Costs of fitting out a boat

[beancounter]

Further to my post "Thoughts & Opinions" a week or so ago, we're now heavily into number crunching (given my profession, we would be, wouldn't we?) to work out the potential costs of our plans.

I'd appreciate some help on the costs of having various items fitted to a boat. It would obviously help in assessing likely boat purchases: if a boat has feature A but not B, and another one has B and C but not A etc.

How much (very roughly) would it cost to have the following fitted to a c35ft boat?

Holding Tank. Fridge. Shore Power. Hot water/shower.

Thanks

John

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[snowleopard]

how long is a piece of string...

it depends on the space available and what quality you want. for example for a fridge you could get an electric coolbox for under £100 or a top of the range twin compressor with holding plate for £1800 and that wouldn't include the box itself! a professional installation would probably set you back upwards of £3000

hot water means a calorifier, new taps, a pressure pump if there isn't one already, a shower tray and drain pump, say 500 in parts, double that for labour

shore power can mean anything from an extension cable in a locker to a full mains circuit with charger , inverter, distribution box etc. anything from 20 to 2000

a holding tank could be a simple tank to fit round the pan or a custom made tank in the bilge with disgharge pump, smell filter, deck outlet etc. say 200-2000

i doubt a yard would give you a quote on the basis of a hypothetical boat, sounds like a case for a couple of days bending ears at a boat show!

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[Trevethan]

How much can you do yourself? I have installed shore power, fridge, hot water (stillw orking on the shower compartment.

Installing a fridge can mean buying a ready made thing and building a suitable enclosure or building a dedicated system. A good ready made fridge will cost £500 or so.

Shore power. Cost me about £150 to fit -- including £25 metres of arctic cable, external connector, consumer unit, rcd and mcb's plus a few sockets and some armoured cable to join it all off.

I am not an electrician, but I had my work checked by someone who is.

Had I had to pay him to do it... well a lot more.

Hot water system#

I spent about £200 on a calorifier, £100 on a pump, about the same on hoses.

I bought a couple of stainless sinks for about £70, and taps from local plumbers merchant (for about £40 each ..

On top of that comes water tanks if you don't have them I am using plastimo 220 litre tanks at £60 each -- great prices and if they need replacing after a couple of years, its not big deal. Plus various fixings, valves, etc etc.

Also need a deck fill, but flexi tanks don't need a vent.

The nice thing about doing this myself is that if and when things go wrong, I know how to fix them

I reckon if you diy it then you are talking under a couple of thousand. Get someone else to do it.. well I was quoted over £1,000 for the shore power alone and plumbing is even more pricey!



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[mikewilkes]

We fitted our boat out in 2000, and every so often my wife keeps threatening to add up the reciepts for the stuff we bought.
My advice is just do it, and sod the cost. Remember there are no pockets in a shroud so get on and enjoy it.

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[pragmatist]

While changing boats we went through the same exercises as you - using a spreadsheet and + or - factors for each item. It has worked well in both instances although a word of warning - the fact that a boat "has" an item on its inventory doesn't mean it isn't near its replacement date so if you get as far as inspecting a boat do look and fiddle carefully.

In terms of retro-fitting items we have a rule of thumb. For non-technical items we take the price of the item off the shelf looking at chandlers ads and add 100% to have it yard fitted - unless it requires significant digging around (e.g. plumbing/wiring) when we add 200%. For technical or electronic items we add 75% to 150% - for example our radar required drilling thru the deckhead in saloon, heads and aft cabin - total price about shelf price from Raymarine + 150% but it's a good installation.

If you have time and expertise we would also recommend you fit things yourself so that some daft b*gger doesn't fit a switch or connection somewhere impossible - or totally unseaworthy.

Good hunting !

<hr width=100% size=1>a pragmatist is an optimist with a boat in the UK

 

[charles_reed]

The questions you've asked are complex and over-simplifying, to cater for your assumed lack of background knowledge, will cause your costings to be entirely misleading.

HOLDING TANK_______________

1. Except in UK Inland Waterways and US National Parks, there are few, if any, pump out stations. Whilst all Mediterranean countries signed a protocol in 1973, which included a ban on raw sewage discharge as well as other effluents, only the Greeks (capricously) ban sewage discharge in their harbours. Only in the UK inland and US waterways are genuine holding tanks mandatory.
So for the majority of situations a genuine holding tank is an embarassment. Far more common is a buffer tank, into which one pumps the toilet effluent, pumping it out into the open sea when outside the 3-mile territorial limit. These vary from simple saddle-tanks fitting round the Raske & v.d. Meyde RM69 toilet to rather more complex arrangements involving tanks in bilge spaces and dedicated pumps and changeover valves.
An additional complication is that there are two types of holding tanks, those for grey (washing) water and those for black (raw sewage). For the Everglades and Intra-coastal waterway you have to have a grey water holding tank as well as a black water tank.
Allowing 5 litres a day per person for black water the RM69 25 litre saddle tank does 2 people about 2 1/2 days - this is borne out in my experience. The cost of this is about £260 and costs (for accountants, who are usually better at telling people what to do than doing it) about£40 for fitting. Most modern shallow-bilged boats are desperately short of anywhere to fit an inconspicuous holding tank and doing so involves the sacrifice of valuable stowage space, long complicated pipe-runs with consequent risk of odours. Costs for tankage for 4 people for 5 days can rise as high as £1000 for materials and £200 for labour.
The provision of grey water tanks is equally difficult in modern boats and capacities are dependent upon how obsessionally clean the crew are, but 40 litres a day for a 4-man crew appear to be the consensual opinion. This should not be confused with 10 man/litres/day.
The costs of these vary, but £400 + £200 is a fair estimate - far more difficult is finding the space for them.
Interestingly it is the grey water that is far more ecologically damaging than the black water.

