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Wrecked narrowboats


Mike8811

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5 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

They are wider too, giving you a much more usable interior. Narrowboats are only narrow because of a bunch of 18th century engineers getting together in the pub, having a few too many bottles of port each and deciding that 7' was the best width for their new canal.

There must have been a reason why they built the locks 7 feet 7 inches wide other than bottles of port. I know why railways were built four feet eight and five eighths inches gauge.

but the reason for the narrow canals' gauge defeats me.

Especially when Brindley set out the Duke's canal at over fifteen feet. 

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15 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

There must have been a reason why they built the locks 7 feet 7 inches wide other than bottles of port. I know why railways were built four feet eight and five eighths inches gauge.

but the reason for the narrow canals' gauge defeats me.

Especially when Brindley set out the Duke's canal at over fifteen feet. 

Yaay, going off topic! The Duke of Bridgewater had narrower "starvationer" boats going underground in to the coal mines. Not the Duke himself of course, that was done by miners. He just got most of the money they made. Might have been the inspiration. The other may have been the Harecastle tunnel on the T&M, which was the first long canal tunnel in the UK and at the time one of the most challenging civil engineering projects since the Romans had left. A smaller tunnel is easier and cheaper to dig than a wide one.

Jen

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21 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

There must have been a reason why they built the locks 7 feet 7 inches wide other than bottles of port.

they got the tallest bloke in the pub to lay down with his arms above his head, measured him, job done ;) 

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3 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

And you can get a 20 foot container much cheaper than a wreck of a boat.

Ebay shows quite a few at around £1000, + delivery will be much simpler as they can be handled by a standard truck with a hiab.

 

40 foot also available.

A 40ft box is often cheaper than 20ft,  lots more of them and less demand by builders  for secure storage, site huts etc but more of a problem to transport. Personal  experience shows that you can  get a lot of "stuff" in a 40ft container  or  use as a large office space, canteen and so on. An empty steel 40ft weighs about 2500kg. Some insulated GRP or aluminium boxes , used for fruit transport can be got, complete with heating/cooling plant  and are cheap as they are not so secure as steel

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15 hours ago, Mike8811 said:

Thanks to the useful replies so far, to the click bait comment, I have been planning to build a garden office for a while and the idea of using a boat came into my head, if you can live on one then why not a office, with a toilet and kitchenette area for making tea and coffee etc? I’ve already run a water supply and electricity to the out buildings it would be near and there is sewage pipes in close proximity.

how tall are narrowboats out of water? Permitted development allows up to 2.5 meters height if you are within a 2 meters of a boundary, but like someone said I could overcome this by digging down having it semi buried.

the main issue would be getting it into the garden in the first place, but the one at the school looks great, so I don’t believe it would be an eyesore anyway.

i have a good relationship with my neighbours and I would discuss my idea with them.

 

You are right about permitted development height limits, and a narrowboat from hull to roof would be less than this.  However, it's not quite that simple:

 

1.  Some properties don't have permitted development rights.  Especially those built within the last 30 years or so.  You might want to check.

2.  This boat/office would be an outbuilding.  To be classed as permitted development, an outbuilding would need to be considered to be 'reasonably required'.  This means that you may have to demonstrate that you are unable to provide office space within your existing house.  I'd contact your local authority on this.

 

3.  Anything which has to be craned over house would not necessarily be considered a temporary structure.

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Sounds like a good idea to me.

 

People on this forum will always list all the negative reasons why it might be difficult or why you shouldn't do it. That's fair enough as it's good to be informed, but if you really want to do it then you shouldn't let that stop you.

 

As others have said, if you take the floor up, remove the ballast and chop the narrowboat up into sections then you might not need a crane at all. It could easily be welded or even bolted back together with mastiked joints using something like Stixall. One thing I would want to do is sit it on blocks to prevent the baseplate rotting through if it's just sat on the ground.

 

 

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24 minutes ago, blackrose said:

Sounds like a good idea to me.

 

People on this forum will always list all the negative reasons why it might be difficult or why you shouldn't do it. That's fair enough as it's good to be informed, but if you really want to do it then you shouldn't let that stop you.

 

As others have said, if you take the floor up, remove the ballast and chop the narrowboat up into sections then you might not need a crane at all. It could easily be welded or even bolted back together with mastiked joints using something like Stixall. One thing I would want to do is sit it on blocks to prevent the baseplate rotting through if it's just sat on the ground.

 

 

Of you’re going to cut it up into small pieces then weld it back together why not go the whole hog and buy some sheet metal and start from scratch ?

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On 18/01/2021 at 11:31, Tim Lewis said:

Or if you are into historic boats ?

 

 

IMG_7996_2.jpg

There was a film once on TV about the chap with Perch rebuilding her in his back garden - as Tims picture shows.  The back end and engine room are in that shed.

 

 

 

Edited by jake_crew
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We looked into this to set up an AirBNB type accommodation in the garden but after looking around it was fairly obvious that any boat that was floating was out of the price range of what you really wanted to pay for something sat in the garden, and anything within budget was a absolute wreck and would take too much work to get up to any standard.

 

However, someone locally has started selling restored railway wagons to use as home offices which I've very tempted by...

 

http://www.harriscabinetmaker.co.uk/index.php/2-uncategorised/25-vintage-railway-carriage-1951-for-sale

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, IanM said:

We looked into this to set up an AirBNB type accommodation in the garden but after looking around it was fairly obvious that any boat that was floating was out of the price range of what you really wanted to pay for something sat in the garden, and anything within budget was a absolute wreck and would take too much work to get up to any standard.

 

Well these people have done it but its floating https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7796491/Escape-Chateau-Dick-Angel-transform-40-year-old-barge.html

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