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240 volt ac on a boat - why?


yabasayo

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You do not need mains electricity on a narrowboat, nor do you need to live in the dark ages without it.

it is actually a pia that some devices require it. It’s getting easier by the year as low voltage stuff becomes more available. We have one mains device other than power tools and that’s a battery charger, sometimes it gets plugged in to treat the batteries, as our mooring has mains access.

However if your boat is the eternal project like many unfortunately you do need power tools. 

We have had 5 boats only one had a mains ring, all were lived on at various times. The one with the mains ring was unplugged from the broker , on purchase and we never plugged it back onto a landline till it was sold 6 years later.

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11 hours ago, Ray T said:

240v is useful if boat is kept in a marina when not in use - battery charging, a low wattage oil heater to keep the chill off in winter and using other electrical gadgets.

 

Or even on an End of Garden mooring ?

 

I find a 240 volt dehumidifier, plus sponges and cardboard to block vents, and an oil filled radiator or two lets me winterise/dewinterise the boat in a couple of minutes.  This allows me to take advantage of cruising on bright winter days without the need to refill the calorifier.

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The other side of the coin:

The live aboards who start bleating as soon as the shoreline power has been off for more than 5 minutes. Nine times out of ten  it's a tripped RCD caused by a fault on their own boat.

I know of several who have neglected the 12v side of things to the extent that they can't start their engine, the batteries haven't been maintained because some cheap  mains charger boiled the electrolyte away years ago, the engine's seized up, frost damaged or similar and so they can't or won't go boating anyway. Under deck engines and batteries that haven't seen the light of day for months  or years and bilge water half way up the engine ( and in it). Don't worry about it until the living space starts getting wet. 

240VAC is very convenient for lots of things but don't rely on it in a boat, 12v(or 24) is the priority.

Edited by billh
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9 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Being a Luddite myself, I have gas lights in my boat. 

 

 

I put a gas light into the last house; very nice too.  When I came to let the house, the young, gas safety inspector seemed to overlook it altogether.  Odd.

 

 

 

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29 minutes ago, billh said:

The other side of the coin:

The live aboards who start bleating as soon as the shoreline power has been off for more than 5 minutes. Nine times out of ten  it's a tripped RCD caused by a fault on their own boat.

I know of several who have neglected the 12v side of things to the extent that they can't start their engine, the batteries haven't been maintained because some cheap  mains charger boiled the electrolyte away years ago, the engine's seized up, frost damaged or similar and so they can't or won't go boating anyway. Under deck engines and batteries that haven't seen the light of day for months  or years and bilge water half way up the engine ( and in it). Don't worry about it until the living space starts getting wet. 

240VAC is very convenient for lots of things but don't rely on it in a boat, 12v(or 24) is the priority.

It's not about coins. Its not about which voltage is a priority. The OP asked if 240V was needed and proceeded to say in his view it wasnt needed. He is right it is not needed......but if you want all the comforts of modern living when living on a boat it is an obvious thing to have. If you want to slum it then ok, dont have it. Of course you need 12v  (or 24V) if you are gong boating on a liveaboard boat.

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4 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:

It's not about coins. Its not about which voltage is a priority. The OP asked if 240V was needed and proceeded to say in his view it wasnt needed. He is right it is not needed......but if you want all the comforts of modern living when living on a boat it is an obvious thing to have. If you want to slum it then ok, dont have it. Of course you need 12v  (or 24V) if you are gong boating on a liveaboard boat.

Gong boating is good ,just remember to stock up on Aspirin and Ear Defenders before you go..

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12 hours ago, cereal tiller said:

If you come across a Cordless  or 12 Volt Hot Air gun please let me know.

Have you tried putting "cordless hot air gun" into Google ??? ?

 

Next thing you'l be wanting a cordless angle grinder, or even a cordless band saw, or what about a cordless coffee maker   or a heated jacket ???

 

Actually my wife is quite tempted by the Makita heated jacket for winter boating, she's just waiting for them to do a pink one

 

...............Dave

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our boat is mainly 12v although we do have a small inverter on board (but it's noisy as hell with a fan screaming and I suspect it's total output is under 500w)

 

the only things that we have actually found we need mains for is a charger for my shaver and charging a bosch cordless drill, everything else is 12v

 

we are far from camping on the boat, for (electric based) entertainment we have a 22" tv with a triple tuner DVR system (could add freesat as a 4th tuner if we wanted) that is all running from a reasonable windows 10 computer, this is also linked into a 3Tb NAS box which contains a few thousand films and tv shows (along with about 3 years worth of continuous music), for sound we run a 200w 2.1 sound system (powerful enough to cause ripples outside the boat so no point increasing it) along with various ipads etc etc

 

the only thing I can fault our boat on is that it has no multi-fuel burner

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1 minute ago, Jess-- said:

our boat is mainly 12v although we do have a small inverter on board (but it's noisy as hell with a fan screaming and I suspect it's total output is under 500w)

 

the only things that we have actually found we need mains for is a charger for my shaver and charging a bosch cordless drill, everything else is 12v

 

we are far from camping on the boat, for (electric based) entertainment we have a 22" tv with a triple tuner DVR system (could add freesat as a 4th tuner if we wanted) that is all running from a reasonable windows 10 computer, this is also linked into a 3Tb NAS box which contains a few thousand films and tv shows (along with about 3 years worth of continuous music), for sound we run a 200w 2.1 sound system (powerful enough to cause ripples outside the boat so no point increasing it) along with various ipads etc etc

 

the only thing I can fault our boat on is that it has no multi-fuel burner

How do you wash your clothes?

