2013 March | Living on a Canal Boat

Detailed narrowboat running costs for February 2013

Here are my bang up to date expenses for my own liveaboard narrowboat James. Not all narrowboat owners will incur the costs that I do. Many of the costs below will apply though so if you’re considering buying your own narrowboat, you need to be aware of the costs. You may wonder why I have included costs for items and services that aren’t directly related to running a narrowboat. They’re included because they are typical lifestyle costs that you may well incur. You can discount them if you want, but just bear them in mind.

Electricity: Each mooring has a 230v electrical supply which is charged at 20p per unit and topped up cards available from our reception. I generally buy 3 x £10 electricity cards at a time. I bought cards twice this month @ £30 a time. Once on 2nd and then again on 20th – £60

Gas:Back to the normal single cylinder purchase this month after having to buy two last month after forgetting to buy one in December – £22.95

Coal: I get a better deal if I buy ten bags at a time. Ten 25kg bags of Pureheat last me about a month. I bought ten last month then another ten this month on 4th. I then bought a pack of 10 softwood heat logs on 20th. I keep a pack of the heat logs on standby in a dry cupboard inside the boat. If they get wet, they expand to twice their normal size and are impossible to light. They’re very handy for providing a quick burst of heat if it’s particularly cold when we get up in the morning like this morning. It’s particularly cold this morning. I’m writing this on 12th March 2013. The overnight low was minus four but with a strong north easterly wind, the wind chill brought it down to minus ten. The temperature in the warmest part of the boat – at the front near the stove – was down to eighteen degrees, thirteen degrees in my “office” half way down the boat, and a rather chilly six degrees in the bedroom right at the back of the boat. At times like this I wish I had central heating. I also bought a 10kg sample bag of Ecofire Oak Nuggets. Waterways World oublished the results of their stove fuel test in the March 2013 edition of the magazine. Here’s what I thought of them. – £126.63

Mooring: Mooring costs £2,300 a year – £191.66

Maintenance & Repairs: There were no repairs as such this month but I record sundry boat expenses here. This month we bought quite a few bits and pieces for the boat;

A bottle of One Chem for the cassette toilet. Added to the flush water and waste tank, it keeps the toilet smelling fresh. I’ve tried quite a few of the popular brands. One Chem suits us best – £8.49

A boat cleaning brush. It’s one of those fancy affairs with a Hozelock connection at one end so that you can enjoy a constant flow of water through the brush. Unfortunately the connection leaks, so all I enjoyed was a constant flow of water down my leg as I cleaned the boat. I went to a great deal of trouble painting James in April 2012. I’m doing all that I can to make sure that the paintwork stays in good condition. – £20.78

Bullet Polish. After I’ve cleaned the boat, I can further protect the paintwork with a good quality wax. Bullet polish’s main ingredient is Carnauba wax which is widely acknowledged as the best wax to use to protect your boat. Mindland Chandlers were offering two for just… £25

Hozelock connectors and a broom handle – The hose that we used to fill the water tank had given up the ghost. I think it was less than a year old. It was one of those very convenient flat hoses on a reel that is very easy to store. It was a waste of money to be honest. The cheap plastic reel fell apart after half a dozen uses. The hose itself developed dozens of pinprick holes along its full length which made fulling the tank a wet and unpleasant affair. We were given a 30m Hozelock hose. The Hozelock connections were for either end.

The broom handle was to provide two hanging rails in the middle of the boat next to the side hatches. Sally uses them to hang damp clothes after they’ve been washed. They’re usually dry within 24 hours.

