Narrowboat festival over the bank holiday!

[JulieL]

This years national narrowboat show is being held in a field next to where our narrowboat is moored

http://www.waterways.org.uk/festivals/preston/

So if any of you are a bit bored and are local to the show........I'll buy you a beer in the beer tent over the weekend!

PS Mine's a pernod and coke

 

[david and julie]

I suspect Julie is trying to lighten the mood slightly.

 

[Freddie]

This years national narrowboat show is being held in a field next to where our narrowboat is moored

http://www.waterways.org.uk/festivals/preston/

So if any of you are a bit bored and are local to the show........I'll buy you a beer in the beer tent over the weekend!

PS Mine's a pernod and coke

Julie do you have to pay rent for the boat and can i ask in what region it may be.

 

[david and julie]

Freddie, do you mean for this particular event or in general?

 

[Freddie]

Freddie, do you mean for this particular event or in general?

In general i have always wondered

How much the rent may be and can you get away with it by keep moving

Do you pay council tax and can you get away with it

Where does the sewage go

Do you get condensation

Do you get rats coming on board

I know i am one of those people

 

[david and julie]

Taking your points in order Freddie.

The mooring costs for our boat which is 53ft long is around £1300 a year. This is for a secure marina berth without power. It includes carparking and has water,showers,toilets etc on site. It is very secure being fenced floodlit and a resident manager. Total costs including moorings insurance and 2 different licenses(because we are on the edge of 2 systems( is about £2500 PA. You can get away without a mooring by using a different license but changes are afoot to curtail this. Google for "continuous cruising" for more info on this.

No you don't pay council tax, unless you have a permanant residential mooring and these are quite rare. Strictly speaking you are not supposed to live aboard all the time in a non residential marina. You have to come and go a littlle.You also don't need a TV licence.

You have a choice of cassette type toilets which are the same as caravans or you can have waste holding tanks fitted on board which are emptied at pump out stations or at marina's or boatyards. A typical tank(although they vary in size) should last two of you about a fortnight, subject to use and they cost about £10 to £15 to pump out. Cassette toilets are free to empty at sani-stations which are dotted about the system. You also get your water from these which is stored on board in tanks which typically hold around 150 gallons,depending how big the boat is.You would normally fill up about every 3 days which is usually enough for normal washing and daily showering etc.

Modern boats do not suffer badly from condensation as they have sprayfoam insulation (like the lagging on a cylinder) on the steel hull, which prevents the cold spots which cause condensation. You do get wet windows in the morning and good ventilation is important though.

I have never heard of anyone having rats onboard except if you have cats. As you know they often bring "presents" back which they have killed. You do get spiders though.

 

[big-all]

Freddie, do you mean for this particular event or in general?

In general i have always wondered

How much the rent may be and can you get away with it by keep moving

Do you pay council tax and can you get away with it

Where does the sewage go

Do you get condensation

Do you get rats coming on board

I know i am one of those people

ooooo freddie
i dont know why but i feel you may have negativity in your mind
i do hope i am wrong cos i think narrow boats are cool
i have never been on one but i belive moorings are at a premium
you pay for linkup services [power and water and sewage disposal]
and i belive you only pay for council services if your static for more than 6 months
now they are only my guesses at the situation lets see how wrong i am


ooohhh well d and j were posting as i wrote this so you can judge just how close i was with my guess

 

[AdamW]

So, you pay £1300 pa to moor at a secure marina?

I can spot an opportunity here.

What about a co-operative? If a whole bunch of marina owners got together, they could introduce a scheme where you pay a bit more per year (say, £1600pa), and you get to moor at any one of the co-op's marinas. After all, you can only moor your boat for 365 days in any one year, so they wouldn't be losing out. To balance out costs you could have some "premium" marinas where there is a slight surcharge (say you want to moor up in the middle of a city one night).

