She Lives Full-Time on Her Self-Built Boat

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00:00 Intro
00:25 Exterior
04:55 Kitchen
06:30 Living Room
09:40 Bedroom Nr. 1
10:35 Bedroom Nr. 2
11:10 Bathroom
13:07 Master Bedroom
14:36 Outro

#tinyhouse #narrowboatlife #boattour

Being like deep in nature and waking up to fresh air and and beautiful views every day is the plus side to to living on a boat hey y’all today we are in England and Jen is going to give us a tour of here self-built boat and that

She has been living already for 2 and a half years let’s have a look this is my boat ad Shakti this is the front of the boat and we’ve got a storage compartment at the front where I store my log for winter and just around the side there

There’s a little um opening where I fill the water tank so um we go to the water point and we attach the hose pipe into the water tank or we use the bottles to fill it manually if we run out while we’re mored up how big is the water tank

The water tank is 1,000 lers and it we use 1,000 liters in 2 weeks we use the roof um for yoga or for eating outside or chilling outside this is basically our our garden and you got the solar panels yes um four solar panels which is

Enough for us because all that we run really is um the fridge we don’t have a Telly or anything like that so it’s enough the four solar panels and lights I guess are LED LED lights on a 12vt circuit how big is the boat the boat is

65 ft long by 12 and2 half foot wide it we could go 5T longer but no wider because there’s only 3 in either side when we’re in the lock okay so it’s one of the biggest boats on the the Grand Union Canal yeah and so it’s a bit

Trickier to to use this lock it’s actually easier because we don’t move the narrow boats they zigzag in the lock but we don’t move too much in in the lock so yeah it’s actually easier apart from you have to open both the lock Gates and not just one so this is the

License number uh I’m class as a continual Cruiser so I don’t have a permanent moing I move every two weeks and I have to do 32 kmers in One Direction per year so somebody comes along on their bike and they write down the license number and where you are and

That gets sent to the office and uh they know your movements and then they choose whether or not they’re going to give you a license again the next year okay based on your movements and what about winter if a canal is frozen if the Canal’s Frozen they let you stay you’re not

Allowed to move when it’s iced over because it damages the other boats um some people do break through the ice if they have to move but yeah you’re not meant to move in the if it’s frozen and how much does it cost to have this

License it costs me £11 a month and that covers water bins toe paath maintenance and my rent so basically it’s your rent yeah yeah yeah which is not bad no and my electricity is free in the summer what about winter I run the engine for

Two hours a day in the winter which is about £50 a month in diesel to to generate the electricity so you you’re on just engine you don’t have separate like a generator no I don’t have a generator um a lot of boers do but they’re very

Noisy and yeah I run the engine for an hour in the morning and an hour at night and then there’s the solar picks up a bit of um power during the day but yeah it’s mainly the the engine run under here is my engine and in here are my gas

Bottles um which run through to the the stove so one gas bottle is about 50 and that lasts me 10 weeks so it’s a just cooking or it’s water heater no that’s just for the oven so it’s the gas hob and uh oven the heating is a diesel

System which is in the engine bay um and but in the winter we don’t really use the radiators because they don’t work that efficiently so there’s a stove inside and we run it on coal so you have to have extra storage for coal well I stack it up here and uh

A coal boat comes so I I ring them and I tell them how many bags I want and then they load them onto the boat they do the gas bottles as well and they fill the diesel oh so convenient yeah so I don’t have to do much for that this is my

Little garden and I grow my own herbs I’ve got basil and lettuce um my tomatoes I’ve already picked but yeah next year I’m hoping to put a a garden on the roof and grow some more vegetables and uh and some fruit as well this is my kitchen it’s um a

Standard custom fit kitchen from ik K so I didn’t have to have a tiny kitchen made um so yeah I’ve got a lot of work space I have lost a little bit of work toop under the gunnel but it still is a nice sizable workable kitchen and I

Guess it don’t didn’t worry about the weight so yeah I did have to make sure everything was balanced so the kid the children’s bedrooms are on this side and the kitchen is on this side so that the boat was balanced yeah but it could load

Quite a lot weight yeah I needed to put three tons into the boat because it came 3 tons too late it has to sit low in the water so yeah I didn’t have to worry about the weight the scaff boards alone they weighed a ton well yeah so yeah

These are scaffold scaffold boards so basically you just designed the kitchen and then they made for you yeah how you wanted the cupboards and stuff and so in here I’ve got a fridge uh on a 240 volt circuit so it didn’t have to be a 12vt

Fridge and in here I have a freezer oh luxury yeah and there I have washing machine but I don’t use it very much because it takes 50 L per wash and that means that we would have to move the boat more often than two weeks so I go

To a launderette for the for the laundry okay but you still can do it that’s nice yeah this is in case I get a moing I leave it here this is my living room and it’s also my workspace so I do a massage and holistic therapies on the boat so my

