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"Fitting Out A Liveaboard We Tell You How And The Costs Involved" Whilton Marina Article


nine9feet

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Whilton Marina have an article on their blog today with the title "Fitting Out A Liveaboard We Tell You How And The Costs Involved".

 

It begins "Have you ever wondered how much it would cost to fit out a narrowboat? Well we have put a pricing example together to give you a rough guideline of what it would cost."

 

There then follows detailed costings for a 57ft boat.

 

I haven't much of an idea how reasonable these figures are. Would be interested to hear from those with experience of fitting out there own boat.

 

http://www.whiltonmarina.co.uk/Narrowboat-Blog/Fitting-Out-A-Liveaboard-We-Tell-You-How-And-The-Costs-Involved/

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Load of balls that is!

 

What about cupboards?! Theyve just listed an overhead cupboard at £300 - right! Go to any decent joiner and you're looking at nearly 10 times that for a couple of cupboards

 

Decent inverter for a liveaboard with modern electrics that you will need as a liveaboard - £425??!

Is that for a 300w one from maplin?

 

Fully fitted kitchen for £1100? Worktops (which theyve listed as worktop tiles) a £155?? Stuck to what?? A sheet of 9mm ply??!

 

What about your gas connection?

 

Mattress £180??

Carpet 200??? Really??

 

Its stupid articles like that which give people the idea they can just buy a boat and do it out like you would a house without running into the problems and the associated costs that boats do invariably end up costing!

Edited by lewisericeric
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Just take the inverter, a decent pure sine wave to cope with a modern boats requirements:

 

A £1539 one

 

product_image_113_2_6_14_50_29.gif

 

Specification:

Victron Energy

Output Wave Form - Pure Sine Wave

Voltage - 12V

Watts (Continuous) - 3000

Out Put - 230V

Hertz- 50Hz

Remote Control - Optional

Dimensions:

Length (mm) - 258

Width (mm) - 218

Height (mm) - 362

Weight (kg) - 18

Description:

Pure sine wave inverters are used for powering many high tech appliance, such as Televisions, audio equipment, computers that are very sensitive to fluctuations in the power supply. These inverters provide a pure alternating current (sine wave), which conforms with the voltage of the house hold power socket.

Warranty:

2 Years

Suitable for:

Washing machines, fridges and much more

A £370 one

product_image_114_9_17_13_54_54.jpg

 

Specification

Victron Energy

Output Wave Form - Pure Sine Wave

Voltage - 12V

Watts (Continuous) - 800

Peak Power - 1400W

Out Put - 230V

Hertz- 50Hz

Dimensions

Length (mm) - 295

Width (mm) - 180

Height (mm) - 72

Weight (kg) - 2.7

Description

Pure sine wave inverters are used for powering many high tech appliance, such as Televisions, audio equipment, computers that are very sensitive to fluctuations in the power supply. These inverters provide a pure alternating current (sine wave), which conforms with the voltage of the house hold power socket.

Warranty

2 Year

Suitable for

Lights, Laptops, TV's and much more

Also:

 

"Outside paint top £1500" ???? Using what, Poster Paint?

-

Edited by Ray T
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Load of balls that is!

 

What about cupboards?! Theyve just listed an overhead cupboard at £300 - right! Go to any decent joiner and you're looking at nearly 10 times that for a couple of cupboards

 

 

Whilst i agree that two overhead cupboards for £300 is somewhat optimistic, if haveing them made by a joiner, but £3000 is extravagent, something between £600 and £900 should cover two decently made cupboards.

 

I suspect their costing is based upon DIY joinery, in which cas they would cost me somewhere around£100 doing the work myself.

Edited by David Schweizer
  • Greenie 1
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We picked a leaflet up from Whilton yesterday, not read it as it was for a friend. But was very disappointed in the standard of boats there. I wiped my feet on the way out and my friend put her foot through a loose plank in the engine room! I must admit my little boat seemed really smart next to the ones we looked at.