Hozelock connectors and broom handle – £12.08

LED light and adaptor – I’m slowly replacing all of the 12v lights on board. There are eighteen of them. The LED lights are brighter than the old bulbs, use very little electricity and have a very, very long life, 50,000 hours I think. Just to put that into perspective the lights I use most often, above my laptop, are on for two hours in the morning and three in the evening. At that rate the new lights will last for 10,000 days or 27.39 years! Although they’re expensive at £8.50 for each light and adaptor, I think they’re a good investment. I bought just one this month – £8.50

I bought a torch in February. It’s an essential bit of kit for a boater. My last torch was a bit of a disappointment. If I turned it on at night and held it very close to my wrist, I could sometimes see my watch. It was useless. The new torch is superb. It’s incredibly bright and its range is stunning. It can easily light up the island 50m away in the centre of the marina (which is great for identifying the Canada geese before scaring them off with a – harmless – laser). The torch came with rechargeable batteries and charger. – £20.99

Ecofan – They use the heat from the stove to power the fan blade, they’re horribly expensive but they do a great job of moving the stove’s heat into the rest of the boat. I’ve really noticed a difference – £78.50

Rain hat (also knows politically incorrectly as a Coolie or Chinese hat) and two doormats – The rain hat sits on top of your chimney to keep rain, and leaves if you’re moored under a tree, out of the chimney. This is my fourth in three years. The first two disappeared in high winds. The third was screwed to the chimney and lasted over a year before it finally rusted through earlier in February.

The rubber backed door mats are to be used in the continuing battle against mud on paws. We’ve put one on the bench seat on the front deck and another just inside the front doors. They work very well in reducing the amount of dirty liquid on the dogs’ paws when they come into the boat.

Rain hat and two door mats – £33.13

The rest of the sundry purchases in February were Sally continuing making the boat into a very comfortable and aesthetically pleasing home. I’m not naturally and untidy person but Sally is very tidy and very organised. She bought a pen and magazine tidy for my office area, a “snake” draught excluder to go under the door from the bedroom to the engine room, oven gloves and a tea/coffee/sugar jar set for the galley a very posh red kettle for the gas hob (Is it wrong to think that our new kettle – pictured – is very, very attractive? It’s almost a shame to put water in it) and, my favourite purchase this month, a Breville 1kw sandwich toaster. We both love toasted cheese and onion sandwiches… or rather, we did before we bought the sandwich toaster. After having them for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a few days, they’ve lost a little of their appeal.

Sally’s sundry purchases – £104.43

Total maintenance and repairs for February – £311.90

Total boat expenses for February – £713.14

Other expenses for February…

Of course, the boat expenditure is only a part of the cost of life on the boat. Here’s what we spent on our day to day expenses in February.

Internet: I’m still using the excellent 15GB per month mobile broadband service from Three – £19.80

Telephone (Mobile): Sally and I both have mobiles on contract and Sally has an iPad, also on contract. I’ve also included the cost of our Skype to landline/mobile calls – £133.15

Laundery: Calcutt Boats as two washing machines and a dryer for moorers’ use. We only use the washing machines. Sally hangs the damp washing inside the boat. It’s dry within 24 hours. The washing machines take tokens which we buy at reception. Each token costs £1 and keeps the washing machines going for 45 minutes. – £20

Groceries: We eat well but not extravagantly. The total includes £23.95 for wine £324.67

Eating out: We enjoy a coffee in a cafe and the occasional meal out. In February we dined out on just two occasions; once at an all your can eat Sunday lunch buffet in a very good Thai restaurant in Banbury and one visit to Costa Coffee for a coffee and a slice of cake – £45.20

Entertainment: I love to read. I love my Kindle. It’s so easy to finish a book, use my laptop to browse through the Kindle books on Amazon, click a button and open my new book within a minute or two. I don’t read as much as I would like because of the time I spend adding content to this site. However, I still get through three or four books a month. I overdid my reading in February with five books downloaded – £25.03

Car: A low cost month for motoring. Forty pounds for fuel and the rest to add Sally to my policy – £54.19

Clothing: I’m still trying to spend as little as possible on clothing but I needed a new fleece work shirt and yet another pair of wellies. I bought a good pair of wellies in January for £35 but by mid February one of them had split. I was given the choice of either sending them back to Dunlop for a possible refund or biting the bullet and buying another pair at the discounted price of £24. I chose the latter- £46.29

My total none-boat-related living costs for February were £668.33 bringing my overall total for January to £1,381.47. It’s the calm before the storm. In March we’re fitting solar panels and new flooring. God help us,and our bank account!

