Tony1

An expert will hopefully answer this in due course, but my very inexpert understanding is that the 'drift' effect would happen to a battery monitor whether it was measuring lithium or lead acid. If the lead acids are resisting the charge to a degree, the monitor will only measure what charge actually goes in there. Certainly I've seen several lead acid users with victron battery monitors, and they wouldnt be bothering with a BMV700 if there was an inbuilt error specific to LAs surely? If I remember Nicks explanation correctly, it is the method of counting the Ah in and out that leads to the drift in accuracy. This counting method means that a small inaccuracy in a current measurement will, over time, be repeated many times, and thus magnified- and will eventually become a significant error. So the monitor will measure the current going into a lead acid just as accurately as it will the current into a lithium. Hopefully that will earn me a gold star from Nick as the Teacher's pet.

I guess another option would be 3x100Ah batteries- and they'd be easier to lug around too. The cheapest way would be to build your own, but those Sterling lithium batteries at £500 do look a steal at the moment, and I think the BMS on them will probably be half decent.

The problem with this cost comparison thing is that its hard to compare like with like in the real world. I say that because anyone building their own 230Ah lithium battery and seeking advice here would go looking for a BMS of about £50-100 (I think one example given here was from Daly), because they would rightly think the extra features in the dearer BMS's would be worth paying extra compared to the cheaper ones you can get. If I were doing it now, I would probably build my own- after all there is a wealth of knowledge and super-helpful people such as yourself on this forum. If you were to opt for two cheap BMS's, at say £40 each, that gives you a battery bank of 2x230 including the BMS's for about £1400, which is amazing really. Add on £50 for a pair of battery boxes, cable, and copper bars, and you're still under £1500 for 460Ah. Even if you add on a piece of 16mm sq cable as a current limiter, plus a victron battery monitor at about £130 (which I imagine will be part of most new installs), you're still in at well under two grand for the lot. I'm surprised more people aren't tempted tbh.

I can't back this up with any hard data, although hopefully the lithium experts will be able to do so: I've found that the lithiums seem to accept solar charge more readily than LAs. So whatever the panels can produce, will go into the batteries. It didnt feel like that was always the case with my old LAs (although to be fair I did sort of break them in my ignorance). It could be argued that with good quality 100Ah lithiums now on the market for around £500, and with them likely to last a decade (depending on usage and care taken), maybe the price difference over a ten year period is not that great. The other thing worth a mention is that if you also go for 1000watts or more of solar panels, you can get hot water on most days during the summer, and there is a saving there in terms of engine hours, wear and tear, diesel fuel, and servicing costs. As an example, my engine was last serviced 9 months ago, and its done about 150 hours since then. Without the lithiums and the solar panels, those hours would probably be doubled. I sometimes see boaters running engines for 3 hours and more in the winter to recharge LA batteries, and there's a significant cost with that.

That's a cracking idea, I'm going to get onto that asap

You might already have this, but just in case- to save on storage pace (and to vastly increase your choice of books) you could read books on a kindle, or even on your phone with a kindle or similar reading app. There are lots of free classics- the likes of Dickens, Shakespeare etc, and lots of cheapo books for a quid or two, that aren't the best quality but quite readable. The recent/good/popular books seem to be the same price for kindle as it costs to buy a hard copy, so you wont save any money on those, but the kindle app is free, and many books are free too, so you can at least try it all out for free. Also, your personal library is always known to the app, so when you get a new phone you can just log in to the app, and all your existing books can be downloaded, and a phone will hold thousands of downloaded books. Once they're on your phone you can read them without an internet signal too, so it works in remote locations. Many people dont like reading books on a phone or a tablet, so it wont work for everyone, but its certainly worth a try, even if only as a backup to buying books from charity shops etc.

I feel I've made an effort to offer some advice to the OP, and so now I deserve a little fun. You might remember fun- its that thing you used to have about 70 years ago. Or maybe not.

That's very kind of you old boy, but possibly not entirely necessary. Like any city, the Pewl has (at least) its fair share of social problems, but I couldn't be prouder of the way it has maintained its political sanity and tolerance at a time when much of the country appears very keen to emulate 1930s Germany.