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.........

 

Its stupid articles like that which give people the idea they can just buy a boat and do it out like you would a house without running into the problems and the associated costs that boats do invariably end up costing!

 

It's stupid articles like that which help them to sell the sheds on their books to unsuspecting buyers

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Doesn't seem far out to me overall - a £13k fit out if you do the majority of the work yourself. The cupboards seem cheap and the inside window lining - if you pay someone to do it - is going to depend on how many windows, surely? It's a pet hate of mine, windows with the radius not lined properly so there's a little triangle of bear steel exposed. I've got someone sorting mine next month 6 windows, best part of £700. He's bloody good though.

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Load of balls that is!

 

What about cupboards?! Theyve just listed an overhead cupboard at £300 - right! Go to any decent joiner and you're looking at nearly 10 times that for a couple of cupboards

 

Decent inverter for a liveaboard with modern electrics that you will need as a liveaboard - £425??!

Is that for a 300w one from maplin?

 

Fully fitted kitchen for £1100? Worktops (which theyve listed as worktop tiles) a £155?? Stuck to what?? A sheet of 9mm ply??!

 

What about your gas connection?

 

Mattress £180??

Carpet 200??? Really??

 

Its stupid articles like that which give people the idea they can just buy a boat and do it out like you would a house without running into the problems and the associated costs that boats do invariably end up costing!

Hmm, my mate is a decent joiner and I'm sure he'd bite your arm off if you offered him £3,000 to build an overhead cupboard.

 

A 300w Maplins inverter is £34.99, my 2kw inverter in the truck cost £190 and I've had it three years now, running a kettle, toaster and microwave oven 5-6 days a week.

 

I could put a good quality fitted kitchen in a narrowboat for £1,100.

 

A Silentnight small double mattress on ebay is £149.99 including delivery.

 

I'm about to replace my carpet, I'll need about nine square metres and I won't be paying as much as this but I could get 10 square metres of Wilton carpet for £114.90.

 

I suppose a lot depends on what you do yourself, and what you pay others to do.

  • Greenie 1
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I agree that some of the figures are way off, but overall it seems pretty reasonable. You will end up with a budget boat, but perfectly livable. Certainly a lot better than some boaters are living with.

 

Luxury and top of the range shells are naturally cost a great deal more but, as the old saying goes, the view from a cheap narrow boat is just the same as from an expensive one.

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Load of balls that is!

 

What about cupboards?! Theyve just listed an overhead cupboard at £300 - right! Go to any decent joiner and you're looking at nearly 10 times that for a couple of cupboards

Surely the blog post is purely aimed at "self fitter-outers"?

 

Therefore what it might cost to have someone build something for you surely isn't relevant?

Luxury and top of the range shells are naturally cost a great deal more but, as the old saying goes, the view from a cheap narrow boat is just the same as from an expensive one.

 

smiley_offtopic.gif Actually if the cheap one has big "bus windows" but the expensive one small portholes, the view is far better from the cheap one!

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I did wonder at whom this article was aimed. I was suspecting that it is there to convince some people that it is far easier and cheaper simply to buy a boat from Whilton rather than fitting out your own shell.

 

Another point is that costs surely depend on the standard and quality of the fit out you wish to achieve (assuming within your diy capabilities). Like the point raised by RayT about inverters. I didn't get from the article what level they were pricing for other than the general "mid level".

Edited by nine9feet
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Seems reasonable to me and with a bit of common sense, e bay, boat jumbles etc. I would hope to do considerably better than that. We don't live on our boat but we do spend most of the summer on it, 300 watts is perfectly ok for charging power tools, tv and so on, I doubt if we use 3000 watts at a time at home very often and we find launderettes easily enough (in France). Since when has painting been beyond the wit of a reasonable human being? its not that hard to do.

Carpet? I always treat carpet as disposable, after a couple of years its too dirty down the middle to bother with, no point spending much on it. I think people have had the wool pulled over their eyes for years and no longer have the confidence to bang a nail in. (shuffles off to bed muttering and grumbling about the good old days of gas lights and black and white t.v.)