This is an example of the monthly expenses detailed in my guide Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat. If you’re seriously considering buying a narrowboat to live on it’s an essential read. Some of the costs listed in this article are optional. You may be able to live on less than we do, but many of the costs that apply to us will also apply to you too. Many potential boat owners mistakenly think that a narrowboat floating home is a low cost alternative to bricks and mortar. Nothing could be further from the truth. Please read the guide before you make a very expensive mistake.

2013 03 11 Newsletter – Fitting Solar Panels

Living on a Narrowboat News 11th March 2013

Nothing’s ever as easy or straightforward as it should be. It’s so frustrating.

I’ve just had a Sterling Pure Sine Wave 1600w inverter fitted. It’s more than enough to run the smaller electrical appliances I have on board. It will run my laptop, iPad, two mobile phones and the television. I could switch to a 12v television but as the one I have is perfectly serviceable and is fixed to the wall using a bracket designed for that particular television, I’m not going to change it. The inverter will also run a small vacuum cleaner if necessary. While the inverter is perfect for what I want, unfortunately the mains wiring I have in James is not. It needs replacing before the next BSS test if James is to pass.

Added to the rewiring headache, I also need to get part of the original floor boards replaced. On Thursday we had a local flooring company arrive to remove the existing carpet and replace it with imitation light oak plastic planks. They don’t sound very attractive the way I’ve described them, but they look great and what’s more, they’re practical. They’re easy to clean and they’re waterproof. The proper name is Colonia English Oak.

All of the original ply flooring appears to be in very good shape considering the age of the boat and considering that it spent over a decade neglected on a mooring. but a section of flooring has suffered from the neglect. In the centre of the boat, aft of the galley there are side and roof hatches on both port and starboard. James originally had a wooden cabin with wooden hatches. The roof hatches perished during the decade of neglect and allowed water to drip onto the ply beneath.

There’s a section about two feet square which needs replacing. Of course, the replacement isn’t straightforward. When James was built, as with all boats, the flooring was laid before the fitted furniture in the cabin. Full eight by four feet ply sheets were fitted in place over the boat’s bearers. The section that’s damaged is between two bearers so if the section is cut out, there’s nothing to support the new piece. The solution is to fit a new section of ply over the damaged part and secure it to the surrounding undamaged ply. This repair will of course raise the level of the flooring by the thickness of the new ply. It’s not going to be a quick job to ensure that the repair doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb.

It’s a job for another day. In the meantime, Mark from Floors 4 Less has laid all the flooring apart from this one small area. He’ll come back to fit the small section once the remedial work has been done. He’s done a wonderful job and has justified his £250 fitting fee for a full day’s work. He was with us from 8.30am until 6.00pm and worked none stop throughout the day. We are very pleased with the work and at £640 including the fitting, it’s not a bad price.

Just to make sure that we didn’t have any peace and quiet on Friday, we also arranged for Tim Davis from Onboard Solar to fit his ever so popular 300w solar panel system for us. Tim has been professionally fitting solar panels on narrowboats now for just over a year. He did a huge amount of research before deciding on the configuration he uses now. His services have proven very popular. He’s fitted 150 systems so far with more and more orders coming in every day, and for very good reason. They work extremely well.

If you’re considering spending long periods away from a static mooring, solar panels offer you enormous benefits. We don’t live in the sunniest place in the world but, with recent technological advances, solar panels can provide you with free electricity even on dull winter days. Solar panels allow you to moor in a spot that takes your fancy for a few days without having to run your engine to top up your batteries. They should save me a fortune on marina electricity charges as I currently pay 20p a unit when I have my shoreline plugged in.

I had high expectations of Tim, and I’m delighted to say that he was a real pleasure to work with. In an industry where shoddy workmanship and poor standards are all too common, Tim provided an excellent service. He phoned me on Thursday to tell me that he was coming and at what time. He arrived on time, was polite and ever so friendly, worked exceptionally hard and fitted three 100w solar panels and the associated electrics in about three hours. And that included getting the wiring from the roof, through two cabins and into the engine room. James’ original cabin has been overplated with steel, so Tim had to drill though the steel, through the two inch polystyrene filled gap, through the original wooden cabin and into the engine room. There was a little good humoured muttering as he threaded the wiring through the cabin tops, but it didn’t take him long.