Table goes here uh when I’m working and and it’s also our living space as well this is the dining area and it also doubles up as my office so when I’m doing paperwork for my business I will sit here with my laptop and it’s quite high ceiling

Yeah do do you know the height or uh it’s 6′ 6 and then 6 foot here so I’m I’m 5 foot two and I can’t reach the ceiling so you can jump and dance and do yoga I’m a yoga teacher as well so I teach yoga on the boat too like private

Lessons because how many how many people I well I didn’t have a sofa until two weeks ago so I used to have four people along here and I would be here but now it’s just one toone yoga but it’s good because people can reach up and how did

You come with idea to build a boat and live on the on the boat I had enough money to buy a boat because I was self-employed I couldn’t get a mortgage so um yeah I just went on a walk down the canal one day and saw the boats and

Was like Ah that’s the life I want so uh I was looking for a three-bedroom boat but they’re very hard to come by um so I ended up designing this uh so I drew the floor plan and told them where I wanted all the windows because I’ve got two children so I

Needed um a bedroom each for them so yeah I drew the floor plan and um the boat Builders had the steel work done in 7 weeks and then it was bought from Liverpool on a lorry down here and then it was put into the water using a crane

Oh and then uh I fit out the inside so it didn’t come with the kitchen or or any of these walls it was just a completely empty shell so yeah we did the the inside work so how long did it take you it took 10 weeks to fit out the

Inside so 17 weeks in total not bad yeah and do you mind sharing the cost it cost well I bought the steel the steel work was bought just before coid so just before the steel prices went up so it cost me 87,000 for the the boat and the end

Engine and they also did the the ply lining and they had the electrics in as well um and then another 10,000 to fit it out that which is not bad no it would cost a lot more now though this is the main the main heat Source in winter so

We all get changed around the fire because it’s so cold in the bedrooms but this is with wood because it have this calls you have his diesel so it’s a third actually yeah no so I I like the fire using wood and then I keep it going through the night with coal

Because it lasts longer um but yeah there are radiators they just don’t get hot enough for for winter so the first bedroom down the corridor is my daughter’s bedroom so I had to maximize as much uh space as I could in the children’s bedroom so I’ve built cabin

Beds for them and they’ve got small single mattresses so they’re a little bit smaller than a stand single bed and then the children have both got uh space under their beds for storage or for playing or for guest or for a guest yeah and then they yeah they’ve got

Little storage above their beds and there’s where they have their wardrobe so their bedrooms are only 5 foot wide and 9t long and the second bedroom and then the next bedroom is my son’s bedroom which is very similar layout the sides just weren’t as high because he was a bit

Older so he wasn’t likely to roll out of bed but again small single uh desk and many many books which which you don’t see often nowadays no so we don’t have a Telly so the children read a lot when they’re when they’re with me yeah and the next room is the bathroom

But with no bath the shower it’s very spacious how big is the shower I don’t know the size of the shower it’s a a double shower though so and it’s got a a rainfall a rainfall head and um we’ve got got a compost toilet it’s a a simp PL

Toilet and it’s divided into two section so the liquids go through a funnel into a bottle at the front and then the solids I have cleaned the toilet the solids go in the back and then we put sawdust on top to keep the smell down

But also there is this 12vt fan which is attached to this pipe work that goes into a car filter which takes the the smell away as well and nobody has ever said that it smells in here it’s actually I find it Opposite yeah compared to to flashing toilet yeah it

Smells much less and um so there’s three options for toilets on boats there’s a pump out which is where the it flushes and it goes to a tank under your bed and then you have to go to a place to get it pumped out like black tank yeah but they

Cause a lot of smell and problems especially if the canal freezes and you can’t move and then there’s the elsen toilets which is the uh chemical toilets um but again you have to take them to the elen point but we compost the solids and the liquids actually go in the

Hedges because the nitrates are good for the plants and that’s what the CRT advise we do with the liquids I didn’t realize how spacious the boat would be so this is actually the first thing I bought off of eBay and I probably could have got a bigger sink this is my

Bedroom which is lovely and spacious and it has a fullsize double bed and I have this lovely area where I can sit and drink my tea in the morning and um yeah have a a front deck as well which is nice to to sit in if

Sun setting at the front of the boat it’s nice to sit here and watch the sunset and you have two wardrobes and the working desk yeah it’s my babe station my makeup my makeup area it’s nice the the bolt is so high that you actually can stand stand on the bed

Yeah yeah my children like to jump on the [Laughter] bed and the bookshelf yeah my and this is my library so and when you’re hitting it up the all spreads equally the heat no in the winter this is the coldest room so I wake up and there’s ice on the inside of

The windows and I I sleep with a beanie hat and pajamas and a dressing gown because yeah the children get the heat from the fire but it doesn’t reach this far but this say it’s healthy yeah and I have lots of hot water bottles in the

Bed as well I put them in before I come in so it’s nice and warm I hope you find this video informative and you found out something for yourself as well the social media of J will leave in description below so make sure to check out here Instagram accounts and see you

In the next one cheers bye