How Much Does It Cost to Live on a Narrowboat? - YouTube

hey guys welcome to another video if you're new  here my name is marina and i'm miles today we're  

going to tell you how much we spend by living on  a narrow boat we've been counting the costs and  

we've got them to share with you and we don't tend  to look at them that often because it can be a bit  

depressing sometimes um but here we go we've been  living on the narrowboat for two years and they  

have been very very different we've been meaning  to do this video for a while however we've been  

waiting to go through one of the biggest expense  that you go through on the boat we did blocking  

and we painted our roof just a couple of weeks  ago so we can include those costs in the video

so let's just set the ground  rules so we're 62 foot  

we're continuous cruising so we're not in a  marina but we are producing our own electricity  

while we're out on the move so because we're not  in a marina obviously we don't have marina fees  

to pay but all of these calculations are based  on having a fridge and having 180 watts of solar

for the last 12 months we were both living on  the boat full time and working from the boat  

as well so we both work online and that is  also a factor of how much electricity we use  

for those who don't live on the boat  laptops do take quite a lot of electricity  

for us to get electricity we need to run  our engine that's how we can charge our  

laptops just to give you an example the laptop  that i have should like the battery should  

last 10 hours in normal use like if i were  browsing internet or using some apps however  

for the video editing work that i do the  software is quite power hungry so the  

battery only lasts for one hour so that's why  it needs to be charged quite a few times a day  

cool so the first cost in boat ownership is  buying the boat so we had a bit of savings  

that we put in but then we also borrowed  some money we get a lot of questions  

like can you get a mortgage for a boat i  think you can however we got an unsecured  

loan which costs us 450 pounds a month for  five years so but a lot of people might not  

have this cost if you're looking to buy a boat  out savings and obviously it depends on what  

size of boat you get and how much money  you put in versus how much you borrow so

the next monthly expense is cit license  so our license uh for being on the canal  

we pay that to canal and river trust  if you're not a boater i think of it as  

a council tax so we get free water for that and  the use of facilities this money obviously go  

towards upkeep of the canals and rivers  in in the uk so that's all good with us  

last year we spent 88 pound a month on  our city license however this year we  

are upgrading to a golden license to cruise  on certain rivers like the thames as well  

so the next one is insurance with the amount of  times we bash into bridges you're going to need  

insurance our insurance is 18 pound a month which  is 220 pound a year but obviously it depends on  

the size of the boat the age of your boat and many  other factors i did have a boating license before  

so that might mean ours is a little bit cheaper  than some people's but i don't think it's that  

expensive it's not as expensive as a car depends  on the age of the boat and alba's 29 years old  

another expense that we have living on  board is internet there are many options for  

accessing internet on the cat and what we  do is for the beginning of the year we had a  

small dongle so we access internet through a sim  card and our contract is only 22 pounds a month  

that is unlimited internet which gives us access  to unlimited data the internet on a good day is  

pretty good however sometimes if we are staying in  the middle of the field it's a little bit patchy  

and that's why a few months ago we installed a  signal booster thing an omni directional antenna  

on the outside of the boat we're still using  the same sim card of the same wi-fi so the costs  

remain the same but we have paid  a little bit more for installation  

and additional um hardware we're going to be  talking about repairs and stuff that we spend  

on throughout the year in a separate section  top tip have your mobile phone on a different  

network so then in case some patchy internet  you can try different network and see which one  

works best so we can tether off our phones  from time to time as well if we need to  

so next up is fuel and that's going to include  gas coal and diesel we have a log burner  

as well and it will also include wood  but we also have diesel central heating  

and our shower is also gas rather than a clarifier  which some boats have so that will factors in  

gas costs us roughly around sort of 30 35 pound  a month a gas bottle lasts us a month and that's  

pretty much because we have gas for the shower  um as well so it's a little bit more than other  

boaters would spend on gas and the second reason  is because we do our laundry as well so we heat up  

we'll use hot water from the tap and which  obviously then uses gas as well so coal obviously  

uh varies um from month to month particularly in  the winter we can go through quite a bit of coal  

and then in the summer obviously we probably  don't need any coal at all a bag of coal is  

usually about sort of 10 to 15 pounds and  we go through in the winter a bag of coal  

every sort of two and a half days so roughly  um averaging out uh probably cost us about 30  

