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New build or nearly new close-enough?


jetzi

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47 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

That pipe is the outlet for the fan that has to run 24/7/365 to stop your bathroom smelling like a farmyard due to the desiccating toilet.

 

The thing that was concerning me most about this boat was the sheer lack of storage space for all the buckets of poo that you would need to be keeping standing around for 6 months while they turned into compost. So I'm very pleased to hear you'd keep the cassette! 

 

 

 

Welcome back Mike! 👍

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22 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Just for your edification - a 41 page thread on the subject - quite heated at times and as a result at least one composter has left the forum.

 

 

 

Ok thanks. Having random-dip-sampled that thread I see nothing more needs to be said.

 

 

 

Edited by MtB
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17 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

 

But if it only takes 10 hp to propel the boat, it doesnt matter if that is coming from a 10hp engine or a 50hp engine you will still only need cooling as for a 10hp engine.

 

Actually Alan it only takes a couple of Kws to power a narrowboat and 3.3Kws to power my widebeam 

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26 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Actually Alan it only takes a couple of Kws to power a narrowboat and 3.3Kws to power my widebeam 

Until you get on a river going upstream... 😉

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7 minutes ago, IanD said:

Until you get on a river going upstream... 😉

 

Yes the power probably rises with the square (or perhaps it's the cube?) of the boat's water speed.

 

And vice versa, so very low speeds take trivial amounts of power. Remember that NB with the bicycle rigged up to power the prop? Even that goes along, though very slowly. 

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I dont understand how VAT affects the value of second hand narrow boats. Obviously,most boat builders will be VAT registered. All new boats will be subject to 20%VAT unless the builder is not registered or the boat qualified as a house boat. All(most) hire boat operators will be VAT registered,so they can re-claim Vat. Private buyers will normaly have to stump up 20% VAT. I assume that very few private buyers will be able to re-claim VAT. So,does the Vat element of a second hand boat disappear on sale by first owner or does it disappear gradualy as the value of the boat diminishes?

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

Until you get on a river going upstream... 😉

Ian I am on rivers all the time, whilst it might take more power its not enough to worry about and if it's full of fresh you shouldn't be cruising anyway 

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13 minutes ago, nebulae said:

I dont understand how VAT affects the value of second hand narrow boats. Obviously,most boat builders will be VAT registered. All new boats will be subject to 20%VAT unless the builder is not registered or the boat qualified as a house boat. All(most) hire boat operators will be VAT registered,so they can re-claim Vat. Private buyers will normaly have to stump up 20% VAT. I assume that very few private buyers will be able to re-claim VAT. So,does the Vat element of a second hand boat disappear on sale by first owner or does it disappear gradualy as the value of the boat diminishes?

The value of a second hand boat depends on the market and what someone is prepared to pay for it. It could be less or more than originally paid. And much harder to value than say a second hand car, due to the limited market and diversity of boats for sale. So I don’t think it’s useful to try to work out how the VAT originally paid is factored into a second hand price.

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20 minutes ago, nebulae said:

I dont understand how VAT affects the value of second hand narrow boats.

 

VAT doesn't affect the value of second hand boats. With a few rare exceptions VAT is not charged on second hand boats, so it can't.

 

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15 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Ian I am on rivers all the time, whilst it might take more power its not enough to worry about and if it's full of fresh you shouldn't be cruising anyway 

All fine unless you don't have any choice because you can't wait, not everyone is retired and liveaboard like you 😉

 

When I went up the Trent it wasn't even on yellow boards but thanks to the rain there was a significant current, maybe 2-3mph. As MtB says power goes up with cube of rpm and speed over water, 3kW/4bhp in still water (we've had this debate endlessly, please don't start it again!) ends up being several times more to maintain speed upstream -- going by rpm I estimate I was using between a third and half of full power on a Beta 38, still perfectly safe with plenty in reserve.

 

Please don't say "Ah, but any experienced boater will plan for the tides" -- how do you plan for the torrential rains we've been having recently (and that I had on the Trent)?

