Advice on buying a liveaboard

[doratheexplorer]

2 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

There is, or certainly was, a panel on the market that's surface was 'pimply', it being claimed that the tiny pimples grabbed light from shallow angles that might otherwise have bounced off of the surface of a smooth flat sheet. I suppose it might have helped a bit, but nothing like as well as lifting the panel so the sun's rays are perpendicular to the surface.

 

When you live, as my wife and I did, off grid, you soon learn that electrical power is far easier to save than to generate, particularly in the winter.

I don't agree with this.  Saving it could mean I lose my job. It also means I have to make choices about what I want to do.  Generating it is a doddle.

 

Consider: it's winter.  It's been a grey day and my batteries aren't anywhere near fully charged.  I fancy relaxing by watching a film in the evening.  Do I:  a) not watch the film), or b ) stick my genny on for a bit?

[Bargebuilder]

21 minutes ago, IanD said:

It will make a difference in December (when the sun is shining) if you're *really* desperate for every last watt; tilting (assuming you can face the panels south) improves the output from terrible to just awful...

 

Also it only makes a significant difference when the sun is shining, which is not that common in December -- when it's cloudy the light is diffuse and panel angle makes almost no difference.

I agree with almost everything you say, in fact they are mostly points I've already made.

 

For a true off gridder as we were, of course every watt of output was important.

 

We became very aware of the weather and I can tell you that crisp sunny days are surprisingly common in December, and tilting ones panels makes the most of the solar energy on those days.

 

Since we coped (just) with the output of 4x 235w tilted panels in an open spot, there can be no doubt that with 4x 330w panels and a similar setup to ours other people could to. That certainly doesn't mean I wouldn't have a nice little Honda generator secreted in a locker somewhere for emergencies.

[Bargebuilder]

7 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

I don't agree with this.  Saving it could mean I lose my job. It also means I have to make choices about what I want to do.  Generating it is a doddle.

 

Consider: it's winter.  It's been a grey day and my batteries aren't anywhere near fully charged.  I fancy relaxing by watching a film in the evening.  Do I:  a) not watch the film), or b ) stick my genny on for a bit?

Our rather large TV was on pretty much all day and up until midnight during the dark winter months, so I see no reason why you should have to make such a choice. In addition, my wife's laptop was being used all the time, so spent a lot of time on charge. 

 

We had to be beyond desperate to fire up our incredibly noisy diesel generator, in fact on the few occasions we did use it, we would set it going and go out for a walk! I can assure you we hardly ever used it. If lack of power had been a real concern, we would have bought a little almost silent Honda petrol generator for emergencies, but in the event, we didn't need to.

[doratheexplorer]

1 hour ago, Bargebuilder said:

Our rather large TV was on pretty much all day and up until midnight during the dark winter months, so I see no reason why you should have to make such a choice. In addition, my wife's laptop was being used all the time, so spent a lot of time on charge. 

 

We had to be beyond desperate to fire up our incredibly noisy diesel generator, in fact on the few occasions we did use it, we would set it going and go out for a walk! I can assure you we hardly ever used it. If lack of power had been a real concern, we would have bought a little almost silent Honda petrol generator for emergencies, but in the event, we didn't need to.

An efficient 32" tv will be about 60 watts, or 5 amps.  If you really are running it "all day" (say 10 hours), that's 50ah (not accounting for losses).  An efficient 240v fridge is about 40 ah per day when the inverter draw is included.  Laptop being used "all the time" let's guess at 15ah.  That makes a total of 105ah not including lights, pumps and other sundry things.  As a rough guess you might have been taking 120ah per day (including losses in the system).  In December you're looking at about 8 hours of day light, of which the first and last will be next to nothing.  So 6 hours of usable daylight.  That means your solar would have had to be AVERAGING 20 amps throughout that day on any given day.  On sunny days it would have to be more like averaging 30 amps or more to make up for dull days, at noon I presume it was putting out over 40a, which would be the sort of output to be happy with in summer.  This kind of output for under 1000w of panels in mid-winter flies in the face of everything known about solar panel output.  You really should have put yourselves forward for some kind of scientific study! 

 

There's another thread currently running where the consensus of advice is it's not worth having a controller of more than 15a for a 380w solar set up.  And that's true.  It's fairly rare that in summer, the current produced would exceed 15a.  By the same token a 940w system would rarely exceed 40a and a 50a controller would be plenty.  But you're indicating that you were regularly getting 30a+ in mid-winter.  As I say, you should have got those magical panels inspected by an expert. Or was your boat moored in the Bahamas?

