Jump to content

Alicelock

Featured Posts

Hello



We are getting a wide beam canal boat built and are planning on constantly cruising and would really appreciate some advise on a few things!



I was hoping to have a full length bath onboard, and 4-6 radiators but I have now been told that unless you have a diesel run boiler radiators are pretty useless, and you’d have to have a huge boiler to be able to heat enough water for a full length bath. Anyone have any experience with either of these? Is it possible at all? Are diesel boilers very expensive to buy and run? Would I have to have a huge boiler?



Also I want to be able to use kitchen appliances fairly regularly (nutribullet - 600w magimix - 1100w) and wanted to have low watt floor lamps and maybe some fairy lights (not to run all the time, but when i want to make it super cosy) - I've been told this wouldn't be possible but I've seen lots of boats with these things in them! Do you have to have a very high watt inverter (and is this very expensive?) Or would I have to get a generator? Or are these things only possible to have if you have a mooring and are connected to the grid?



I have been quoted £4800 to have the boat painted which seems slightly ridiculous to me! Does anyone know how much it would cost to employ someone to come and paint an overcoat and then do some stencilling? Does the price we’ve been quoted sound right?



Really appreciate any advise or guidance!



Thanks :-)


Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will just take the paint job.

 

about five years ago I was quoted about £1,000 per ten feet for a narrow boat.

 

Prices have risen and £4,800 seem ridiculously cheap for a decent job.

 

Preparation is everything and if not done properly, money will be wasted.

 

Now if they are just going to slap a bit of paint over the existing then it may be expensive for what they are going to do.

 

You pay the money, your choice wink.png

Edited by bottle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

£1000.00 per foot ?

 

you were quick I edited it, noticed after I hit the post button. £1,000 per ten feet.

 

Hold on your post is after my edit, did you miss read it.

Edited by bottle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Radiators: No problem- you just need a big enough stove/boiler to drive them. These are available in gas, diesel and solid fuel. a gas one will be most easily controllable, but horrendously expensive to run and will involve big gas cylinders. Diesel and solid fuel are much of a muchness for cost to run. The stove size will be minimised by good insulation. The problem with a bath, apart from water consumption, is of getting a big enough calorifier to heat the water. Domestic ones are the right size, but are not strong enough to cope with boat water pump pressure, Standard boat ones are quite small so you will have to have one made specially. Top dollar. A good central heating design will be need so that it heats up reasonably fast.

 

 

Kitchen: What you want is not difficult to do, at least at the installation level. Big inverters are available (and quite pricey), but the real problem is where is the power going to come from. What you take out of the batteries has to be put back. That means generating it; either from solar panels, or the propulsion engine, or a dedicated generator. You need to do a power audit to see which of these might be viable.

 

Paint: £4800 sounds to be in the ball-park for a decent paint job. Top painters want about £100 per foot for a narrowboat. It is a labour intensive job and good paint is not cheap.

 

N

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you were quick I edited it, noticed after I hit the post button. £1,000 per ten feet.

 

Hold on your post is after my edit, did you miss read it.

Sorry yes, I must have misread it. Didn't have my specs on.

Bit of a coincidence that you made a mistake and I misread it though eh?

 

Still no glasses, can't find smiley face.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A full sized bath is not a good idea on a small (relatively) boat as indicated above - however there are smaller baths available - cain narrowboats fit on - but I've no idea what size it is - even so to fill any size bath is going to be a challenge to the whole boat's systems - especially if you enjoy a jolly good soak and need to top it up with more hot water part way through.

Alternatives are the hip bath type. I hate shower trays, so I fitted a small bath 4'6" (?) - you can sit in it - but 'knees up to chin' - as a gynaecologist friend put it - or legs either side if you mount it centrally. Out unit also doubles for Memsahib's har washing sessions plus somewhere to run a small twin tub washing machine.

 

But then we're not liveaboards.

 

If the electrical items are only run for short periods, then a large battery bank coupled with a second large output alternator would do.

Anything else would need a travel power unit in addition (doesn't take up much space in the engine bay) or a 'proper' generator - which to be long lasting and quiet needs to be a 1500 rpm unit - and that's relatively large.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

£ 4,800.00 for painting a wide beam vessel sounds cheap you here of people being quoted £ 6,000 / 8,000.00 for a narrow boat.

 

As to using kitchen appliances this is no problem with a good electrical design and installation.

 

Personally I wound use a 24-volt inverter / charger with an output of 3 / 5 thousand watts and a Fischer Panda variable speed DC generator if you would like any more details please PM me.

 

 

Keith

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would find another boat-builder.

Everything you have mentioned is possible - it has implications to the build and to other 'systems' but your builder should be able to explain what those implications and costs are.

 

You only have as much water and electricity as you can carry on the boat therefore you need a big enough water tank to allow for your " 400 litre bath" every day - its not a problem if your tank is built big enough.

 

Electricity comes from your batteries. If you take out 1000 watts then in effect you need to put back in 1500 watts - how do you do it - there are various ways, with the two most usual being running the engine or a generator, nowadays there is a third option to replace some of the electricity by solar panels.

 

When you say "continuously cruising" do you mean moving every day or every 14 days ?

You will need buy enough batteries to last you until you move / start engine.

 

It is fairly complex but a good boat builder should guide you thru' it.