Edited by IanD
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14 minutes ago, IanD said:

All fine unless you don't have any choice because you can't wait, not everyone is retired and liveaboard like you 😉

 

When I went up the Trent it wasn't even on yellow boards but thanks to the rain there was a significant current, maybe 2-3mph. As MtB says power goes up with cube of rpm and speed over water, 3kW/4bhp in still water (we've had this debate endlessly, please don't start it again!) ends up being several times more to maintain speed upstream -- going by rpm I estimate I was using between a third and half of full power on a Beta 38, still perfectly safe with plenty in reserve.

 

Please don't say "Ah, but any experienced boater will plan for the tides" -- how do you plan for the torrential rains we've been having recently (and that I had on the Trent)?

Simple look at the weather forecast? Ian I have been on rivers all my boating life so I have learnt what a bit of rope on your prop can do or a tyre, control is lost a100 hp cant help you so when the forecast is naff I dont travel. Dropping an anchor could be unsafe if you have started to turn. boats end up on weirs or over them if they are unlucky, nothing is that urgent that I will travel when lots of fresh is in the river.

The worse situation I got onto with my diesel was going through Gainsborough before one of the bridges we got rubbish caught on the prop lost all power and swiped a bridge! in a narrowboat it would have been game over, the boat behind saw our bottom, thats what 10 meter tides can do, the boat still has the large dent in the side!

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1 minute ago, peterboat said:

Simple look at the weather forecast? Ian I have been on rivers all my boating life so I have learnt what a bit of rope on your prop can do or a tyre, control is lost a100 hp cant help you so when the forecast is naff I dont travel. Dropping an anchor could be unsafe if you have started to turn. boats end up on weirs or over them if they are unlucky, nothing is that urgent that I will travel when lots of fresh is in the river.

The worse situation I got onto with my diesel was going through Gainsborough before one of the bridges we got rubbish caught on the prop lost all power and swiped a bridge! in a narrowboat it would have been game over, the boat behind saw our bottom, thats what 10 meter tides can do, the boat still has the large dent in the side!

Peter, please read what I said -- not everybody has flexible schedules like you and can afford to wait a day or two, and no amount of reading a weather forecast will change this. The currents I was travelling against were perfectly safe (not even yellow boards, I wouldn't dream of moving when it's not safe) but nevertheless needed far more power than in still water to make progress.

 

I suggest you put yourself in other people's shoes sometimes instead of assuming that because you can do something (run on solar all summer, use a compost toilet properly, put off travelling, drive a BEV for free...) they can too...

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54 minutes ago, nebulae said:

I dont understand how VAT affects the value of second hand narrow boats. Obviously,most boat builders will be VAT registered. All new boats will be subject to 20%VAT unless the builder is not registered or the boat qualified as a house boat. All(most) hire boat operators will be VAT registered,so they can re-claim Vat. Private buyers will normaly have to stump up 20% VAT. I assume that very few private buyers will be able to re-claim VAT. So,does the Vat element of a second hand boat disappear on sale by first owner or does it disappear gradualy as the value of the boat diminishes?

VAT is irrelevant in this case. Most new boats are sold to consumers who have to pay the VAT inclusive price (unless the builder is a small enough business not to be VAT registered). So that is the price of a new boat. Second hand boat prices are subject to the laws of supply and demand, but are inevitably benchmarked against the (VAT-inclusive) price of a new boat. Since there is no VAT on most second hand boat sales, then VAT doesn't really affect second hand prices.

A VAT registered business selling a second hand boat they own will have to charge VAT (but will have reclaimed the VAT paid if/when the boat was bought new), but the price including VAT is what the market perceives and that determines the value. i.e. the VAT-exclusive price is depressed by the amount of VAT chargeable.

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4 minutes ago, IanD said:

Peter, please read what I said -- not everybody has flexible schedules like you and can afford to wait a day or two, and no amount of reading a weather forecast will change this. The currents I was travelling against were perfectly safe (not even yellow boards, I wouldn't dream of moving when it's not safe) but nevertheless needed far more power than in still water to make progress.