[Alan Gawthorpe]

Op here.  Wow, didn't realise solar would be so contentious 🙂 Lots of food for thought. Thank you.

 

I have a follow-up question.  I'll need fairly reliable internet for my work.  I see that you can get aerials, etc to get a stronger 4G signal but I am coming to the conclusion after traveling around various marinas in the NW that I'll need to stick close to population centres to have any hope of a reliable 4G signal when working.

 

I'm also planning on investigation satellite but I think that is relatively new and not yet reliable.

 

What are people's thoughts on this - agree with the above?

 

 

[IanD]

18 minutes ago, Alan Gawthorpe said:

Op here.  Wow, didn't realise solar would be so contentious 🙂 Lots of food for thought. Thank you.

 

I have a follow-up question.  I'll need fairly reliable internet for my work.  I see that you can get aerials, etc to get a stronger 4G signal but I am coming to the conclusion after traveling around various marinas in the NW that I'll need to stick close to population centres to have any hope of a reliable 4G signal when working.

 

I'm also planning on investigation satellite but I think that is relatively new and not yet reliable.

 

What are people's thoughts on this - agree with the above?

 

 

Satellite (Starlink) is available and very fast but is expensive (£440 + £89/month) and power-hungry (~100W), you've got to *really* want/need high-speed access to justify it -- maybe a business would think it was worth it, it's expensive for private use. Also needs a reasonably clear sky view, which may not always be available when moored. People (with deep pockets) who've used it seem to be very happy with it.

 

To get really reliable coverage you might need both this and a 4G/5G router connected as an aggregated link, so one or both are used depending on signal strength and speed -- the chances of having no reception on both at the same time should be pretty slim. 4G/5G is good in towns where satellite could suffer (buildings, shadowing etc.), satellite is good in open country where 4G/5G coverage is poor, so they complement each other.

Edited August 11, 2021 by IanD

[David Mack]

Do you actually need 4G?

It has been suggested here before that you have at least two means of connecting to the internet, using different providers, so that the chances of at least one working are improved. 

I have found hotspotting on my phone, which is on the Three network, has been fine for ordinary web use including YouTube and zoom calls, but I have never needed to check whether that is adequate for more intensive use.

[IanD]

7 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Do you actually need 4G?

It has been suggested here before that you have at least two means of connecting to the internet, using different providers, so that the chances of at least one working are improved. 

I have found hotspotting on my phone, which is on the Three network, has been fine for ordinary web use including YouTube and zoom calls, but I have never needed to check whether that is adequate for more intensive use.

If you look at the coverage maps, areas which are poorly served (usually the countryside, where a lot of canals go) tend to be similar for all providers because none of them want to spend money erecting masts where there are hardly any customers. Different providers might help sometimes and have the benefit of being cheap to do, though ideally you'd again want to have both running at the same time and aggregate them which means two antennas and access points.

 

Some networks are undoubtedly better than others in remote areas (IIRC Three is one of the best) but none of them has comprehensive coverage over the canal network, especially the pretty bits.

 

Cheapest and least reliable option -- single access point with single SIM (you can swap SIMs but this is trial and error)

More expensive and more reliable -- dual access points with different SIMs + router which can aggregate them (or a dual-SIM access point that can use both at the same time -- do these exist?)

Much more expensive, much faster, most reliable, high power -- Starlink + 4G access point + aggregating router

 

You pays yer money and you takes yer choice...

Edited August 11, 2021 by IanD

[Bargebuilder]

4 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

An efficient 32" tv will be about 60 watts, or 5 amps.  If you really are running it "all day" (say 10 hours), that's 50ah (not accounting for losses).  An efficient 240v fridge is about 40 ah per day when the inverter draw is included.  Laptop being used "all the time" let's guess at 15ah.  That makes a total of 105ah not including lights, pumps and other sundry things.  As a rough guess you might have been taking 120ah per day (including losses in the system).  In December you're looking at about 8 hours of day light, of which the first and last will be next to nothing.  So 6 hours of usable daylight.  That means your solar would have had to be AVERAGING 20 amps throughout that day on any given day.  On sunny days it would have to be more like averaging 30 amps or more to make up for dull days, at noon I presume it was putting out over 40a, which would be the sort of output to be happy with in summer.  This kind of output for under 1000w of panels in mid-winter flies in the face of everything known about solar panel output.  You really should have put yourselves forward for some kind of scientific study! 