 

Painting a widebeam and doing a decent job £8000

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wonder who the builder is? I appreciate you might not want to say. They sound quite negative though, and stuck in a mind set of what they are prepared to build, which makes me wonder if they have much experience. We certainly put many central heating systems in on narrowboats, with effective radiators. ..can't see their problem there. Reasonably large calorific rs can be bought, so as long as your hot water is good and hot, that should be doable too. As is your electric 23rd requirements, so long as you install the background power source to cope with all these needs. That quote for the paint is very reasonable, I would expect more to be honest....check what you are getting for that, spray or coach painting, does it include any decoration, coach lines etc, or is that just for a single blank colour. I would guess at the latter, sprayed, possibly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thank you all so much for your replies! Actually what happened was we visited one builder in coventry (starline boats) who said yes to everything we wanted pretty much. We then decided to go and get a quote from another yard just to compare and they guy there was the one who started bursting out bubble (i think he enjoyed doing so) - and it made me think that our first builder hadn't been honest with us and was just being a yes man. It sounds like the electric stuff and the boiler/radiators shouldn't be a problem, but maybe i cant have a full length bath! Which is fine, you have to make compromises - is just good to hear from people with experience rather than just being told yes by the builder. We would be moving every 14 days not every day so we're getting solar panels on the roof so hopefully in summer those will generate enough power for us, but it winter, we will probably be having to turn the engine on for a few hours every couple of days. Good to know the pain quote is right - i thought it was a alot but clearly ive got quite a good deal! :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My impression is that all the things you ask for are perfectly possible but neither builder was inclined to spend the time necessary to educate you about the associated drawbacks. The enormous water tank you'll need to fill a full length bath regularly for example, which will tank hours to fill regularly from a canalside water tap.

 

Each of your requirements is worth a whole thread of its own to deal with in detail!

 

MtB

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd be careful about your assumption of "running the engine for a couple of hours every other day".

For the sorts of facilities that we all expect nowadays PLUS your higher than normal requirements, you'll need to do a lot more charging; else you'll be back saying 'knackered batteries'

 

Please do read the other recent threads on the same problem.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thank you all so much for your replies! Actually what happened was we visited one builder in coventry (starline boats) who said yes to everything we wanted pretty much. We then decided to go and get a quote from another yard just to compare and they guy there was the one who started bursting out bubble (i think he enjoyed doing so) - and it made me think that our first builder hadn't been honest with us and was just being a yes man. It sounds like the electric stuff and the boiler/radiators shouldn't be a problem, but maybe i cant have a full length bath! Which is fine, you have to make compromises - is just good to hear from people with experience rather than just being told yes by the builder. We would be moving every 14 days not every day so we're getting solar panels on the roof so hopefully in summer those will generate enough power for us, but it winter, we will probably be having to turn the engine on for a few hours every couple of days. Good to know the pain quote is right - i thought it was a alot but clearly ive got quite a good deal! :-)

 

Alice

 

before we all jump in, what experience do you have of boating on canals and where do you plan to continuously cruise.

 

Lets have a starter for ten, wink.png

 

You do know that you will be restricted to either north or south of Birmingham, unless you go to sea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the way you want to do things lends itself to being attached to utilities full time rather than having to take them with you in fuel and water tanks. Perhaps a pace back and tell people what you want to achieve - there's a wealth of experience on here regarding heating, cooking, bathing etc. - rather than asking if it's going to be OK to import land-based technology on to a boat.

 

For example if your requirement is 'a warm boat' it can perhaps be achieved without any radiators.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My impression is that all the things you ask for are perfectly possible but neither builder was inclined to spend the time necessary to educate you about the associated drawbacks. The enormous water tank you'll need to fill a full length bath regularly for example, which will tank hours to fill regularly from a canalside water tap.

 

Each of your requirements is worth a whole thread of its own to deal with in detail!

 

MtB

 

This is an important point. We have (for a narrowboat) quite a large water tank - 900 litres - which lasts two of us 5 days (ten showers plus washing up and perhaps 1 use of the washing machine). Almost the whole tank would be required to fill a standard bath.

 

So, even with the larger tank allowed by a wide-beam, you would need to move during the 14 days, just to water up.

 

Plus, it can take an hour to fill my tank from empty on some of the slower taps. Many services do not strictly allow an hour's mooring for water.

 

Frank.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Worrying when a complete newbie comes on and has expectations of in effect being able to use the equivalent of the nation grid by simply running their engine for a couple of hours every day or so.

With all due respect the OP needs to sit down with someone and have a crash course in power management or be prepared to do some serious reading on the search button at the top of the page.

I do wish them well but they do need to take onboard a lot of knowledge quickly.

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We would be moving every 14 days not every day ..

 

Are you aware of CRT's new Terms and Conditions, and the increased level of enforcement they are carrying out for continuous cruisers who do not move enough? Moving only every 14 days is going to put you on their radar very quickly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kitchen stuff is definately do-able. You just need to be aware of how long you run appliances like that for as they will murder your battery bank if used for long periods, but you will learn that sort of stuff as you go. The general rule that I have come up with for electric appliances is; if their primary function is to produce heat then they aren't going to be viable.

The rads are also fine, I have a Morso Squirrel with a back boiler and it heats 3 rads to the point where you can't touch em.

 

The bath is possible as others have said, but would be a utter pain to have due to the size of the water tank. I'm brand new to this houseboating stuff and water is the biggest pain in the arse so far, 400l runs out very quickly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would advise the OP to attend a couple of banters (as well as doing many searches on this forum). The OP needs far more background information than any builder can afford to spend time on giving unless being paid to do so.

 

Good advice.

 

The other way for the OP to learn is to find a builder who will build exactly what they ask for, then try to use it!

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.