 

I suggest you put yourself in other people's shoes sometimes instead of assuming that because you can do something (run on solar all summer, use a compost toilet properly, put off travelling, drive a BEV for free...) they can too...

Ian in all my boating days I would not dream of pushing the tide like you did for the reasons I have outlined plus the waste of fuel

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13 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Ian in all my boating days I would not dream of pushing the tide like you did for the reasons I have outlined plus the waste of fuel

The tide was a couple of knots, it was perfectly safe (no yellows), and I needed to get up the river that day to get back to the boatyard in two days time, having been delayed earlier in the trip (Leicester Ring) by flooding on the Soar. Other boats were doing exactly the same thing, so I wasn't alone.

 

What would you have done?

 

If you were Doctor Who you could have jumped into a time machine, gone back a week, and chosen a completely different cruising route -- but how would you have known what was going to happen to the weather a week later when the Met office didn't?

Edited by IanD
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9 hours ago, MtB said:

That pipe is the outlet for the fan that has to run 24/7/365 to stop your bathroom smelling like a farmyard due to the desiccating toilet.

I accept that the composting toilet needs ventilation, but as it was a new fitout you'd think they could have hidden the pipe.

 

 

9 hours ago, MtB said:

The thing that was concerning me most about this boat was the sheer lack of storage space for all the buckets of poo that you would need to be keeping standing around for 6 months while they turned into compost. So I'm very pleased to hear you'd keep the cassette! 


I highly doubt most composters keep their poo 6 months when there are hedgerows for it to be buried (or strewn) in all along the canals. I strongly dislike having large quantities of poo on my boat, if nothing else it's a collosal "waste" of space. Emptying the elsan isn't exactly a nice job but honestly I can't see that it's that much worse than dealing with a pump out tank (an odour from which I have smelled on all boats with a pump out I have been on so far). And it seems significantly better than dealing with buckets of half composted faeces.

For what it's worth I think composting toilets would be great if you have somewhere on land to do the composting. If you are a continuous moorer like me then you won't have that luxury.

 

 

6 hours ago, nebulae said:

I dont understand how VAT affects the value of second hand narrow boats. Obviously,most boat builders will be VAT registered. All new boats will be subject to 20%VAT unless the builder is not registered or the boat qualified as a house boat. All(most) hire boat operators will be VAT registered,so they can re-claim Vat. Private buyers will normaly have to stump up 20% VAT. I assume that very few private buyers will be able to re-claim VAT. So,does the Vat element of a second hand boat disappear on sale by first owner or does it disappear gradualy as the value of the boat diminishes?

I should think that having to pay VAT is one of the reasons that a new build should have to be more expensive than a secondhand.

 

6 hours ago, nicknorman said:

The value of a second hand boat depends on the market and what someone is prepared to pay for it. It could be less or more than originally paid. And much harder to value than say a second hand car, due to the limited market and diversity of boats for sale. So I don’t think it’s useful to try to work out how the VAT originally paid is factored into a second hand price.

If it's really the case, as it seems a number of people are suggesting, that you can get a new boat for a similar price as a second hand one, then I am definitely going to commision a build. It seems that you have little to lose?

 

6 hours ago, IanD said:

going by rpm I estimate I was using between a third and half of full power on a Beta 38, still perfectly safe with plenty in reserve.

I haven't spent much time on rivers but my Beta 38 feels like it would be enough propulsion in any conditions I'd dare boat in. But for me it's about the generation capacity of my small engine. I have a 75A alternator and I have it on good authority that's the biggest I can reasonably go. I do have a 40A starter alternator that I am going to look at parallelising this winter to try to get more out of the engine. But the Fischer-Pander diesel generators I like the look of are rated at 6.5kW - that's 540A at 12V! - and all of that in a smaller, more efficient, quieter, and easier to maintain package. What's not to like?

