booke23

That’s impressive!

West country accent?

Not strictly canal based but it does involve a lock! I was reading about the history of the USS White Sands, a mobile dry dock ship which was decommissioned in 1974. She was purchased by a ship building company to be used as a permanent dry dock in Lake Seattle, USA. This involved transiting an 80ft wide lock....the ship's beam was 81ft. The solution? Well they weighed down one side of the ship and transited the locks while listing 38 degrees. P.s I hope this doesn't give widebeam boaters any ideas!

Not tiny then. My narrowboat is 40ft and it currently has 400w of solar. I could easily double that to 800w and if I was happy to loose all the roof 1kw would be possible. But my boat has a big cabin for a 40 footer…..how much solar you can fit will depend on your cabin size and design (chimneys, pigeon boxes etc), and how much roof you are actually comfortable to loose as it’s handy for storage etc.

For the sake of the first time narrowboater OP......You'll need a battery bank at least double your daily usage, assuming it's a lead acid battery bank. So 440AH should do it. But with the kind of power usage you're talking about, you should consider LiFePO4 batteries as you can get away with a smaller battery bank....say 300AH. But that doesn't come that cheap. You'll probably want to install the maximum solar you can too..if you can get 1KW of solar on your boat it should keep up with those power requirements from May-September.

I have a 55inch oled tv in the house, it draws around 120 Watts. A PS5 draws up to 230 Watts. Using worst case figures if you play 4 hours a day, that's 117AH....say 150AH when you take into consideration inverter efficiency. Add in all your other power use (fridge,lights,water pump etc) and you're probably looking at over 200AH. That's a lot of power to generate every day.

You're right, but I fear the various voices of reason and caution in this thread are whistling into the wind. Just like most other posts like this, the OP has already made up their mind.

Even stretching to £25,000 will only get you a very low end steel narrowboat which would need work, so I'd definitely suggest you need to secure finance for a decent boat. £35,000 - £40,000 gets you a perfectly good albeit old boat. If you want anything built in the last 20 years that is suitable to live on, you're going to have to spend north of £50,000. Of course financing this sort of sum in addition to mooring fees/licence/boat maintenance/boat deprecation, will probably be close to what your current rent is. The sensible advice would be to use your cash deposit to buy a flat/house.....long term it's by far the better proposition then buy a boat as a hobby later...........But you only live once.

Good point.

150 amps at 13.8 volts is about 2kw or 2.7hp, so very similar to cruising at 3mph in most boats. Of course during charging 150 amps won't be generated for long, but it'll still be a significant load.

Yes, once you've planned the route go to preferences at the top of the page, then the planning tab. There it will let you put in the dimensions of your boat and it will plan the route accordingly.

Here's the chart from the Beta 43 manual. Notice the fuel consumption graph at the bottom....there is hardly any difference in hourly consumption between 800 and 1200 RPM, but likely a big difference in alternator output.

Canal plan says it's possible. 4 or 5 days cruising depending where you are on the Nene.

I've tried all three. Brazier is a bit rubbish and I wouldn't recommend. Very ashy and although cheap,, a false economy as you end up using more of it to get the same heat output of better coal. Homefire and ecoal are both good, in fact I'm using ecoal at the moment. Homefire is a bit hotter but more expensive.

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True.....and expensive when you get into rebuilding beds etc. Which is why I ultimately abandoned the idea myself.

That may well be, but when you're retrofitting as in the OP's case certain limitations come into play. In my case there are drawers under the bed on my boat which means the tank would have to go in the space behind the drawers along the port side which would result in a list.

Indeed. Mercifully in this day and age there should be a RCD (surely one of the most underrated and brilliant inventions of the 20th century!) somewhere that will save your life in most circumstances but by no means all and not to be relied on.

It's certainly feasible, I considered putting a plastic tank under the bed in my boat. However there were a few problems: I realised that due to the framework of the bed I'd only get an off the shelf 200 litre tank under there. If I had the bed rebuilt or commissioned a custom built tank I think 600 litres would have been possible but prices started spiraling when looking at these options. My plan would have been to arrange it as @David Mack suggests.....fill through the old tank connected to the plastic tank.....and draw off from the plastic tank. However the outlet on my stainless steel built in tank is 15mm, which would result in quite slow filling of the plastic tank. Probably ok if it was 200 litres but a pain if it was 600 litres. The bed is at one side of the boat, so the boat would list with a 600 litre tank. Less so with a 200 litre tank. So in the end I didn't bother. A big tank is definitely better if you're living aboard, simply to give you more time should you get iced in or break down. However when you're cruising around it doesn't matter so much as you're always passing water points.....and there is a school of thought that no matter how big your tank is, it is good to fill up perhaps every few days so you're not spending hours at a time filling. 900 litres takes a long time to come out of a garden hose!

CTC has just released an update video on this boat. I see they have a porti potty which they use for liquids and only actually use the incinerator toilet for solids.

In an ideal world a WIFI connected camera would be perfect. I imagine the blink has quite modest power requirements, but when you add in the power requirements of the WIFI it could get problematic. Of course everyone's setup is different. But my Huawei B535 4g wifi router draws 1 amp when it's running which in the middle of winter during cloudy weather, my solar just can't keep up with. When you factor in the blink subscription fee along with the 4g sim fee you can see why a covert wildlife camera might be an attractive choice.

It's not my belief or idle speculation, it's fact. There's a prolific guy who operates on the western K&A, steals between 6 and 8 a month and advertises his stolen goods on FB marketplace where he gets around £500 for each generator. Maybe I'm imagining that? 😂