Jump to content

Living on River Severn or Kennett & Avon


daveswoodensigns

Featured Posts

5 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Last time I checked it took an absolute minimum of 8 hours to charge a battery from 50% to (near as dammit) fully charged, often closer to 12. With a generator.

 

But in winter with only solar, I suspect the batts would never fully charge for the full three months. 

 

Definitely the case for FLA, maybe less so for lead-carbon, not the case for LFP 😉

 

Guess what batteries Solar Thames Boats use, going by their Facebook page? Clue; they're not the best (and most expensive) option... 😞

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, David Mack said:

The G&S on its own is probably too short for extended CCing without coming under the radar of the CRT enforcement officer,

 

Funny you should mention that :

 

Word Document :

 

Appeal :-

Mr and Mrs D are liveaboard boaters, based in Gloucester on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal (G&S). As they do not have a home mooring they are subject to the Trust’s continuous cruising requirements. The Trust was not satisfied with the boat’s cruising pattern and decided only to allow them, on renewal of the licence, to have a restricted six month licence.

CC Case Appeal Lost G&S Canal.docx

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, daveswoodensigns said:

Regarding the 100 KW of batteries I did mean to say 100 kWh, sorry for that. I am not an electrical engineer but I have rewired my own house and have seriously looked into new battery technology for a number of years. I have seen over the years appalling electrical installations by so called professional installers. How some of them ever passed their exams is beyond me.

 

 

Then just be aware that there are a huge amount of rules and regulations about fitting out a boat, and very specifically wiring standards and specifications - which are VASTLY different to house wiring regs, both in methods and types of cables used.

 

Wiring a 60 foot long sewer-tube with 12v DC wiring takes way more caculations that a 15 foot square room with 240v AC.

 

Happy to provide copies of the EN specifications for 'small craft' if you wish.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Countryfile  on BBC1 tonight is interesting all about the River Severn and how it floods.

Not somewhere I would want to be when its bad but I have done Diglis to Stourport with 2ft of fresh on the river ;)

 

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, daveswoodensigns said:

To all, thank you for your many comments. I guess that many of you will still be puffing out fumes and polluting our rivers and canals for decades to come.

 

Bye bye.

 

I've had a great idea. I'm gonna take the 220bhp V6 engine out of my van and fit a second hand washing machine motor instead. I'll connect it up to the battery and fit a solar panel on the roof to recharge it. Free motoring, I'm a GENIUS!! 

 

No negativity from you lot now, ok? 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, MtB said:

 

I suspect it came from this website which makes the same skoolboy error in the "Solar Electric Propulsion System (SEPS)" price section.

 

https://thamessolarelectric.co.uk/index.php?p=1_5

 

 

That's the same site which gives the beam of their narrowboats as 6'.  I hope that's just a typo, but it doesn't inspire much confidence in them.

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

That's the same site which gives the beam of their narrowboats as 6'.  I hope that's just a typo, but it doesn't inspire much confidence in them.

The heat recovery system should cause a few discussions with the BSS inspector on ventilation I don't know about the RCD and nothing like a tone of pea shingle for ballast

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Loddon said:

Countryfile  on BBC1 tonight is interesting all about the River Severn and how it floods.

Not somewhere I would want to be when its bad but I have done Diglis to Stourport with 2ft of fresh on the river ;)

Going upstream under the Worcester bypass bridge when the river's at the cusp of amber/red would certainly be an exciting experience in an electric boat. Hours of fun as you watch the meter quickly dropping while you slog upstream at 1mph or less. The anticipation of whether you'll actually make it to Diglis or whether your batteries will give out and you'll need to anchor in midchannel in flood conditions. Frankly I can't see why people aren't queuing up to do it.

  • Greenie 2
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Richard Fairhurst said:

Going upstream under the Worcester bypass bridge when the river's at the cusp of amber/red would certainly be an exciting experience in an electric boat. Hours of fun as you watch the meter quickly dropping while you slog upstream at 1mph or less. The anticipation of whether you'll actually make it to Diglis or whether your batteries will give out and you'll need to anchor in midchannel in flood conditions. Frankly I can't see why people aren't queuing up to do it.

The website posted by the OP gives the cruising range on full batteries as 10 hours.  That will be in ideal conditions.  Fighting the current on a trip from Gloucester to Worcester, I expect they'd last no more than 5.  After a few years when the battery capacity has dropped, they might not even get you to Tewkesbury.  And if they did, you'd be relying on solar to bring them back from empty to full charge.  From October to March, that might well never happen.  And that's not even factoring the heavy day-to-day use of a liveaboard.  I got the impression the OP was expecting to cook electrically too.