 

There's another thread currently running where the consensus of advice is it's not worth having a controller of more than 15a for a 380w solar set up.  And that's true.  It's fairly rare that in summer, the current produced would exceed 15a.  By the same token a 940w system would rarely exceed 40a and a 50a controller would be plenty.  But you're indicating that you were regularly getting 30a+ in mid-winter.  As I say, you should have got those magical panels inspected by an expert. Or was your boat moored in the Bahamas?

What a lot of effort you've put into trying to prove that what worked for my wife and I isn't possible. 

 

My barge is visible on Google earth, complete with its 4 solar panels at the end of a long path in the middle of a salt marsh, a long way from the nearest mains electricity and if you've got time on your hands, and that appears to be the case, you could visit it and ask my many friends on the marsh how long we lived aboard. 

 

I'm sorry that solar hasn't worked out for you, but I haven't the energy to keep replying to these pointless posts.

[ditchcrawler]

8 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

   I fancy relaxing by watching a film in the evening.  Do I:  a) not watch the film), or b ) stick my genny on for a bit?

So it was you I was moored opposite to the other night with a genny at 11pm when I went to bed.🥰

[doratheexplorer]

18 hours ago, Alan Gawthorpe said:

Op here.  Wow, didn't realise solar would be so contentious 🙂 Lots of food for thought. Thank you.

 

I have a follow-up question.  I'll need fairly reliable internet for my work.  I see that you can get aerials, etc to get a stronger 4G signal but I am coming to the conclusion after traveling around various marinas in the NW that I'll need to stick close to population centres to have any hope of a reliable 4G signal when working.

 

I'm also planning on investigation satellite but I think that is relatively new and not yet reliable.

 

What are people's thoughts on this - agree with the above?

 

 

Not my experience.  I cruise widely, and work from my boat, used to be on Three, now with Vodaphone.  There are some 'dead' patches, but they are usually only for a few hundred yards.  Easy enough to cruise on for a few minutes and use a speedcheck app to find a good place to moor.  I don't use any additional aerial, just tether to my phone which is put in the window.

13 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

So it was you I was moored opposite to the other night with a genny at 11pm when I went to bed.🥰

I never run my genny after 8.  Very rarely after 7. I tend to be an early riser anyway, often tucked in by just after 9.

Edited August 12, 2021 by doratheexplorer

[Richard10002]

If you work from your boat and connection is critical, you would find places with good connection and avoid those wher it is bad. If you want to stay in places deep in the countryside with poor connection, you can do that during holiday periods.

 

It's not rocket science.

[booke23]

20 hours ago, Alan Gawthorpe said:

I'm also planning on investigation satellite but I think that is relatively new and not yet reliable.

 

Satellite internet has actually been around for a while. It is very fast and is reliable but it has high latency (due to the 45,000 mile round trip the signal has to travel), so will probably make video calls very frustrating due to the delay. The latency would also rule out online gaming if that's your thing. 

[doratheexplorer]

6 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

If you work from your boat and connection is critical, you would find places with good connection and avoid those wher it is bad. If you want to stay in places deep in the countryside with poor connection, you can do that during holiday periods.

 

It's not rocket science.

True.  I suspect that most people who seem to think it's a massive problem, don't actually work from their boat.  Netflix recommend 3mbps to stream in SD.  In my experience 2mbps will do fine.  If you can stream Netflix then Zoom/Teams calls shouldn't be a problem, and that's probably the most data hungry thing you'll do in a working day.  It really isn't hard to find places with 5mbps even in remote locations.  2mbps can be found pretty much everywhere, except known blackspots.  I'd recommend EE or Vodafone (with the max data speed plan) over Three, as the speeds are better and more reliable.  I'm often amused seeing old-schoolers erecting enormous 20' tv aerials when they moor up, when I'm streaming in HD straight off my phone.

[IanD]

33 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Satellite internet has actually been around for a while. It is very fast and is reliable but it has high latency (due to the 45,000 mile round trip the signal has to travel), so will probably make video calls very frustrating due to the delay. The latency would also rule out online gaming if that's your thing. 

Starlink latency is much smaller (about 30ms) because the satellites are in low orbits (500-1000km) not geostationary.

[booke23]

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

Starlink latency is much smaller (about 30ms) because the satellites are in low orbits (500-1000km) not geostationary.

 

True, I didn't realise Starlink was operational already.  

[IanD]

26 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

True.  I suspect that most people who seem to think it's a massive problem, don't actually work from their boat.  Netflix recommend 3mbps to stream in SD.  In my experience 2mbps will do fine.  If you can stream Netflix then Zoom/Teams calls shouldn't be a problem, and that's probably the most data hungry thing you'll do in a working day.  It really isn't hard to find places with 5mbps even in remote locations.  2mbps can be found pretty much everywhere, except known blackspots.  I'd recommend EE or Vodafone (with the max data speed plan) over Three, as the speeds are better and more reliable.  I'm often amused seeing old-schoolers erecting enormous 20' tv aerials when they moor up, when I'm streaming in HD straight off my phone.

