Morning! Good morning! Today we're gonna be talking about electrics on Narrowboat Silver Fox.
Yay! We've got cables everywhere. (Colin places cable on his tongue) No! And we're gonna try and explain the
electrical system for you with the least amount of jargon that we can.
We did actually used to be electricians, but we just don't do that
anymore, don't do it anymore. One thing I do need to mention, the
electrical system might not be the same that you've got on your boat,
particularly if it's an old boat and if you are thinking of making any changes
get a qualified electrician in to do that. That is important. It is important.
We're also going to try an answer some of your questions. We've got some questions
in about the electrics and we'll answer those as we go through the vlog, yeah.
The first one we're going to do straight away came from Tony Adams and he wanted
to know what the differences are between the electrical system on a boat and the
electrics in a house. I think that is a job for you. I know what's coming.
Off you go!
Let's start at the power station. Burning coal and gas and oil, biofuels, and some using
hydro and solar, they're creating electricity on a massive scale.
Four hundred thousand volts is taken from here. It goes down the super grid to the next stage.
That four hundred kilovolts - four hundred thousand volts of
electricity travels down the super grid, down the pylons to local area networks
like this. The voltage is dropped using transformers by about half and then it's
off again towards the towns and villages. The voltage comes into these smaller transformers
in towns and villages where the voltage is dropped again by about half.
Almost there... From these transformers on poles it
drops the voltage down to either 415 or 230 volts. It sounds familiar doesn't it.
It goes from these transformers down these lines into your house.
I think Colin's back! Right...! So, on a narrowboat we don't have the luxury of
incoming mains electricity at 230 volts unless we're lucky enough to be at a
mooring or a marina that's got shore hook up, one of these. (You alright?) So with this we can hook up
to the National Grid and we can get our 230 volts which means we can run
everything from this.
While we're out cruising we're really going to be relying on these, and these
are our batteries. Now on narrowboat Silver Fox we've got six 12-volt 165 amp-power
batteries. These are special marine batteries made for boats.
Whoa! Whoa! What's an amp-hour? Right, put simply an amp-hour is a unit we use to measure the flow of energy.
So something that uses a tiny little bit of electric might be 0.1 amps an hour
and that's a really slow rate, and something that uses a lot of electricity
might use 10 amp-hours, so 10 amps per hour. So that means it's using energy faster.
Imagine this is a jelly bean battery. It's full of jelly beans, 165
jelly beans, and each jelly bean is one amp-hour.
Let's open the battery up. Don't open a battery up to see if it's got jelly
beans in it. Oh for God's sake, can you imagine. I bet people will actually do that.
They will! Yeah, "Oh no I've burnt my mouth!" Well why did you open a battery up?
Because Colin said it had jelly beans in it. No! Honestly, this is a made up jelly bean
battery alright. So this is our battery, it's got hundred and sixty-five jelly
beans. Each jelly bean is one amp-hour. So if I wasn't greedy I might eat one
jelly bean an hour. And so that means if I ate one jelly bean an hour, after 165
hours the box would be empty. If I ate... I don't know,
10 jelly beans an hour, it would last me 16 and a half hours. If I ate...
a hundred jelly beans an hour (Just put the kettle on) it would last you just over...
Eeeuugghh, no! Cinnamon! You get the point?
The lids regenerate any gas that's produced during the kind of charging and discharge process, and utilises that,
so everything kind of goes on for itself. We don't have to do anything with it,
hence it's called maintenance-free. As well as the six Vetus batteries, we've
got two extra ones. We've got two Bosch batteries. One is for the bow thruster
and that helps us move the boat left and right if we want to use it. The other one
is the starter battery and that's a Bosch 110Ah battery.
Those are charged separately from the alternator and they don't really have
any part to play in the leisure batteries inside. Our battery bank is quite big.
990Ah in total available to us. But we want to look
after the batteries and to do that we don't really want to be using all of
that 990 amps. I don't think we could to be honest.
We'll come on to a power audit in a second and you'll see how much power we actually plan to use.