As to toilets, give me a tank anyday! I've never had to use or empty a cassette toilet, and after hearing the horror stories I never want to. Also, it is my experience that the pedestal on which the apple of one's eye is placed, is notably lowered once one has encountered physical evidence that they actually, and indeed frequently, have to do a poo. I'd much rather pay the £15 and have a machine do it

EDIT: looking at the narrowboat festival, it mentions "cabin crochet". Julie, have you ever encountered a patient with such an affliction in your professional capacity?

I won't even start on "Painting knobstick roses"

 

[kendor]

as sewerage still gets discharged into rivers by water authorities pipes does it really matter if one's droppings are discharged into the river as you float along , keeps the fish fed and happy

 

[AdamW]

Eutrophication, dear boy! Poopy in the water helps algae grow, thus starving the fish of sunlight and oxygen.

The sewage-plant output to the rivers is clean enough to drink... Apparently.

A water-treatment engineer buddy even tells me that pumping it into the river in the first place is proposterous and wasteful.

 

[david and julie]

To be fair kendor, the vast majority of these boats are on the canals and they are not allowed to discharge overboard. You are right about the rivers but this is beginning change and will no doubt eventually be banned, all for the good if you ask me too. I find the thought of raw sewage floating about disgusting, more so on a canal where the lack of any significant flow(in most cases) makes matters worse as the waste takes longer to break down.

 

[Freddie]

Freddie, do you mean for this particular event or in general?

In general i have always wondered

How much the rent may be and can you get away with it by keep moving

Do you pay council tax and can you get away with it

Where does the sewage go

Do you get condensation

Do you get rats coming on board

I know i am one of those people

ooooo freddie
i dont know why but i feel you may have negativity in your mind
i do hope i am wrong cos i think narrow boats are cool
i have never been on one but i belive moorings are at a premium
you pay for linkup services [power and water and sewage disposal]
and i belive you only pay for council services if your static for more than 6 months
now they are only my guesses at the situation lets see how wrong i am


ooohhh well d and j were posting as i wrote this so you can judge just how close i was with my guess

Behave BA i am not negative quite the opposite i would love that way of life, maybe not on a barge but on a boat that goes on river and sea aswell.

I used to go clay pigeon shooting with a man who was going to make a concrete barge and we used to take the pee out of him untill he threatened to punch our heads but apparently its true you do have concrete barges

 

[big-all]

OK FREDDIE i appologise

wasnt shure if you where collecting amunition for a barny

or were genuinly interested

it looks like a realy idilic way of living [yes i know its not the same as two weeks in the summer]

now im shure dewalt were going to do an 18v router and pull saw

 

[petewood]

as sewerage still gets discharged into rivers by water authorities pipes does it really matter if one's droppings are discharged into the river as you float along , keeps the fish fed and happy

I'm sure that discharging raw sewage into a waterway is an offence which is quite stringently punished.

I was working on a farm where some slurry drained down a field and into the river before the farmhand had time to turn off the tap.

Two days later we were still on the job and a pair of inspectors from the waterways authority (or somewhere) came on site and asked us questions about what we had seen etc etc.

The farmer was fined several £1000's.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

yes i know its not the same as two weeks in the summer

It's probably not, particularly in January and February..

But on the upside, remember that any holiday boat you've experienced will probably not have been fitted out to the highest standards.

Also - I had a lift once on a privately owned narrowboat when I was on a canal holiday once. Just as well, as we were going through the Preston Brook tunnel, I'd hopped off to open a stop-lock, and to my dismay was informed by my mates that we'd lost reverse, and they were unable to stop for me to get back on before they disappeared into the tunnel...

I really didn't fancy the walk over the top....

Anyway - it was very interesting to see how much space there is on a narrowboat, once you're free of the constraints of a central passageway with bunks down each side. It's never gong to be palatial, but it's no longer cramped.

now im shure dewalt were going to do an 18v router and pull saw

You could always buy a generator...