The solar panels are now installed and look quite attractive on the boat roof, but they’re not there to look pretty. They’re there to provide me with free power courtesy of the sun. How are they doing?

It’s early days yet but the signs are very good. I haven’t seen any sunshine since Tim installed them. On Friday the weather was about as dull as it’s possible to get with thick cloud and fog. However, the panels still produced something. 1.6 amps is better than nothing. Today, there’s still no sun but the day is brighter than when Tim was here. I’ve just checked and I’m getting 3.2 amps. Actually, I’ve just been outside and tilted the panels into where the sun would be if it was out, and now I’m getting 4.7 amps. It’s enough to power my fridge. Yippee!

While he was with me, Tim also reconnected the rev counter and the engine temperature gauges that are set into the pigeon box just in front of Tim in the photo. They were disconnected when the pigeon box was removed during the cabin overplating. Unfortunately the wiring wasn’t labelled when it was disconnected so Tim had to spend some time experimenting. He cracked it in the end though. I knew he would.

I also took advantage of Tim’s mechanical knowledge while he was here. I have a problem with my engine or rather, with my gearbox. When the boat’s moving the propeller is turning intermittently. One possible cause is low oil in the gearbox. I know it’s not that though because I’ve recently had it topped up.

Tim thinks that it is the gearbox clutch plate. He told me that if it’s the clutch plate that’s the problem, the symptoms will probably disappear when the engine warms up. I tried it. He’s right. All I need to do now is get a reconditioned gearbox fitted. Remember the B.O.A.T. acronym? Bet On Another Thousand. Don’t you just love boating?

A New Service For Potential Narrowboat Owners

I’ve had an idea. I hope you like it.

I regularly receive emails from potential boat owners. They’ve done their research. They’ve trawled the internet looking for information, subscribed to canal magazines and bought books. They’re ready to start looking at boats for sale in earnest… and they’re confused.

There are over 1,000 narrowboats for sale at any one time. Most of them are advertised somewhere on the internet, often on the excellent Apolloduck site. The prices range from less than £10,000 to well over £100,000. You can buy a boat that’s so new that the paint’s barely dry or one that’s so old that the paint is all that’s holding it together. There are boats with bedrooms at the front, bedrooms at the back and no bedroom at all, boats with cruiser, semi trad or trad sterns, boats with vintage engines or modern engines, boats with fitted furniture, free standing furniture or no furniture at all. There are even empty boats that you can finish yourself.

The adverts for the boats often include plenty of information. Too much information sometimes for those new to boating…

As I said, I’ve had an idea. Here it is.

I’m thinking about adding a new section to the forum. If you’re a potential narrowboat owner and you’ve reached the stage where you’re seriously looking at boats for sale, you can use this section to introduce yourself and let other site users know what you want to use your boat for. You can say whether you want to use your boat for limited recreational cruising or as a full time home on either a static mooring or for continually cruising the network. You can provide a link to the boat advert you’re interested in and ask current boat owners to offer the benefit of their experience.

There are hundreds of boat owners are now registered on the site. Some of them are very active on the forum. I will add observations about the boat for sale based on the information provided in the advert. I will ask other boat owning forum members to do the same. By reading the response to both your own posts and posts by other soon-to-be boat owners, you’ll be able to build up a pretty good knowledge of the terminology and the specifications to look for in a narrowboat advert.

What do you think? Is it a feature that you think you would use? I’m more than happy to set it up if there are enough people interested. It’s up to you to let me know one way or the other. I’ve created a very quick two question survey here. It will take you less than a minute to cast your vote.

Waterways World Stove Fuel Test

Since last week’s newsletter and the article about stove fuel, a number of site users have emailed me with additional information. I’ve created a dedicated post for the stove fuel test and additional comments. You can read it here.

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

There are dozens of helpful and interesting articles on the site, but have you found them all? I thought you might appreciate a list of the more popular articles that you can glance through and click on the ones that take your fancy. Here it is.

C & RT Tighten Up On Illegal Moorers

Historically “bridge hopping” – the practice of constantly moving a liveaboard narrowboat backwards and forwards between two points in the same area – has been largely ignored by the authorities. It’s against the rules but British Waterways didn’t have the resources, or the inclination, to tackle the problem.