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I was thinking all the costs were on the high side! £300 on a cupboard?! £36 from IKEA, slightly more with a more posh door on it....

 

£1000 on cables? If you pay someone to make you a bespoke wiring loom, maybe, but I've spent less than £300 on all the cables needed for my 72' boat.

 

Edit: £1000 on the calorifier and hot water system? How?

Edited by FadeToScarlet
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The thing is, long lists of rough estimates often turn out to be surprisingly accurate once added up and compared to the real, final cost once the project is complete*.

 

This happens because each item on the estimated list will be wrong, but the errors cancel each other out once the list is totaled up.

 

MtB

 

 

 

* Except where boats are concerned, when all estimates of both tiome and money need to be tripled to have any hope of ending up accurate.

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I've done five DIY fit-outs over the years so I've pretty good idea of how much it would cost.

I reckon the overall figure is about right - perhaps a bit on the high side.

The other figure given was for the length of time it takes. Again it's fairly realistic. I spent about 100 days, spread over about none months, fitting out our butty.

 

What hasn't been taken into account is the tools required to do a decent job. I would add at least £1000 for this.

 

It's not for the faint hearted. I know at least one chap who simply couldn't cope with the magnitude of the enterprise and gave up half way through the job.

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When looking at any use of statistics, I always ask myself "What might the author want these statistics to prove?".

As nine9feet suggested in post #12, Whilton could have a motive to persuade people to buy a boat which is already fitted out.

This doesn't necessarily mean they have tried to exaggerate the costs, just that it's best to bear that possibility in mind.

 

As with houses, the cost and the quality of the fit out is surely going to vary greatly according to how much of the work is done by paid professionals, the skill of the amateurs or professionals involved, and how much trouble they go to to do the job well.

 

Just looking at the example of the cupboards, at one extreme you can spend plenty of money paying a good joiner to use quality new materials and expect to get a pretty end product. If you're well off and just want a nice shiny boat to use without doing any work yourself on it, why not? Or an average DIYer can make functional cupboards out of salvaged wood for virtually no cost other than time. I'm currently following the latter approach building a garden shed, and out of all the materials I've used or plan to use so far, all I've paid for is some nails and screws and a tin of undercoat paint. Replaced windows, pallets, old furniture etc. are easily available; a lot of stuff gets dumped in the street where I live, and if in doubt I ask the likely owner and the reply is "You want that? Be my guest, saves taking it to the dump". This project does take lots of time, because I'm designing it as I go along and having to select and adapt from the available wood to make whatever section I want next, but it's fun.

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Koukouvagia makes a good point about tools.

I don't regard them as a cost because I had them long before embarking on building my shed, and will be using them on other projects in future, but for someone who buys all the tools needed, fits out a boat, then has no plans to use those tools again, they are a cost, although they don't lose their value much if used properly.

 

As it happens, I've broken and replaced both my drill and jigsaw during my shed project. That's just bad luck, I bought both in 1985 and have used them quite a lot over the years, so they had a good innings.

  • Greenie 1
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Good tools, in my opinion are an investment you have to make if you are going to do a DIY fit out. Even that can save you money.

I bought a portable (Ha Ha!) planer thicknesser when I started Sabina's fit out and that and a good router saved me an absolute fortune, any second hand timber I came across could be finished to the size required and any mouldings needed could be made as required. Now 90% of the work is done (does anyone ever actually "finish" a boat?) the planer is on permanent loan to a carpenter friend (in exchange if I need any bits doing, he does them for me)

I agree with Koukouvagia, Peter X and others that Its probably not too far out but I reckon I could do it for less

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As it happens, I've broken and replaced both my drill and jigsaw during my shed project. That's just bad luck, I bought both in 1985 and have used them quite a lot over the years, so they had a good innings.

 

only 29 years old?/!! I would demand a refund........... ninja.gif

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