 

  • Greenie 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 13/03/2022 at 09:30, Loddon said:

When I was younger (15 or so years ago when I was 55)  we took Parglena (61x11) down the K&A it was very hard work and not really fun at all. We didn't get past Newbury before we decided that it wasn't worth doing.  Six years earlier we took SM (33x7) to Bath and back with ease. This was before the K&A became overun with towpath shufflers so mooring was easy.

Personally I wouldn't attempt it in a big boat 😱

 

 

Single-handed, inexperienced, big wide beam, with working commitments. I am wth Loddon, he knows his stuff. 

I too watched YouTube for a few years, they never seem to have problems that can't be sorted in a few days. 

I've currently  been broken down for four months and two days, no tow boat available., limited repair facilities. 

I think I had about nine months in Lockdown.

Nothing like the happy clappy boating portrayed on YouTube. 

Dip a toe in the water, see if you like it.

Winter is difficult, summer is lovely. 

Edited by LadyG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

The website posted by the OP gives the cruising range on full batteries as 10 hours.  That will be in ideal conditions.  Fighting the current on a trip from Gloucester to Worcester, I expect they'd last no more than 5.  After a few years when the battery capacity has dropped, they might not even get you to Tewkesbury.  And if they did, you'd be relying on solar to bring them back from empty to full charge.  From October to March, that might well never happen.  And that's not even factoring the heavy day-to-day use of a liveaboard.  I got the impression the OP was expecting to cook electrically too.

 

 

All of which is another reason you need an onboard generator, as well as lack of solar in the winter (or charging points) -- assuming this provides half the full motor power, it also doubles run time on rivers.

 

The company under discussion seems to think that an enormous FLA battery bank (e.g. 96kWh -- meaning 2000Ah at 48V, will weigh about 2 tons...) gets around this -- kind of true, if you ignore the fact that the "6.5kW" solar array (20kWh/day) would take about a week (allowing for Peukert and efficiency losses) to fully recharge it in summer, and a 2% tail current (for 100% SoC) is 40A which is 2kW. Probably means this happens occasionally or never, so sulphation will kill them off in fairly short order, because one thing 2V traction FLA cells really do need is regular charging to 100% and equalisation...

 

I'd love to know what data they have on actual battery lifetime and/or capacity reduction under these conditions; my guess is not much given they've only built a few boats over the last 5 years or so, and I bet most of them spend most of the time moored up and plugged in not CCing...

Edited by IanD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

All of which is another reason you need an onboard generator, as well as lack of solar in the winter (or charging points) -- assuming this provides half the full motor power, it also doubles run time on rivers.

 

The company under discussion seems to think that an enormous FLA battery bank (e.g. 96kWh -- meaning 2000Ah at 48V, will weigh about 2 tons...) gets around this -- kind of true, if you ignore the fact that the "6.5kW" solar array (20kWh/day) would take about a week (allowing for Peukert and efficiency losses) to fully recharge it in summer, and a 2% tail current (for 100% SoC) is 40A which is 2kW. Probably means this happens occasionally or never, so sulphation will kill them off in fairly short order, because one thing 2V traction FLA cells really do need is regular charging to 100% and equalisation...

Oh I don't know.  I suspect they know only too well what the problems are with charging a battery bank that size with solar, but so long as they keep selling the boats...

 

If I was wealthy and wanted a narrowboat for recreation use only (not living, week long trips out), and I had a home mooring with 240v supply, I might well look at an electric boat. 

 

But for a year round liveaboard on a widebeam, no.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, doratheexplorer said:

Oh I don't know.  I suspect they know only too well what the problems are with charging a battery bank that size with solar, but so long as they keep selling the boats...

 

Me too. In my experience of life, companies whose marketing departments 'sail close to the wind' with excessive and improbable claims tend to have a well-rehearsed response to complaints from customers seeking to get their money back, usually centred on blaming the customer for not using their product quite right.

 

Its 'well rehearsed' because it isn't the odd customer here and there, it is every single customer they ever had. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

Oh I don't know.  I suspect they know only too well what the problems are with charging a battery bank that size with solar, but so long as they keep selling the boats...

 

If I was wealthy and wanted a narrowboat for recreation use only (not living, week long trips out), and I had a home mooring with 240v supply, I might well look at an electric boat. 

 

But for a year round liveaboard on a widebeam, no.