My dear fellow, Heaven forfend that I should appear to correct such a highly regarded (and dare I say, cunning) linguist. But as a Liverpudlian of more decades than I care to recall, I feel I must interject and offer a clarification regarding the pronunciation of the word 'fur'. There is, as far as I know, no vowel sound in the standard English language which accurately describes the sound made by a native Liverpudlian when saying this word. I can say that this unique vowel sound is almost identical in the words 'Er', 'Fur;, 'Her', There'- and even 'Work', as well as many other words. I'm not aware of a phonetic spelling for this unusual vowel, so I shall leave it to this expert voice actor to enunciate:

Phoebe, I hope you won't think me rude in persisting with this, but do please stop and think about all of the financial implications you might get into with a 12k boat. If you have a reserve fund of 10k to fix the problems that you will find, then you can afford to take the chance- but otherwise you might be wise to consider that any narrowboat under 15k is a fairly risky prospect. I would look ask you this- is your dream to live on a narrowboat, or to live on the waterways? If your dream is to live on the waterways, then the craft you live in doesn't matter that much, as long as you can live comfortably. If your dream is specifically to live on a narrowboat, then fair enough- you can justify taking the gamble to fulfil the dream. But I will say this- I've heard of a few people buying cheap narrowboats in the least couple of years, and all of them spent almost as much again on fixing it up. And conversely, in June I met a young student in Chester who'd recently spent 15k on a viking 32 GRP boat, and all the issues he'd found so far he was able to sort out himself. He even fitted fairy lights.

Perhaps he hesitated because his insurance didn't cover the rescue of dying trombonists. PS- when you are still learning that instrument, I'm not sure you can justify the name of 'trombonist'. I feel like you are probably a trombonista, at best.

Ok, so I'm just sort of workshopping a solution here... but it might be possible to join some kind of online discussion group- a forum, if you will- with a bunch of wonderfully polite and welcoming people who never get grumpy, and who share a common lifestyle interest, who will keep you entertained for the evening with their wit and repartee.

Sorry to be a debbie downer, but if memory serves, I recall the trombone being an instrument capable of producing significant number of decibels. If Lady G has neighbours with functional eardrums, one can envisage that a very amateur trombonist beginning their musical career in a boat next door could give rise to a certain amount of anger. Or even the odd stabbing.

Its certainly helpful to point out the need for insulation on a GRP if its a liveaboard, and I hope the OP takes note. The thing that I like about the idea of a GRP cruiser is that interior and fitout work can be done as DIY, including the insulation. It would be a major pain, but its doable, and for maybe a hundred quid. But as soon as the word 'overplating' appears in any conversation involving a 30 year old steel narrowboat, a sum of not less than 5 grand seems to invariably follow.

I've no idea if the OP will look at GRP options, but if they do, is it recommended that you ask a specialist surveyor for GRP? I ask because to diagnose and to repair the potential problems with GRP hulls will presumably require a different skillset to steel narrowboats. I recall an old work colleague called me about 6 months into my liveaboard lifestyle, telling me that his son had had the idea to live aboard a narrowboat, but only had a max budget of 20k, at the very very most. I pointed out all of the downsides of a GRP that had put me off them personally, but I also said that it was at least worth looking at a few, because if they found a decent example, it could work as long as the lad was happy with the compromises (e.g. having to fetch petrol for the engine, smaller interior space, smaller water tank, being vulnerable to bumps from steel narrowboats, etc). But on the plus side, it might be cheaper to buy, cheaper to run (eg no blacking), and might need less money spending for remedial work than a 20k narrowboat. My thinking was that instead of spending 6 months or more and £10k fixing it up, he could get cruising straight away. They did look at a few narrowboats, and then at some 32ft viking cruisers (and similar), and they ended up going with a viking 32cc. I cant remember the age but it was younger than the narrowboats they'd seen, and in better condition, and he called me back 6 months later to say he son was absolutely loving life afloat, and had no major issues with the boat. If I was looking for a small canal boat and I only had 15k to spend with no major cash reserve, I wouldn't even consider a steel narrowboat. I'd be looking for a viking 32cc or similar, although you will to install a stove somewhere and do some other jobs if its for a liveaboard.