I would suggest that holding tanks are less desirable than a watermaker - though several people have for several years prophesised the imposition of mandatory holding tanks this has still not arrived and it's advent (IMHO) is unlikely in the near future.
Of course a tender social conscience may compel you to fit one, but it's unlikely that bathers and boats would be sufficiently intimately mixed to make cross-infection a real likelihood.
Ironically ecological compassion would be better demonstrated by fitting a grey water tank.

FRIDGE________________

Now here is a real necessity. The first major categorisation is to appreciate the differences between compressor and condensing fridges.The former are expensive, power-efficient and effective, the latter are cheap, use a lot of power and are only effective at fairly low ambient temperatures. I'll dispose of the latter by pointing out they are available nearly everywhere at starting prices as low as £60. Caravan shops sell them as multi-fuel fridges.

The most seamanlike way of making a fridge is to convert the ice- or cool-box with which most boats are fitted . As insulation is the most critical thing about how good or bad an installation might be quite a lot of effort has to go into this. The alternative is to fit a compressor fridge from a caravan shop. Many liveaboards have a fridge freezer fitted.
The cost of converting an existing icebox works out at about £600 for the compressor and insulation and about £250 for expert fitting. An air-cooled compressor is OK but you need to duct it to work successfully in hot climates - the alternative of a water-cooled compressor will cost you about £250 more for materials and about £50 more for fitting. The fitted fridge freezers work out at about £2500 fitted.

SHORE POWER_________________

Depends on the complexity - assuming a ring main with 8 water-resistant points and a 20-amp smart charger will be about £1050 for materials and about £450 for the labour.

HOT WATER, SHOWER__________

Here again it depends on the approach. Assuming you have to fit a new electric pressurising pump and double up the piping, doing that and fitting the shower will cost about £450 for parts and about £150 for labour.
You can then either go for an engine heated calorifier with mains immersion heater (only possible with indirect engine cooling) cost of materials £300, labour £80 or you can fit a gas geyser such as the Paloma which should cost about half that and allow you to enjoy hot water at anchored, without having to run the engine.



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[AndrewB]

To have this done, don't expect much change out of £3,000, and that assumes no major rebuilding will be needed to fit the components. DIY will save at least 50%. As it happens I have had all these mods done over the last 8 years:

- A pressurised H/C system with calorifier, yard installed 8 years ago at a cost of £1,500.
- A holding tank modification for my Lavac, yard installed 8 years ago at a cost of £400. (It was useless by the way, I couldn't bear the smell or constant failing of the Y valves, chucked it out after 2 years, now carry a PortaPotti).
- SWMBO installed a ring mains with 5 outlets 4 years ago, parts cost about £150 including RCB unit and sockets, took her about a week. I added an inverter costing about £120 last year.
- A new fridge box was built as part of a galley rebuild by a friendly chippie 2 years ago, which cost £1,600. SWMBO and I fitted the fridge unit itself which cost an extra £300, took us about 3 person-days, mainly spent modifying a locker to take the compressor unit.

 

[Tim_Bennett]

Labour is the single biggest cost - as you know. DIY is great to save you thousands of pounds if you can do a really good job and you have the time. I always commission professionals to do the trickier jobs because I spend most of my time earning bucks and I don't want to spend my sparce leisure time grovelling in the bilges when I can be sailing. OTOH, if I had plenty of time on my hands, I would also probably be short of dosh and DIY would be the way to go. Horses for courses. In answer to your question - allow £10000 and be prepared to double it!! Boat ownership is horrendously expensive. If you can't afford it, simply charter where and when you want.

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[beancounter]

Thanks for a very detailed & helpful response Charles. Yes, we are on the steepest part of the learning curve. Yes, there was an element of oversimplification in the question - we're dealing in fairly approximate numbers here, so I wasn't expecting answers to the nearest £. (I've worked with forecasts and budgets long enough to know that there are only 2 sorts - lucky or wrong).

I won't take the remark about being "better at telling people what to do than doing it" personally

John


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[beancounter]

thanks for all the helpful responses guys & gals. I'm off now to bash the calculator, check the bank balance and sharpen my tools.....

John

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[islanderdeluxe]

Hummmm. Fitting out a boat hey! Well i have fited my boat out by mainly using Caravan Parts. I have fitted a carver water heater which comes in a DIY pack, but i did not think it was rocket science!. This Heater runs off 240volt electric or gas saveing you the space of both a calorifier and a gas boiler for if you dont want to start your engine. I purchaced thisfrom a local caravan seconhand dealer with a full service for just £100.

Shore Power. Well this is something almost anyone can do with a basic knowledge of electrics. I fittted mine fora total cost of £100
Your other alternative is to purchace a a pre-wired shore power kit, (these are designed for camping in tents, so if you have a canopy on your boat these could be the way.) These cost around £100.

I would also look first at the size space for your fridge. Is there much room? Once again i bought this from the same place a the carver water heater for a cost of £100.

I would personally take a look at your local caravan distributor as anything that has the words MARINE written anywhere near it it often has at least an extra 0 on the end of its price.

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[AndrewB]

You didn't mention the holding tank. The Tesco bag sellotaped onto an old drainpipe didn't work out then?

;-)

 

[ean_p]

Sadly Tesco's bags are not quite up to the job............ always shop at Morrisons now !

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[charles_reed]

Please don\'t

some of the best colleagues to have alongside one are Cost and Works when you're trying to manage a recovery.

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[beancounter]

You\'re showing your age...

...Charles, we haven't been Cost & Works for about 30 years now....

cheers

John

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