 

Most of my engine running is for power generation, not cruising, so it makes more sense to me to get a powerplant that is suited for the primary purpose - electricity generation - than the secondary one, propulsion.

 

5 hours ago, David Mack said:

Second hand boat prices are subject to the laws of supply and demand, but are inevitably benchmarked against the (VAT-inclusive) price of a new boat.

 

Makes sense to me. But, benchmarked minus a chunk of depreciation based on the fact that a secondhand boat is going to have some wear and never 100% exactly what you would have specced.

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13 minutes ago, jetzi said:

 If it's really the case, as it seems a number of people are suggesting, that you can get a new boat for a similar price as a second hand one, then I am definitely going to commision a build. It seems that you have little to lose?

 

That wasn’t really what I meant. A new boat suffers a fair old depreciation in the first few years, then the depreciation rate tails off. In the meantime, inflation is having the opposite effect and can overtake the slow depreciation rate of an older boat. So a 30 year old boat (kept in good condition) might sell for more in terms of numbers of £ than the original owner paid to have it built 30 years ago. Of course those £ are now worth considerably less.

 

That said, yes you can have a new build for less than the price of a second hand one, but the new build will be cheaply made poor quality and the second hand one a good quality boat. In my opinion it is far better to get a second hand boat high quality boat rather than a brand new cheaply made one.

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33 minutes ago, jetzi said:

  But for me it's about the generation capacity of my small engine. I have a 75A alternator and I have it on good authority that's the biggest I can reasonably go. I do have a 40A starter alternator that I am going to look at parallelising this winter to try to get more out of the engine. But the Fischer-Pander diesel generators I like the look of are rated at 6.5kW - that's 540A at 12V! - and all of that in a smaller, more efficient, quieter, and easier to maintain package. What's not to like?

A Beta 43 has a 175A alternator as standard (and a 45A engine alternator) and you can add a Travelpower, either 3.5kw or 5kw. We have the 3.5 kw and it works pretty well. Of course you will have to get from 3.5kw of mains power, to low voltage dc for battery charging (same applies to the Panda genny). We have a Mastervolt 12 2500/100 ie 100A charging capability. So we have the capability to charge at 275A, and more with a bigger or second charger (using more of the Travelpower’s 3.5kw).

 

Although having a separate generator does give you redundancy, it is a lot of extra cost and space bearing in mind the extreme reliability of the Beta (Kubota) engines and multiple charge sources contained therein (2 alternators + Travelpower).

Edited by nicknorman
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23 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

That wasn’t really what I meant. A new boat suffers a fair old depreciation in the first few years, then the depreciation rate tails off. In the meantime, inflation is having the opposite effect and can overtake the slow depreciation rate of an older boat. So a 30 year old boat (kept in good condition) might sell for more in terms of numbers of £ than the original owner paid to have it built 30 years ago. Of course those £ are now worth considerably less.

 

That said, yes you can have a new build for less than the price of a second hand one, but the new build will be cheaply made poor quality and the second hand one a good quality boat. In my opinion it is far better to get a second hand boat high quality boat rather than a brand new cheaply made one.

 

Right, yeah one has to compare apples and apples.

 

If one was going to make a stab at a guess, how much less is a given boat worth say a year after a new build compared with what was paid for it? 30%?

 

9 hours ago, peterboat said:

Actually Alan it only takes a couple of Kws to power a narrowboat and 3.3Kws to power my widebeam 

 

Since the generation of the electricity is so much more efficient by a generator than an engine, and since you spend so much time stopped in locks or passing boats at below the engine's optimally efficient cruisng speed, I'm convinced that converting kinetic to electric and back to kinetic isn't really that much less efficient. Combined with the fact that you can run the engine from solar when it's available, I believe you'll end up using less diesel with a diesel-electric drive than a big old Beta 43 or 50 engine.

 

 

 

12 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

Although having a separate generator does give you redundancy, it is a lot of extra cost and space bearing in mind the extreme reliability of the Beta (Kubota) engines and multiple charge sources contained therein (2 alternators + Travelpower).

