Sunday, February 15, 2009

I currently have around 275 DVD films which I plan to sell at a car boot sale but only after I have transferred them to the 500 gig hard drive i recently bought. To think I can get a book case full of DVD films stored into a small silver box no bigger than a 7 x 5 photo frame! Not only will this free up storage but it will act as a DVD jukebox. No more hunting around for that certain film ever again!
I am quite minimalist in my bricks and mortar home lifestyle and the idea of transferring this to narrowboat living is a big appeal to me and also the nomadic lifestyle too. This picture shows an LCD screen freestanding in a built in wood surround. My idea would be to have a built in 32in LCD screen mounted into the side with a much narrower profile with the speakers mounted into the ceiling. I use a 20in imac here at home running OS leopard (I also have three laptops running windows xp, vista and the new beta windows 7), but i much prefer my mac. I will probably have a mac computer on board running as a server holder all my music, video, and internet services feeding two screens - one in bedroom and one in the saloon.
I think this link http://www.abnb.co.uk/Boat_pages/fdr1477/1477abnb.php is probably the closest to my ideal layout. from the helm going inwards , there is a small area for storing boaty things, then through to galley, (i like the eye level oven), then forward to the saloon, - again I would have a centre fireplace. I don't like the through shower space and would opt instead of shower,toilet,sink enclosed with the corridor running sidewards to the master fixed double bed.

7 comments:

  1. Wow!
    You certainly know what you want!
    I think it's great you're thinking about options already. It'll give you the chance to have a look at layouts "in the flesh", and compare them to your ideal.
    When you come to select a builder, get some professional layout drawings done for them to quote against. And check out several. Judging by the quality you're looking to build in, it'll have to be one of the high end builders....
    Good Luck

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  2. Thanks Geoff/Mags....reading your blog helps for inspiration and keeps my canal boat dream alive :)

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  3. Hi there,
    I agree good idea to know what you want, one thing is, have you thought about how you are going to power all of this kit? Remember if you are cruising around the network you will be on 12v battery power most of the time. Of course you can use invertors, but don't forget they are pretty inefficient so you waste energy, and the chances are that items like laptops etc all convert from 240v back to 12v or these days some other strange small voltage so you loose even more in the second conversion.

    When I first bought Sirius one of the previous owners had wired up the whole boat with house hold mains lights wire, big mistake, as on a 70' narrowboat you loose about 1.5 volts from one end to the other so the headlight only had about 10.5 volts. Also the fridge was a 12v fridge, but probably because of this poor wiring they had a 12v->240v invertor by the batteries and a 240v->12v invertor by the fridge! What a waste! ( I've replaced them both with a single piece of 9mm thick cable which has far less volt drop and runs the fridge fine :)

    Some food for thought :)

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  4. Thanks Chris for the info....
    Im planning on Trojan T125 – 6v Series 240 Ah Deep Cycle Monobloc Battery, wither a bank of 4 or 6.
    I also plan to have a whispergen generator on board which would kick in automatically when the batteries run low.
    "This 12 or 24V diesel-powered generator provides up to 800W DC output to automatically maintain and charge the boat's battery bank. Through an AC inverter, the battery bank powers radio, navigation, lighting and other systems, handling peak appliance demands that may exceed 5kW with ease."
    http://blog.boattraderonline.com/2008/12/whispergen-boat-generator-offers-quiet.html

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  5. It's lovely to see someone who is actually researching and planning their lifestyle change rather than those who just jump blindly in! Well done Dunny and the very best of luck with all the plans. I have linked to follow you so that I can keep in touch with the dream becoming reality. I hope to see you somewhere out on the cut in passing one day in the future. It certainly looks as if you'll have quite a head turner when it eventually comes to fruition.

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  6. Thanks Andy

    Busy researching heating systems atm, Hurricane looks favourite over Kabola and Eberscher. But who knows what technologies will be around in 6 years.

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  7. Wow! Loveing your ideas for your boat. The fire place is fab, I have never seen one like that before. You have a real eye for style. I am sure your boat will be a jawdropper! Good luck with your dreams and aspirations. We are liveaboards who fitted out our own boat. Not through choice though. Our lovely boat builders went bankrupt + left us with an empty shell instead of a fully fitted that we had almost paid for. It didn't put. us off though we have lived aboard 5 yrs now + love our life afloat. Deb + John Nb Tickety Boo.

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