would effectively be laying flat, but those are sure to start rotting after say 5 or 6 years, right? The other issue for me was that I wanted to almost fill the roof, and so I would have to place the panels above the mushroom vents, rather than alongside them. The midsummer mounts hold the flat panels just above the mushrooms (once I'd sikaflexed on some rubber mounting feet to protect the roof paint from scratching by the outer ends of the arms). I dont regret using tilting mounts, and they do come in handy in the right situations, but if I was doing it over again, I have to admit as a CCer I might be tempted to just mount them flat and be done with it (assuming I could find an angled mount to deal with the slope of the roof). But for a marina moorer whose sides usually face south, the option to tilt could make more sense.

One other thing I found with the tilting mounts (from midsummer energy) was that although they will hold my 1m wide panels (and they are well made), they need extra support to hold them tilted upwards, because the sheer weight and the width of the panels means the allen bolt holding mechanism (within the legs) doesnt feel 100% secure. https://midsummerenergy.co.uk/buy/solar-panel-mounting/Narrowboat-Tilt-Mount That said, I'm sure they'd work very well with say 80cm panels (which were the ones I saw on the youtube vlog) The idea is that you tilt them up and then tighten the allen bolts to hold them in place, but I found it necessary to add support. I bought a small aluminium work platform (the type that has a short ladder on each end of a platform). I took the two ladders off of the platform, and I use the ladders to help prop up the side of the mounting frame when the panels are tilted up. A neater solution would be to put hinges on the end of the ladders (or similar legs), and attach the hinge to the mounting frame itself, so the support legs drop down when you lift up the side of the panel. Its aluminium so its no problem doing a bit of heath robinson adaptation. Re the tilting, bear in mind that if you have two lines of say 80cm or 1m panels running along the roof, the panel that is nearest the sun- when tilted up- will tend to cast a shadow on the panel behind it, so in some situations you actually want to leave the 'sunny side' panel flat, and only tilt up the one behind it. You will have seen the odd boat with panels hung almost vertically on the sides of the superstructure. For off grid purists it probably works pretty well, but aesthetically some might not be keen on the look of it. For the hard core types, I do think with that sort of setup, and not running the fridge, you could probably get 90% through the winter just on solar. I think the ideal world mount would be something based on a rotatable or movable base, so you could adjust it every hour or so to follow the sun (and with that, you don't have to face the sides southwards). But that's a lot of designing (and cash) for what would probably be not too many extra amp hours of charge during winter.

I would add a note of caution re the wind. I was in Ellesmere Port basin, I think last February, and I tilted the panels up almost every morning- it seemed to be fairly sunny most mornings if I recall correctly. Things was, there was one morning it was forecast for I think 25mph winds, blowing from behind the tilted panels, and although I realised the panels ought to be lowered to avoid damage, I didn't do it straight away and then I forgot, and sure enough, an hour or two later there was a banging noise as one of the tilted panels was caught by the wind coming from behind it, blown off, and deposited on the grass beside the boat. Thankfully I got away with minor damage to the clamps on the mountings, and I was able to remount the panel later. That basin is a bit of a wind trap and it behaves unpredictably when it blows hard because of the high buildings nearby, but one of the things about tilting mounts is you have to remember to always lower them if the forecast is for strong winds, or just lower them every night as a default procedure. In the summer you dont need to tilt them anyway as the sun is so strong, so most of the time they stay flat. Its the spring and autumn when you want to tilt, and they can be quite windy as we know.

For me, the thing about tilting panels on narrowboats is that it's nice to have the option, but from Nov to Feb inclusive, they are limited even on good days. So if its an overcast day in November, its not worth tilting. But if the side of the boat happens to be facing south, and its a day when it happens to be a bit sunny, then its worth tilting them. But for me, its not worth trying to seek out open-aspect moorings (or ones where the panels face south) just to gain an extra 20-40 Ah per day. I'd rather stay in a mooring that is convenient and pleasant, and just run the engine for an extra 20 or 30 mins to make up the meagre 30Ah that I would have gotten from solar in a more open mooring. As an example, I tilted my rear panels this morning because they were facing south east, and the sun was out. So for about 2 hours (at most), the rear panels were yielding about 20 amps, and the front panels (flat), were yielding about 10 amps. But then the sun passed into the south and southwest, so I laid them flat again. But then it got cloudy anyway, and the sun went behind some trees, so I got very little during the afternoon. I did meet a boater with a broken engine at Whixall Moss last spring, who said he'd been stuck there for 3 months waiting to complete a major engine repair. His sides faced almost due south and he had two panels angled at 60 degrees on the roof, and one panel hanging on the side of the superstructure, and he said he'd managed to get enough electricity from those throughout the winter. But what is considered enough electricity for one person may be a nightmare scenario for someone else.

Bit of a long shot, but the Haggises may have some more up to date contact details, might be worth sending a message to ask for the phone number they use to contact the relevant marina staff.

I think you're onto something with the idea of different engine running rules for visitor moorings, although I personally would allow a window of say 10am to 4pm to allow for people who are away from the boat for a few hours. But that's just detail, really. The real problem with these ideas, as you'll already know, is enforcement. CRT can't effectively enforce the existing 8 to 8 rule, so there's simply no chance they'll bring in a new rule. Not that it isn't interesting to hear these ideas, of course. One must always live in hope. In terms of personal annoyances, I often moor at least 200 yards from the line of boats that you usually find near to popular mooring places. What I'm hoping to do is give the impression that I've chosen to moor well away from the other boats because I'm not very sociable. (I am of course the very embodiment of joviality when I'm looking for a bit of help at a lock.) So it is slightly annoying when someone turns up and moors 6 feet from me, when there is another 300 yards of piling that is nearer to the place they actually want to visit. Of course I am always a perfect gentleman about it, and I never show my irritation in any way, apart from slightly murdering them with an axe in the middle of the night, and then jumping up and down on their cowboy hat. Its all about moderation.

My boat came with a Sterling 1600 watt modified sine wave model, and within 6 months two laptops had bitten the dust with knackered battery systems, although they still worked if permanently plugged in. To be fair, no other electrical gadgetry seemed to be affected by the nasty cheap modified sine waves. That 1600 watt model also had a very noisy fan that, for reasons only known to itself, kicked into action at various random hours during the night, which was extremely sub optimal in terms of one's sleeping experience. After it damaged two laptops, I replaced that noisy POS with a 2000/4000 watt pure sine model that cost I think £250 from Amazon, and that one is still going ok 18 months later. Amazon products vary wildly in quality and I took a gamble on it because it had several thousand very good reviews, but there really is no being sure with them, so its not something I'd strongly recommend unless budget is such an important issue that a posh model is out of reach. The 2000 watt model seems to run a 1000 watt kettle with no problem, and I discovered by error that (for a few minutes anyway) it will even run the kettle plus the 1000 watt immersion (i.e. when I've forgotten to switch one of them off).