Continuous cruisers don’t have to pay for a home mooring. As many moorings, even none residential moorings, cost in excess of £2,000p.a. it’s quite a saving but continuous cruisers have an obligation to cruise continually. They must move their boat, as part of a progressive journey, every fourteen days.

Bogus continuous cruisers often over extend their stay on short term visitor moorings, on water points and on the bollards reserved for boaters entering and leaving locks. We had one very annoying example at Calcutt last week. A “continuous cruiser”, complete with a roof overflowing with coal, logs, planters full of weeds, bikes and a wheelbarrow, chained and padlocked his boat to one of the bollards at the entrance to Calcutt Bottom Lock. (He clearly wasn’t the brightest of buttons. The chain was secured by a heavy duty padlock to the bollard at one end, but simply tied on to the boat with a rope at the other end). His boat prevented easy access to the lock for five days. His attitude demonstrated a complete disregard for other boaters.

The Trust recognises that it’s a nuisance caused by a minority group of boaters which causes problems for the majority of law abiding boat owners. They are taking steps to tackle the problem. Here’s the latest information from Damien Kemp in the Trust’s latest edition of the Boaters’ Update, and here’s the Trust’s interpretation of BW’s Continuous Cruising rules.

Useful Links

Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat – Narrowboat costs explained in detail. My own maintenance and living cost on narrowboat James for a full year. Use this information to work out your own costs.
Find out what parts of the canal are closed and for how long. Essential cruising information for you.
Do you need to find a home for your boat? Here’s a comprehensive list of the narrowboat friendly marinas in the UK
Do you want to see where these marinas are on a map? Here it is.
Here’s a map of all the canals on the system to help you plan your route.
Newsletter Archive – Browse through a wealth of useful content in the newsletters over the last year.

Narrowboat Stove Fuel Test

Waterways World tested stove fuel in their March 2013 edition. It’s fascinating reading if your boat’s main heat source is going to be a solid fuel stove. They tested coal briquettes, wood briquettes, wood, straw logs, newspaper logs and Continue reading

2013 03 03 Newsletter – Stove Fuel Test

Living on a Narrowboat News 3rd March 2013

It may be the beginning of March and ever so close to the start of much needed warmer spring weather, but my stove is still in use twenty four hours a day. I use Pureheat, compressed coal briquettes. It burns well, produces plenty of heat and stays alight overnight, but it’s messy. Very messy. It drives Sally mad. No matter how often she races around the boat with a duster (and she races around the boat with a duster very often), there’s a new layer of dust, often within hours. It’s coal dust and the price we have to pay for using very convenient coal briquettes. Because of the constant dust, and because we often get bags of coal with holes in them which let the water in, soak the coal and form an oil coloured liquid in the bottom of the bag which inevitably end up on the carpet, I am always looking for a better alternative.

Waterways World Stove Fuel Test

Waterways World have tested stove fuel this month. It’s fascinating reading if your boat’s main heat source is going to be a solid fuel stove. They tested coal briquettes, wood briquettes, wood, straw logs, newspaper logs and peat. The testers recorded stove heat, room heat and the volume of ash and unburned fuel for each of the products tested. Of all the fuel coal briquettes produced the most ash and unburned fuel. “No surprise there!”, said Sally waving her duster around for the umpteenth time that day. The four wood briquettes tested produced just 8% – 11% of the volume of ash – and possibly dust – produced by the coal. Of course, the heat produced by the fuel is the most important factor and the wood briquettes scored well there too. They actually produced slightly more room heat than coal.

Many boaters burn wood in their stoves. The clinical tests proved what I have suspected for a long time. Even though wood can be sourced for free as you cruise the network, it’s just not practical to use it. Wood, with the exception of ash, can’t be used immediately. It needs to be stored under cover for at least six months so that it can dry out. If the wood you burn isn’t dry, much of the energy produced during burning is used to evaporate the water in the wood rather than producing heat. If you live on your boat you probably don’t have anywhere to store your wood to dry it out. You certainly don’t have the space inside your boat and, unless you have a permanent mooring with dry canalside storage, you don’t have the space outside either. You’ll see many liveaboard narrowboats with logs stored on the boat’s roof. It’s not going to dry there, so it’s not going to burn very well.