To look after them it's really a good idea not to use more than about
half of its power. We call it discharge. So about fifty percent is really the
maximum before you want to be topping them up again. So for us that's just
under 500Ah, and again we won't be using anywhere near that
really on an average day, but it does mean that with the solar and the
alternator charging them up that we should be able to keep them charged and
look after them. To work out how much power you need from your batteries to
run everything on your narrowboat, the best thing to do is a power audit. Let's do that now.
It's a great idea to do a power audit if you're building a new narrow boat and want
to know how much power to have available in the batteries, or if you're struggling
for power on an older boat. Now because we're still fitting out Silver Fox we
don't have the exact consumption figures yet, but as soon as we do we're going to
do a vlog with loads of details for you. Right so let's get started. Get a sheet
of paper and write down the following headings at the top. Appliances. Volts.
Watts. Amps. Daily Use, and Total Amp Hours, then we can start working out the consumption
So we're going to start with the TV.
We know it's 230 volts and the label on the back says it uses an average 38
Watts an hour, so to work out the amps we divide the Watts by the volts so 38
divided by 230, that gives us 0.16 amps. Now we'll have the TV switched on
for about 4 hours a day, so we multiply the 0.16A by 4 hours and
that gives us 0.64 amp-hours each day for the TV. Now the process is
the same for 230 volt and 12-volt appliances, but let's show you the same
method for working out the 12 volt fridge.
We know it's 12 volts and it uses 34 watts (it says in the specifications), so
again we divide the Watts by the volts. So 34 divided by 12 gives us 2.83A.
Now even though the fridge will be on 24 hours a day, the kind of cooling
bits and the fan, they'll only be running between like 14 and 18 hours, but let's
be conservative and we'll say that it's going to run for 18 hours a day.
So we multiply the 18 hours by the 2.83A and that gives us 51 amp-hours a day to
run the fridge. So after that you'll do the pumps and the lights and everything
else on your boat that draws power. You'll be surprised how it all adds up,
and when you finished add up the total amp-hours and
ideally it should come to less the 40% of your total battery bank power.
Now some boaters and electricians might have slightly different advice and views when
it comes to these power audits, so don't just take my word for it. I'm not an
expert by any means. This is just the way we're doing it. Ask an electrician or
there's plenty of advice and information online.
Next question then comes from Phil Jenkins. He wants to know what are the differences between the 12-volt
system and the 230 volt system on the boat. To answer that we need to go to the inverter.
The batteries on narrowboat Silver Fox
are 12 volt DC. Now DC means direct current. It goes in one straight line, one direction.
(Screaming fans)
And on the boat things that use 12 volt are like the lighting,
the pumps, the fridge, and we've got sockets like you get in your car.
So it's like a car adaptor that we can charge batteries and cameras and things
like that from. But we also have some 230 volt appliances. Things like the TV,
the washing machine, and our computers. And they use AC current. Now AC is
different to 12 volt DC. AC instead of going in a straight line it means
alternating current. A bit like a cha-cha-cha
two steps forward two steps back three steps forward two steps back
things like that. So we can't use the 12-volt batteries to power 230 volt
equipment. So that's why we have this. This is an inverter. This takes power
from the 12-volt batteries and it changes it into a 230 volt AC current.
That means it goes through separate circuits then which go out into the boat
like a ring main in your house. Like a socket circuit, and it means we can plug
the TV and our computers, and we can have our washing machine working.
If you're having an inverter fitted, make sure that the power is enough to supply the 230 volt
appliances in your boat, okay. We've got 3000 watt (3kW) inverter, that's
well within the scope of what we need. Some older boats might have a lesser one
like 1600 Watts, so it's a good idea to refer back to that power audit, look at
the amount of Watts that you would pull at any one time and make sure that your
inverter is capable of powering that. The only downside really to the
inverter is it does use a bit more power. It pulls in power from the 12 volt DC
batteries and it does use a bit of that power really just to run and convert it
to 230, so by leaving it switched on all the time, even if you've got nothing
running, it will use a little bit of power.
Mike Bates wants to know does narrowboat Silver Fox have a fuse board?
The power is coming in from the batteries. It's coming through the inverter, and then it comes
to this which is our distribution board. So this is where all our micro switches,
Our MCB's, and what they do is they protects the circuits. Each circuit goes
out and if there's a fault for example on the lighting circuit one of the light
switches will trip, and that gives us an indication that there's a problem on
that circuit. So that's kind of the first line of defence. We've got a separate MCB
which controls the whole board we can switch the whole electrics off through this.