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1 minute ago, Dr Bob said:

How do you wash your clothes?

launderette every 2-3 weeks or wait until back at home (very occasionally hand wash a couple of items)

to be fair I do not live aboard (although if circumstances changed I would in a heartbeat) and end up spending time on the boat in the form of a month here and there.

 

also worth bearing in mind that when I was first on the boats bucket & chuck it was common, electric lighting was rare (still have a couple of the oil lamps) and water systems were considered sophisticated if you had cold water supplied by a foot pump in front of a sink

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16 minutes ago, Johny London said:

So like a lot of things (particularly "hot topics" such as toilets, batteries etc) it really does all depend on how you live. 

 

I wish I had the power available to run electric kettles, toasters and blankets, and windows pc's with hard drives etc - at 12v or 240!

for windows pc on 12v I use these https://www.amazon.co.uk/x5-Z8350-Processor-1000Mbps-Display-Computer/dp/B0791ZL3PM (the 4Gb ram 64Gb ssd version)

at full load they draw 2.5A (in most uses it's nearer 1 - 1.5A)

they aren't the fastest machine but are good for normal browsing / word processing / video watching / etc etc, most of what they can't do is gaming (the onboard graphics just isn't powerful enough), the only thing I change on them is adding an extra M.2 SSD drive to increase the 64Gb hard drive

 

at around 6 inches wide/long and 1 inch high they are small enough to tuck away almost anywhere

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13 hours ago, nicknorman said:

However we now have our own boat with mains power. A Combi inverter, and a Travelpower. Things that are mains powered on the boat include the TV, the recording HD Sat box, the table lamp, the ignition and fan for the oven, the electric kettle, the toaster, the Nespresso coffee machine, the bread maker, the electric food mixer, the washing machine, the tumble drier, the electric blanket, the immersion heater, various power tools, inspection lamp, soldering iron. Do I need to go on?

 

Sounds like a nightmare to me. What happened to the simple life ?

My idea of boating is to get away from al that stuff.

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1 minute ago, yabasayo said:

Sounds like a nightmare to me. What happened to the simple life ?

My idea of boating is to get away from al that stuff.

Then why ask the question? You dont need mains electricity so save yourself any perceived hassle. Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Barney and Betty Rubble did ok without it also.

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7 minutes ago, yabasayo said:

Sounds like a nightmare to me. What happened to the simple life ?

My idea of boating is to get away from al that stuff.

Comfortable nightmare though. 

5 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Then why ask the question? You dont need mains electricity so save yourself any perceived hassle. Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Barney and Betty Rubble did ok without it also.

They did have gadgets, cars, excavators etc. 

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29 minutes ago, yabasayo said:

Sounds like a nightmare to me. What happened to the simple life ?

My idea of boating is to get away from al that stuff.

My idea of living is not to live in the 30’s.   When I’m boating I have a wheel in front of me and a clear view of the river/canal, all my living stuff is inside.

Edited by Robbo
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1 minute ago, Robbo said:

My idea of living is not to live in the 30’s.   When I’m boating I have a wheel in front of me and a clear view of the river/canal, all my living stuff is inside.

Youll be in trouble soon then

Oh, you meant 1930's didn't ya!:)

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1 hour ago, Jess-- said:

launderette every 2-3 weeks or wait until back at home (very occasionally hand wash a couple of items)

to be fair I do not live aboard

I think that is the difference for those of us who want to live in the 21st century and those who want to stay in the 1970's. We lived aboard for 3 years looking in each port for launderettes and having to queue to get clothes done. What an utter waste of time. For us, life is too short to have to plan when and where to wash clothes.

47 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Then why ask the question? You dont need mains electricity so save yourself any perceived hassle. Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Barney and Betty Rubble did ok without it also.

Absolutely.

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4 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:

I think that is the difference for those of us who want to live in the 21st century and those who want to stay in the 1970's. We lived aboard for 3 years looking in each port for launderettes and having to queue to get clothes done. What an utter waste of time. For us, life is too short to have to plan when and where to wash clothes.

We lived for the first year aboard with no washing machine. Weekend visits to the launderette in berko. Mrs rusty then threatened to leave me if I didn't immediately install a washing machine and tumble dryer. The tumble dryer remained unused and eventually got binned.It would have been cheaper to get a new mrs Rusty.

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3 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:

Same here but we both realised that a drier wasn't needed as we can dry things easily in the catch or under the pram cover summer or winter.

When my cousin asked how we cope with clothes washing on the boat,I told him we put it in a huge metal basket, lower it behind the prop and run the engine for a couple of hours whilst chucking washing powder down the weed hatch. 

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