The Waterways World testers used wood that had been seasoned for over a year. Even then, the results weren’t very impressive. Seasoned wood only produced about 60% of the heat produced by either coal or wood briquettes.

Peat and newspaper logs didn’t fare very well at all. Peat is difficult to light and doesn’t produce much heat. Newspaper logs may be free to produce yourself once you’ve bought an inexpensive log maker, but they are time consuming and messy to make, leave a lot of unburned ash/fuel and don’t produce much heat.

The best fuel on test appeared to be wood briquettes. As the dust created by our coal use drives Sally mad, I thought I would run my own test to see how the briquettes fare in real life. I’ve ordered two 10kg sample bags from firewoodandlogs.co.uk; one bag of Ecofire high density heat logs and one of their Ecofire oak nuggets. Each 10kg sample bag costs £15 including delivery.

There are a number of factors that will determine whether we switch to heat logs full time. One of them is the cost. The high density heat logs are available singly at £3.99 each, in packs of fifty for £183.75 (£3.68 each) and in packs of 100 for £364.09 ( £3.64 each). The fuel that I use at the moment, Pureheat in 25kg bags, costs me £10.78 a bag. The cost of the heat logs for the same weight fuel is £9.98, £9.10 and £8.27.

The heat logs work of cheaper than my current Pureheat, but it’s not the only consideration. The option I would prefer is the 50 bags at £3.64 each. Where can I store them? I buy Pureheat ten at a time. I store them on the walkway next to the boat. Although the coal is stored in plastic bags to keep them dry, sometimes the bags have holes in them. Wet coal is messy to handle but the fuel still lights easily enough. Heat logs are an entirely different matter.

I use softwood heat logs at the moment. I don’t use them often so a pack of ten kept in a cupboard is enough to provide a quick burst of heat if the boat is cold when I get up in the morning. They’re softwood so they’re not particularly good but they work very well if they’re kept dry. However if they come into contact with water they act like a sponge, expand to twice their size and prove very difficult to light. Heat logs need to be kept completely dry.

Fortunately Sally and I have a storage unit, a twenty foot container, a couple of miles from the boat. We can keep it there and bring two or three bags back to the boat as and when we need it. Storing the bags next to the boat wouldn’t work. Any holes in the bags would render the logs unusable.

I considered buying a sample bag of one of the other heat logs on test, Easy Logs. Unfortunately the supplier, The Briquette Company, doesn’t want to do business with southern softies, or for anyone else outside their immediate area. They’re based in Preston and will only deliver less than 25 bags to the nearby postcodes. They’re expensive too. The equivalent of 25kg of logs cost £13.10 compared with £9.10 for the Ecofire logs that I’ve already ordered.

I’m now waiting for my two sample bags of logs to be delivered. I placed the order yesterday. They emailed me almost immediately to tell me that they were out of stock (because of the WW article?) but would deliver them week commencing 4th March.

I’ll let you know how I get on with them.

Update 2nd March 2013

My 10kg sample bag of Ecofire Oak Nuggets arrived yesterday. I’ve used them already. What a waste of money.

Each oak nugget is slightly smaller than a tennis ball. The first time I used them, I made the mistake of filling the grate with about fifteen of them. The result was spectacular. I had a taste of what it must be like standing in the centre of the sun… on a particularly warm day. We had to throw the doors and windows wide open, remove the Ecofan off the stove top before it took off, and move to the other end of the boat until the heat died down… which took about half an hour. It was an intense, but short lived blast of heat and totally useless for providing a steady heat throughout the boat.

On my next attempt I added just six nuggets to the stove. The heat was less intense, but still too much for comfort even with the fire damped down (by closing the vents). Half and hour later I had to add another half dozen, and so on throughout the day.

Coal briquettes are so much easier and more practical to use. My stove is old and not particularly good. It’s certainly not a patch on the Morso Squirrel which, I’m told, will stay alight for more than 24 hours without any interference. Even so, my stove will stay alight without a problem overnight if I use coal. If I had to rely on the oak nuggets, the fire would last no more than a couple of hours unattended.