If there's any fault on any of the circuits, that will automatically trip, so if
Shaun accidentally cuts through something it will trip that and protect us.
We've got different Isolators also protecting the inverter, and we can also
just isolate the whole system and the batteries if we need to work on it.
From the distribution board the circuits come all the way down the boat, so we've got
lighting circuits, 12 volt circuits for the lights. We have 12 volt sockets circuits.
We can plug adaptors in and charge things like cameras and batteries
with those, and they come out here like this.
So here we've got a socket circuit and we've got the lighting circuit. We've also got the cables for
the HDMI, the Ethernet for the internet, and things like that, and of course sockets and light switches too.
Graham Cooke has asked us what type of wiring we use on narrowboat Silver Fox?
I've brought some of it to show you. This is what we use for the lighting circuits
it's one and a half mm thick and the thickness really relates to how much
power, how much current is running through it, so for the lighting circuit
it's nearly all LED lights so we don't need a lot of current running through it,
hence it's only one and a half mm thick inside. This one next to it is a bit thicker.
This is twin on earth, which means it's got a live, a neutral and an earth and
it's got this blue sheath around it. We use this for the sockets, and the sockets
use quite a bit more power than the lighting circuit because we've got
things like the washing machine, TV, and the microwave running through, so we use
this for the sockets. This runs around the boat and we use this for the
lighting. We do also have a 12-volt system and that runs alongside the other
electrical system, so we've got 12-volt sockets as well as 230 volt sockets.
Up along the centre of the roof of the boat you can see all these wiring bundles
included in there we've got the inputs from the solar, and we're actually going to
do separate vlogs on the solar and the Wi-Fi once we've got that up and running
so we can show you the controllers and everything else, all the equipment that goes with that.
That's the electrics done then! Don't you miss being an electrician? No, not at all. No? I kind of do in a way but I don't know...
If you remember on the news, there was like a spate of house fires a few years ago...
Nothing to do with me! Shaun's electrics! (Laughter)
The fits out continues then, and we'll show you more of the fit-out of Narrowboat Silver Fox next time.
We hope you're enjoying the vlogs because we're loving making them, and if you do, and you're not subscribed, please subscribe.
Hit the notifications button if you want to be notified every time we release a new vlog.
If you liked it, do that for us, and ask questions, leave comments.
We answer every one. We do try and answer every single comment.
and we'll see you next time. See you later!
Ooooh, he's ever so clever!
Aaaah, I got it wrong again!
It might not be the same as they are on yours but (Shaun laughing) What...?!?!? My mind's gone blank!
Errrr... Just always, errrr... Just make sure that you're not distracted by drills in the background. (Shaun laughing).
Today on... slap... (Blows raspberry).
Let's start at the (laughing) power station where they're creating...
(Slips and starts laughing)
Let's start at the power stations (Laughing)
(forgot lines) Aaaaggghhh!
From the left...
So, that 400... so.
Wait...! (Laughter).
I think Colin's back...
No, too late. I was too late.
I think Colin's back...
(out of breath, can't speak)
I think Colin's back...
Too long a gap!
I think Colin's back...
Ha haa! (struggling for breath) I need to get to the gym a little bit more! So on a boat we don't have the... errr... Aaaagghhh!
On a mooring, where we've got (hits hand) Aaaagghhhh!
We're connected to a shoreline hookup which we could be at a (can't pronounce words)...
Unless we're lucky enough to be at a, errr... a... errrr.... (Shaun laughing)
Is...(Shaun laughing) You can't say that! (more laughing).
Graham Cooke asked us what sort of cables we use for the ewec - ewectr - ewectwical wirewing (Shaun laughing)
What do you think of our lighting circuit then? It's like Blackpool Illuminations
Just hit the subscribe (pauses) button. (sighs). Cheers Michael! (Shaun laughing).
But we do (mixes word up)
That's the electrics done... (pauses). Bye! (Shaun laughing)
(Shaun choking on a jelly bean).
(Colin can't stop laughing)