 

Without an onboard generator a week-long trip on an electric narrowboat won't work unless you spend a large part of it stationary, because you can only get at most 3kWp of solar (9kWh/day in summer, 2kWh in winter) on the roof even if you cover all of a full-length boat, and a full day cruising will use maybe 15kWh for propulsion -- more on long lock-free stretches -- plus any domestic use.

 

Even Peter acknowledges that for all-year-round living on a wideboat he needs a generator, and he doesn't even have electric cooking...

Edited by IanD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Me too. In my experience of life, companies whose marketing departments 'sail close to the wind' with excessive and improbable claims tend to have a well-rehearsed response to complaints from customers seeking to get their money back, usually centred on blaming the customer for not using their product quite right.

 

Its 'well rehearsed' because it isn't the odd customer here and there, it is every single customer they ever had. 

 

I don't actually think there too much issue with the solar array and battery size as long as the boat is kept mainly on a shoreline and has only occassional trips out.  It would be interesting to see what the company's response would be if a customer said they were planning to continuous cruise.

25 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Without an onboard generator a week-long trip on an electric narrowboat won't work unless you spend a large part of it stationary, because you can only get at most 3kWp of solar (9kWh/day in summer, 2kWh in winter) on the roof even if you cover all of a full-length boat, and a full day cruising will use maybe 15kWh for propulsion -- more on long lock-free stretches -- plus any domestic use.

 

Even Peter acknowledges that for all-year-round living on a wideboat he needs a generator, and he doesn't even have electric cooking...

My trip out would be ok if I did a couple of hours pootling along each day and gas cooking.  That's what I was imagining.  Anyway, it's a world away from what the OP is planning to do.  Sadly, he came on here for advice, received advice and then got huffy that his dreams were not realisable.  I blame youtube personally.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, doratheexplorer said:

I don't actually think there too much issue with the solar array and battery size as long as the boat is kept mainly on a shoreline and has only occassional trips out.  It would be interesting to see what the company's response would be if a customer said they were planning to continuous cruise.

My trip out would be ok if I did a couple of hours pootling along each day and gas cooking.  That's what I was imagining.  Anyway, it's a world away from what the OP is planning to do.  Sadly, he came on here for advice, received advice and then got huffy that his dreams were not realisable.  I blame youtube personally.

 

As you say, OK for mostly moored/plugged in (what I said too) but not for CCing -- but their literature does mention "cruising the canals" and narrowboats. I bet even if someone asked the awkward questions they'd do what another electric/hybrid narrowboat supplier was doing when they claimed unfeasibly low propulsion power use figures (e.g. 1kW) on CWDF -- and then flounced off in a huff when these were comprehensively shot down in flames as not just unrealistic but impossible. I suspect they'd then do what car companies do and hide behind the small print that says "energy consumption can vary with usage" if a customer complains that they were using more energy and getting shorter range than advertised.

 

Indeed it would -- but keeping gas on the boat for cooking kind of goes against the fossil-fuel-free idea of a solar electric boat, don't you think? 😉

Edited by IanD
  • Happy 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Without an onboard generator a week-long trip on an electric narrowboat won't work unless you spend a large part of it stationary, because you can only get at most 3kWp of solar (9kWh/day in summer, 2kWh in winter) on the roof even if you cover all of a full-length boat, and a full day cruising will use maybe 15kWh for propulsion -- more on long lock-free stretches -- plus any domestic use.

 

Even Peter acknowledges that for all-year-round living on a wideboat he needs a generator, and he doesn't even have electric cooking...

That sounds ideal for CCing moor up for 13 days and on day 14 cruise of an hour or maybe even two and then sit for another 13 days. I know people will shout but that is what a lot of CCs do, there are some who suffer itchy tiller finger and are always on the move.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

That sounds ideal for CCing moor up for 13 days and on day 14 cruise of an hour or maybe even two and then sit for another 13 days. I know people will shout but that is what a lot of CCs do, there are some who suffer itchy tiller finger and are always on the move.

 

True in summer, but even then in winter I'm not convinced there will be enough solar power (when not plugged in, which few CCers are) to run a gas-free boat with electric cooking and 230V appliances -- and if it has gas, what's the point, it's not fossil-fuel free?

 

(yes you could cut down power use by being abstemious and avoiding 230V appliances, but that's not what these boats or the owners they're targeted at do)

 

And if you're going to sit in a marina almost all the time plugged in and rarely move, then why bother with solar and electric at all?

 

Solar/electric/gas-free with no onboard generator might *just* about work for a wideboat, but it really doesn't make sense for a narrowboat...

Edited by IanD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.