30 40 pounds a month on coal so we tend to use  sort of heat logs um instead of actual logs  

which we found to be a lot more efficient you get  a lot more logs for your money but they're usually  

about seven to eight pounds um a bag and so it's  the same price as logs but you get a lot more  

of them and they're much easier to store but  all in gas coal diesel and wood for the fire  

over the year obviously some months or  more than others probably averages off  

about 180 pounds a month and that includes  things like traveling keeping warm showers  

etc so it's all of our utilities and just in  terms of fuel costs as well naturally last year  

in between lockdowns we went up the grand union  down the oxford down the thames and started the k  

a which was about 330 miles so all of those costs  for fuels also include 330 miles worth of travel

toilet costs are pretty low for us we've got  a compost toilet that we got with alba so we  

didn't have to buy one and the only expense is  getting wood shavings that we get in massive bags  

it they only cost 10 pounds and they last us  about three months which you can get from a  

pet store and some garden shops i think all then  for the year our toilet expenses are 40 pounds  

so another cast boaters will have  will be blacking or narrow boaters  

we'll be blacking every two to three years we've  just had our blacks obviously it depends on size  

but our blacking six anodes and a bit of welding  work to alba cost us one thousand three hundred  

and pounds so yeah you can divide that by three  years and we'll break that down into a monthly  

average for you as well so when we were looking  at blacking we were looking we had many sort of  

different quotes in london it was about 1800 quid  whereas um in devises where we went um they quoted  

us 950 quid obviously we then put the anodes on  top um as well as some of the welding bits as well

when we went in for lacking um because we stayed  under cover for a few days we decided that  

it's the best time to repaint albus roof we've  never done it before and we didn't know what  

state of the roof is going to be and how to  tackle it we spend money on paint on hiring  

specific tools and some miscellaneous items that  you need for painting like paint brushes and  

stuff like that um so we spend about 290  pounds on paint 65 pounds on hiring tools and  

um a few more on miscellaneous items so all  in painting albus roof cost us 410 pounds  

we didn't pay separately for hiring a a tunnel or  anything like that because we went in for blocking  

and that was undercover for a few days when i said  paint i meant primer undercoat top coat um a fair  

town which is a rust converter alcohol decreases  stuff like that obviously you don't need to  

paint your roof every year we don't know exactly  how long it should last we did a really good job  

we hope because we pretty much taken it to the  bare metal but we've heard that it should last  

for about six to eight years so we'll  just calculate split onto six years  

next one is servicing and repairs last year we  spent 2 600 pounds on servicing and repairs that  

included fixing coolant leaks replacing core plugs  having a full engine service having the shower  

fixed and the shower pump replaced it included  a new set of batteries including fitting as well  

now obviously that's quite a big expense over 12  months roughly around 220 pound a month however  

the year before that so 2019 we spent nothing on  servicing and repairs um once we bought the boat  

and had it into the yard it can vary from year to  year it's probably worth having some money aside  

for those day rainy days where you just need to  get a professional in to get it fixed quite often  

when something goes wrong on your boat it's quite  a detrimental thing whether that be your engine  

which is your power source and water pump lighting  charging etc so you do need to be in a position  

and be prepared to get things fixed what we tend  to find is most of the repairs that we have done  

on the boat individually aren't that much money  they're quite cost-effective the engineers that  

we've worked with have been really good and  really fair as well often a big fear about  

moving on to a boat is the sort of cost of repairs  and things like that and i know i've just dropped  

the bomb on how much we spent last year but on  the whole each one is quite sort of manageable  

so obviously all boats are different they have  different water tanks different type of toilets  

different systems some expenses that we don't  have but other boaters might have and you might  

need to think about them if you're moving on  the boat pump out toilets every time you empty  

those type of toilets you need to pay which is  i think about 17 or 20 pounds cassette toilets  

for those type of toilets you would need to use a  special uh clearing liquid that is another expense  

if you live in a big city like london and you've  got a small water tank perhaps you will opt out  

to use a gym so a cheap a gym membership could be  an expense and another expense that we also don't  

have we only went once is a laundrettes so we wash  our clothes on board but if you don't then you  

will be going maybe once a month a couple of times  a month to wash your clothes and that's another  

expense to think about so the total annual costs  for living on a boat are wow that's a big number  

oh no that's why we don't count it normally anyway  and what that works out on average a month is

but all of the expenses that we have are necessary  we don't budget fuel or stuff like that because  

when you're cold you're getting  everything you need to keep warm  

when the engine when you have an engine issue  you do whatever it takes to sort it out so  

well i hope you guys found this useful we are  really happy that we finally recorded this video  

because this was one of the most commonly asked  questions if you still have more questions do  

leave them down below and we'll try and answer all  of you if you want to see what actually happened  

in the last year we have been vlogging every  week so check out our channel so you can see  

what we actually spend our money on because we've  documented all of that and it's worth it and it's  

really fun i hope you enjoyed it and found it  useful thank you so much and i will see you in  

the next video see you in the next one bye we made  it back in just in time it started to snow again  

this is a blizzard we just had  sunglasses on and sat out in the boat

you