The oak briquettes are absolutely useless for providing steady heat. They burn quickly and fiercely. In the Waterways World test there was very little ash or unburned fuel left in the stove at the end of the test. I agree. There was very little residue in my stove either, but what WW didn’t mention was the unburned fuel in the bag. I didn’t weigh it but I estimated that there was between 500g and 1kg of sawdust in the bottom of the bag which in addition to the ash in the stove was more waste than the coal briquettes produced in the test.

I can’t think of any occasion on the boat when I would rather have a bag of Ecofire Oak Nuggets on the boat rather than my regular Pureheat. Coal might produce more dust, but it’s a far, far more reliable heat source.

Essential stove maintenance

I’ve just been talking to a fellow liveaboard about the above fuel test. He told me a story demonstrating two very good points. I’ll share both with you. A few years ago, he had to go to Germany leaving his wife alone on the boat. While he was away, the carbon monoxide alarm went off and continued its shrieking all day. She put it under the mattress to deaden the sound and thought nothing more of it. Of course the alarm was making a racket because it had detected dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide inside the boat. Fortunately they weren’t high enough to incapacitate, or kill, his wife.

When he returned to the boat, and recovered from shock at hearing what his wife had done to silence the carbon monoxide alarm, he used a torch to look down his chimney. Wood burning stove flues can suffer from a build up of tar. Coal burning stoves suffer from accumulated soot. He burns coal. I piece of biscuit hard soot had fallen from the flue wall accross the flue which restricted the air flow. It hadn’t caused enough of an obstruction to prevent the coal from burning, but it was enough cause the carbon monoxide to build up to an unacceptable level.

Learn from others’ mistakes before it’s too late;

Make sure you have a carbon monoxide alarm (and make sure that everyone on your boat knows what it’s for
Clean your flue regularly. You can by flue brushes at many chandlers, but you don’t need to. A slightly longer than flue length piece of chain will do the trick. Take your chimney off, drop one end of the chain down the flue, and give it a good rattle. Make sure the stove door is firmly closed before you do it though, or you’ll be cleaning your boat for a week!

WiFi For Narrowboats

When I first moved onto James I couldn’t connect to the internet. I had bought a USB dongle to get me online. The instructions were simple. Plug the dongle into your laptop’s USB port, watch the dongle automatically install the required software, and click the Connect button that appears on the screen. In reality it wasn’t quite so easy.

The dongle doesn’t work very well inside a steel box. I had to buy a USB extension lead so that I could hang the dongle out of the window before I could get a signal. I wrapped a plastic bag around it to protect the dongle from the rain. It looked very untidy. The setup is much neater now. I have run the extension cable through some nearby trunking and up through a vent where it is attached to the top of a four foot metal pole I have attached to the roof.

Using the dongle alone, I could get a good internet connection for my laptop, but not for my Kindle, my Galaxy S2 (It’s now well and truly dead. I went for a swim with the phone. Neither the phone nor I enjoyed it. I recovered, the phone didn’t) or Sally’s iPhone or iPad. I bought an Edimax N150 wireless 3G compact router. It works perfectly. All of our devices are now fully connected.

Detailed Narrowboat Expenses For January 2013

If you’re a Narrowbudget Gold user, here’s a comprehensive account of my expenses for January. Everything’s included. There’s a breakdown of my mooring fees, maintenance and repairs, general living costs and sundry expenses. I’ve listed every penny that I’ve had to spend to keep myself afloat in January.

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Useful Links

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Detailed narrowboat running costs for February 2013

2013 03 11 Newsletter – Fitting Solar Panels

Living on a Narrowboat News 11th March 2013

A New Service For Potential Narrowboat Owners

Waterways World Stove Fuel Test

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

C & RT Tighten Up On Illegal Moorers

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links

Narrowboat Stove Fuel Test

2013 03 03 Newsletter – Stove Fuel Test

Living on a Narrowboat News 3rd March 2013

Waterways World Stove Fuel Test

Essential stove maintenance

WiFi For Narrowboats

Detailed Narrowboat Expenses For January 2013

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links