DHutch

I was surprised how many displays, large and small, we could see from our house last night. My extended family have an annual bonfire party which was last Saturday and we are going to a display at Tranmeres ground on Sunday. We're on the ridge overlooking a reasonable amount of the Wirral so get good views. Me and my daughter had the lights off watching out of the window for about an hour. Our anxious dog passed away last week, and had lost his hearing two years earlier. But we found if we kept him away from the biggest bay window and put the radio or some music on he was ok. Probably harder in a narrowboat, but more scope to move to a more rural area. Our other dog is so unaffected by them he will happily go out in the garden while they are going off. Broadly speaking I support the current situation regarding fireworks, which are already fairly well regulated. They provide and awful lot of enjoyment to those who like them and it seems unfair to prevent that due to a minority of inconvenienced people. Be careful what you wish for because there are likely atleast as many people who like to see dog ownership banned as fireworks.

Over a decade later, but did you get anywhere with your EX1000? I've got ours "on the bench" currently as its lost its Japanese rock steady reliability somewhere. Like the OPs the green light is intermittently lit, and when out I'm not getting any power, but by adjusting the choke and setting the frequency knob to 60hz I managed get it upto 50hz, light on, and it did 2hours of putting juice into the battery and running the big 240vac florescent in the engine room for me before the charger stepped down a bit and it all wobbled off. First port of call is going to be soak the carb in acetone and blow throw the jets with some carb spray. Its gets very infrequent, and it seems to just been poor fueling making the idle very poor. Oil airfilter and plug change feels well over due too. New link to the owners manual, which also includes oil type, plug type and gap, tapet clearance, electrical semantic and the attached page on adjusting the governor. But nothing specifically about carburetor or internal governor. https://cdn.powerequipment.honda.com/pe/pdf/manuals/31ZC0040.pdf

Saw the same video as I follow Phil's activities on facebook, some what disappointing and alarming state of affairs. But certainly worth checking if you use such a thing.

Yes, and if for various reasons I've opted to leave it wet a touch later I have in the past wrapped rags and rope around the flue to bridge the gap. But its so relatively easy to isolator and drain. Typically if then doing a work-day on the boat during winter I will boil the kettle on the gas hob for hand washing etc and or place it on the Squirrel stove if lit. Back to the OPs question, yes we do drain the calorifer over winter. Ours is a horizontal unit mounted at gunnel height above the engine, and I find with out boat if isolate the supply at the pump ans open all the taps and leave it a week, the contents of the calorifer ends up in the bath. Presumably weeping back through the non return valve. This works sufficiently well its become the normal routine! We now also have a pair of drains right at the back of the boat under the aft deck (wheehouse in our case) in the swim, which can be used to drain the main fore-aft hot and cold lines. Which I tend to do the following time I visit, after the calorifier has done its weeping into the bath trick.

Most home insurance policies have similar requirements for unoccupied setback temps, presumably with the expectation some pipework will be outside of the thermal envelopes, ie in the loftspace so not freezing the rooms alone is not enough.

In my experience its often not about how cold it gets, but how warm it doesn't get. Often night at day -5 doesn't appear to typically do much damage if the days either side are reasonably warm. But as you say, if you get a week where its -5 at night but only -2 or 3 during the day the cold will penetrative deep into the boat and freeze even reasonably protected things, like fiddly pipework at the back of a cupboard, or a brass pump bolted down to scantilings. The obvious exception to the rule is the Paloma gas water heater, on a very short flue. That im told by grandfather, will freeze at almost nothing, having caught him not once but twice apparently! I drain aim to drain it good and early and leave the drain plug out and the supply isolated all winter.

Seems the perfect use for it.

Ruddy autocorrect. Fixed.

Ofcause. But the risk is low, your phone is already live on the Internet, and this thread is predominantly about backing up online records in the first place!

Better still, and easier, set you phone up to automatically back them up to the cloud in real time (or atleast next time its on wifi) and make whatever manual local copies you want from there. Its is very much the most common thing to do, Google, Microsoft, Apple and a host of others all offer the service for little or no money.

Sounds good to me, I'll send you mine and you can do any contact exchange. It would be great to arrange for one to pull a butty/horseboat.

Yes. I did wonder if that might be the case! What are you running onboard when away?

I thought I would cover the electrical side a bit as others haven't that I can see. Firstly, the primary job of a fuse or breaker is to protect the cable. So it needs to be sized small enough to provide adequate protect to the cable, and large enough to safely provide power to the device(s) its supplying. So you need to know the size of the cable and the power of the device. In your case you have three wires off the battery and they likely all need their own overcurrent protection. The fuse should be fitted as close to the supply (battery) end as practical to minimise the chance of the fault occurring between the battery and fuse. All three should also be able to be isolated from the power supply. Bilge pumps are often wired directly so they continue to work even when the majority is isolated, on the basis the risk of a flat battery is less than that of the boat sinking and or the fire risk. For a steel boat ingress should be minimal and or zero, but often aft and or bow deck areas direct rain to the bilge. So check the cable size and look up the rating of the pump, pick a fuse size, and fit a suitable fuse and holder into the cable. 5A is probably about right and although they are basically awful one of the in-line rubber blades fuse holders is probably as good as anything else unless there is somewhere easy for a bulkhead fuse carrier. Fuse for the supply to the "busbar" and or distribution panel is likely best sized to suit the cable. Hopefully its cross section area is printed on the side of the cable, if not you will have to estimate. If its thicker then you can terminate, you can likely move the battery end to the fuse carrier, and then get a link lead to go from fuse to battery. Halfords do some heavy duty pretermated cables, else there are plenty of folk who could make you one us and post it. For the inverter, the manual likely states the required fuse size. Else you can work out a sensible size from the power output of the inverter. Where is the battery isolator in all of this? And the batteries? In the engine room? Post pictures of the current setup and or further information if you want.

As said, could be age, could be a fault somewhere. Do it ever trip when you are onboard? I too would start by replacing it, they are cheap enough that st 15-20 years old it would be my first port of call. Then if it still trips, try to narrow down what is tripping it by unplugging or otherwise isolating things in turn. Note that most sockets and a switched fuse connection units only switch the live, which might not resolve the problem. Common high risk items for developing earth leakage faults including refrigerators, power supplies inc battery chargers, outdoor wiring and or snyththar gets wet. Depending on how many things you want to leave on when away from the boat, another option is to replace the single RCD and individual MCBs with a number of combined RCBOs which mean each circuit has its only RCD protection. This can help narrow down where the fault is, as well as mitigating against multiple things having a very small amount of earth leakage which together adds up to enough to trip a 35mA RDC. Hope that helps.

Worth a watch if you have not yet seen it. More of a video presentation than a meeting, but summerises some of the content of the annual report and puts a name and face to some of the roles within the trust. https://www.youtube.com/live/7ucGKmNvhbg?si=smyOU-6XnqEjbqDj