I can totally understand the excitement and impulse to buy a boat, that might be pushing you mentally towards pulling the trigger on this boat, but I would strongly urge you not to rush in, unless you can afford to lose most of the money, and/or you have another 15k in reserve to fix any major issues, as people have explained above. Its a huge risk. The problem is that a full survey might cost almost 10% of the price of the boat, so it looks like a really bad deal, but the truth is that the boat could very easily be a disaster waiting for you to step into it. Even worse, you can't sue a surveyor if they miss things, so even a survey is no guarantee. This is a bit of a left-field suggestion, but worth putting out there in case you havent thought about it yet: If you're ok with a 30ft boat, why not look for a GRP (glass fibre) boat of say 27- 32ft? You'll get just as much living space as on a 30ft steel narrowboat, but at least with a GRP boat, rust damage or pitting wont be an issue (although the hull could still be damaged and will still need surveying). This example is only 26ft, so probably not enough space to live on comfortably, but it'll give you an idea of the sort of thing I'm suggesting: https://www.apolloduck.com/boat/viking-cruisers-26-for-sale/711168

Tbh your modern hen party is, if anything, worse than the stags. You can at least try to reason with a gang of drunks, but the ladies are on a whole different level of wildness. And that's not me slating them, I think its great. Great, but scary.

What is it with stag do's? Suddenly you get Tim from Accounts, a model citizen all his life, going full gangsta because his homies are all in town. By 11am he'll be standing on the roof with a can of special brew and nodding at everyone they pass, like 'thats right motherf***er, this here boat is baaad.'

Surely the Scots summer doesn't officially end until Nov15th? I recall a byelaw prohibiting the use of solid fuel by any Scots person until the start of December. Being resident in England, you may be safe from extradition and trial, but I would tread carefully. Our dear Mrs Haggis takes these rules very seriously. The icicles have to be hanging from Mr Haggis' nose for no less than three days before she will relent and light the stove. As a feeble Sassenach, I'm already pondering whether the annual First Stove Lighting ceremony is almost upon us. But the one feature I dislike about my Hamlet Hardy stove is that the air vents are tiny. The movement of the air knob between fully open and closed is about a centimetre, so it's fiddly to be precise about regulating the burning. I do love a first world problem...

There are things called heat logs that will burn for a few hours, but they are a couple of quid each, and you might need 4 per day to keep the fire going 24/7, so it would get a bit expensive compared to coal. Things like that might tide you over for a few days if you run out of coal before the fuel boat's next trip, and they're fairly light, so you could bring back an armful of them from a local supermarket pretty easily, but I wouldn't personally view them as a full-time fuel.

The rules for shipping distress signals definitely apply in my case- even with my imaginary shipmates aboard there are only three of us. I moored near Whixall junction late one Sunday evening last summer. Due to a critical failure in the vessel's logistics management systems, I discovered that I was completely beerless, and this after a long hot day's cruising. In my view this clearly warranted a distress signal of some sort, but I don't have a VHF radio or a distress flare, and I wasn't clear on the correct authority to report a beer shortage. I considered boarding a nearby boat and bludgeoning the crew to steal their booze, but they were only about 85 years old, and they had a jack russell, so I didn't fancy my chances.

Although I agree with you to a large extent, just as a sort of devil's advocate thing I will say that there have probably been examples of new gadgets that were intrinsically flawed and unreliable to a degree that made them not worth spending money on. But on the other side of the coin, there will always be people resistant to new technologies and change in general- and especially when the new thing results in there being much less need for skill and experience on any given task. I can imagine when the first caveman started making fire, there would have been a few old greybeards grumbling at the back of the cave that they didnt need any fancy fires, and what was wrong with just putting on another bearskin like when I was a lad? The first coracle maker probably got a lot of abuse as well. 'The youngsters wont learn to swim if we all paddle about in these fancy new coracles,' they probably said. 'Lets put a Lister SR2 in there instead. Like the good old days.' ETA- I'm not claiming here that the fossil record shows evidence of Lister engines existing before coracles. It's just a theory at the moment.