Of course this does depend what you're doing for work. If you're using any kind of remote file access/editing -- which we very often do for security reasons, the files are locked inside a secure company network which they never leave and accessed/edited remotely over VPN -- then anything less than 10Mbps is really painful, you really need 20Mbps-30Mbps to avoid noticeable delay, or even more when doing things like editing drawings/schematics. Zoom/Teams/Webex calls with a lot of participants also doesn't work very well, especially if you want to access something else while the call is on.

 

If you can do everything on local or downloaded files or use "simple" Zoom calls, then I agree that lower rates are OK.

[doratheexplorer]

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

the files are locked inside a secure company network which they never leave and accessed/edited remotely over VPN -- then anything less than 10Mbps is really painful, you really need 20Mbps-30Mbps to avoid noticeable delay, or even more when doing things like editing drawings/schematics.

This is exactly what I'm often doing.  It does lag a bit when my data speed is low, so I move what I need to work on onto my machine and edit it there, then move it back.  Works for me. 

 

Coincidentally, I'm at a friend's house today, so connected to their wifi.  In the same room as the router I get 20-30mbps.  But elsewhere in the house it drops to around 6-7mbps which is less than I'm often getting out on the cut on my phone.

[IanD]

22 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

This is exactly what I'm often doing.  It does lag a bit when my data speed is low, so I move what I need to work on onto my machine and edit it there, then move it back.  Works for me. 

 

Coincidentally, I'm at a friend's house today, so connected to their wifi.  In the same room as the router I get 20-30mbps.  But elsewhere in the house it drops to around 6-7mbps which is less than I'm often getting out on the cut on my phone.

We're not allowed to download sensitive files and work on them locally, they have to stay behind the company firewall -- it's not just a rule, it's actually impossible to do.

 

A lot of engineering software also isn't really designed to work over low rate data links... 😞

Edited August 12, 2021 by IanD

[IanD]

22 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

True, I didn't realise Starlink was operational already.  

It is and it's very fast, but it's expensive and power-hungry.

 

https://www.speedtest.net/insights/blog/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-performance-q2-2021/

 

"Starlink showed a much faster median download speed in the U.K. during Q2 2021 (108.30 Mbps) than the country's average for fixed broadband (50.14 Mbps). Starlink's upload speed was also slightly faster (15.64 Mbps vs. 14.76 Mbps), and the latency was pretty good, given the distance traveled (37 ms vs. 15 ms)."

[doratheexplorer]

My best ever 4G speed while on my boat was a couple of months ago.

 

If it's possible to get 275mbps on 4G it makes me wonder what the point of 5G is?

[IanD]

10 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

My best ever 4G speed while on my boat was a couple of months ago.

 

If it's possible to get 275mbps on 4G it makes me wonder what the point of 5G is?

Much bigger network capacity (data rate * number of users) compared to 4G. You can get high rates on 4G so long as you're near a basestation and there are not many other users. As soon as the number of users goes up a lot the radio network hits an overall capacity limit and the rate per user drops.

 

5G will give at least an order of magnitude more overall capacity once it is fully rolled out.

 

FYI I've been working on the network bandwidth requirements to 5G basestations for some time... 😉

Edited August 12, 2021 by IanD

[Rob-M]

1 hour ago, booke23 said:

 

Satellite internet has actually been around for a while. It is very fast and is reliable but it has high latency (due to the 45,000 mile round trip the signal has to travel), so will probably make video calls very frustrating due to the delay. The latency would also rule out online gaming if that's your thing. 

I'm just having this very conversation with someone now who is complaining about quality of Teams call over his high bandwidth satellite link but he isn't understanding that the 900ms ping is causing him performance issues.

[IanD]

Just now, Rob-M said:

I'm just having this very conversation with someone now who is complaining about quality of Teams call over his high bandwidth satellite link but he isn't understanding that the 900ms ping is causing him performance issues.

Not Starlink then... 😉

[booke23]

10 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

I'm just having this very conversation with someone now who is complaining about quality of Teams call over his high bandwidth satellite link but he isn't understanding that the 900ms ping is causing him performance issues.

 

Yes I can well imagine how people wouldn't understand, especially when they are getting very high download speeds. He will also be in for a world of pain of he ever tries VoIP phone calls!