 

I'd not have both a generator and engine. I'd only get a generator paired with electric drive. I realise that there would be some loss stepping the generator down to low voltage DC. I think most of the DC motors used for drive are 48V or 60V so I imagine a battery bank at a higher voltage than usual should help reduce the losses.

Edited by jetzi
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2 minutes ago, jetzi said:

  

 

Right, yeah one has to compare apples and apples.

 

If one was going to make a stab at a guess, how much less is a given boat worth say a year after a new build compared with what was paid for it? 30%?

 

 

Since the generation of the electricity is so much more efficient by a generator than an engine, and since you spend so much time stopped in locks or passing boats at below the engine's optimally efficient cruisng speed, I'm convinced that converting kinetic to electric and back to diesel isn't really that much less efficient. Combined with the fact that you can run the engine from solar when it's available, I believe you'll end up using less diesel with a diesel-electric drive than a big old Beta 43 or 50 engine.

 

 

 

 

I'd not have both a generator and engine. I'd only get a generator paired with electric drive. I realise that there would be some loss stepping the generator down to low voltage DC. I think most of the DC motors used for drive are 48V or 60V so I imagine a battery bank at a higher voltage than usual should help reduce the losses.

Yup 48 volts dc motor, 48 volts batteries and a 48 volt victron quattro inverter/charger, 6kw genny which will also heat water, wots not to like? Of course as much solar as you can fit on the roof 

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10 minutes ago, jetzi said:

 

Since the generation of the electricity is so much more efficient by a generator than an engine, and since you spend so much time stopped in locks or passing boats at below the engine's optimally efficient cruisng speed, I'm convinced that converting kinetic to electric and back to kinetic isn't really that much less efficient. Combined with the fact that you can run the engine from solar when it's available, I believe you'll end up using less diesel with a diesel-electric drive than a big old Beta 43 or 50 engine.

 

I'd not have both a generator and engine. I'd only get a generator paired with electric drive. I realise that there would be some loss stepping the generator down to low voltage DC. I think most of the DC motors used for drive are 48V or 60V so I imagine a battery bank at a higher voltage than usual should help reduce the losses.


Ah yes I see your point. When hybrids or diesel-electric used lead acid batteries I alway thought it was a bit dodgy, but with Li batteries being like a “bucket for electricity” and having much higher power efficiency, it starts to make more sense.

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2 hours ago, nicknorman said:


Ah yes I see your point. When hybrids or diesel-electric used lead acid batteries I alway thought it was a bit dodgy, but with Li batteries being like a “bucket for electricity” and having much higher power efficiency, it starts to make more sense.

The numbers I plugged in said that if all the power came from the generator and allowing for all losses, an electric (series hybrid) boat will use about 40% less fuel than a diesel boat with a typical mix of cruising and locks -- about 14kWh/day energy consumption was the estimate. If some power comes from solar (about 7kWh/day typical in summer for a narrowboat) the saving increases to 70%. If you only cruise every other day, the generator isn't needed at all in summer. All of which is for propulsion only, ignoring other domestic loads.

 

However the fuel cost saving is swamped by the higher installation cost compared to diesel, whether it's a new system or a secondhand roll-your-own one. Silent cruising with no noise or vibration or diesel fumes plus the capacity to support any normal household electrical stuff are the real reasons for doing it, plus the option in future to run from charging points when these become available. Lower emissions are a bonus if you're green-minded, but in reality the savings are negligible compared to cars because there are so many of them.

 

But you have to be willing to pay the premium -- including LiFePO4 batteries and a 10kVA generator inverter/charger, you're looking at a minimum of £20k extra (over the cost of a conventional diesel) for a new installation, or more if you don't cut corners and penny-pinch. DIY/secondhand kit is cheaper, but then so is a secondhand diesel, the cost is still a lot higher.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of electric boats and am having one built, but I'm being honest about the realities and costs involved 😉

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