This is Jedi level stuff. Personally I read the body language of oncoming boaters- if their head twitches slightly to the left, it means they're about steer left. If they raise a G+T, pull in and get out of their way. They taught us this sort of thing in the CIA, but I'm not allowed to talk about it unless I kill you- and I couldn't kill a hound.

Tbh when sharing a double lock with a boat that has a few crew, I always make a point of asking people in advance what they want me to do in the locks. Sometimes they'll say 'just stay on the boat', and sometimes they prefer some help- which is fine of course. And I'll quite happily work the double locks if there are a significantly older couple who seem a bit hesitant, or complete newbies . But if someone just flatly refused to leave their boat- and especially with a crew- I'd probably back out of the lock, or not enter it. I'd tell them I'd changed my mind and was going to moor up short of the lock for a while.

The challenge was that the Valences I have dont have an internal BMS, and I felt I needed high-voltage and low-voltage disconnects to protect them in the very unlikely event that something ever went wrong with the MPPTs or the B2Bs. So that was why I got two of the BMV712s. And as emergency disconnects, they haven't been triggered yet in 18 months of use, apart from the odd test. The controversial element was the third BMV712 that I use to monitor SOC. At the time I was doing the installing, all the info I was reading described how long the batteries would last, and it was based on different charging regimes- and all of these regimes were measured via SoC. The graphs I could see seemed to show that the longest lifespan would be achieved if you cycled the batteries (mostly anyway) between 25-75% on a day to day basis. I decided that 30-80% would still give excellent longevity, so my thoughts were focused on ways that I could make this happen, and I knew a BMV712 could monitor SoC, so I took the plunge and got one to use. I didnt stop to consider that that a charge profile set correctly could manage the day-to-day charging just as well. I had used a charging profile to try to control my A2B charging (from alternator to lithiums via a lead acid), and as you can imagine it didnt work at all. Not only did the alternator get too hot during the tests, but more worryingly, the A2B let the batteries go to 14.8v and beyond, and in my ignorance I very nearly ruined my batteries. So after that I was a bit sceptical about how safe it was to rely on any charger to manage the battery voltage safely during charging. I didnt realise that a B2B or MPPT is a totally different beast to an A2B when charging lithiums. Plus, I basically had tunnel vision about SoC being the thing to monitor, so I set up this system where the BMV712 tells the MPPTs and the B2Bs to switch off when the SoC gets to the daily target value of 80%. I wasnt very clear at the time how much the SoC can drift over a few weeks, but there was one occasion the SoC was so inaccurate that I thought my batteries were up to 80% when in fact they were at 95%. The lesson for me there was that voltage has to be the most reliable guide about the battery state. Unlike SoC it is not a derived/calculated value, and when it gets high, you know you have an issue. Voltage doesn't lie, I guess you could say. Having put the SoC management system in, I've left it, and it has a couple of minor advantages, but what I always do when looking at SoC is to also look at voltage. The voltage and SoC should correspond (taking account of current draw lowering the voltage, and vice versa), so if I see them not corresponding, I know I have an issue with the SoC and it needs recalibrating. But thats only part of the heath robinson story. Because my domestic alternator is rubbish and cant put out more than 35 amps without overheating (at tickover anyway), I've also ended up with an overly complex winter/engine charging system, that uses no less than four B2Bs in order to drag every possible amp out of both alternators, without overheating them. As I said, at tickover my domestic alternator can give about 35 amps safely, but if I rev up to 1300 rpm say, it can give an extra 10-15 amps and still stay relatively cool. So to get this extra power from them, I connected an extra (lower power) B2B to each alternator. So the process now is that when doing a static engine charge during the winter, I run the engine at 1300rpm, switch on the extra two B2Bs, and I can get a combined 90-95 amps charge from the two alternators, so my charging is completed more quickly. All this was to work around the limitations of crappy alternators, but to paraphrase Macbeth, I was so far steeped in B2Bs, that it was easier to carry on with them. Four B2Bs is verging on ridiculous, and I'm certainly not going to try and justify it by the extra amps I squeeze out of the alternators. The only thing I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, and it kept me from being on the streets mugging pensioners.