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Well, if you did it with no clothes on, and the unicorn sank, you'd be Lady Go-diver! ?

House coal and anthracite are pretty dense and won't absorb much moisture, if any. Its the smokeless ovoids, they're pretty porous like a sponge and soak it up. The moisture mixes with the binding agent and causes the cement like clag.

I'll have to report you to the RSPCB- Royal society for the prevention of cruelty to batteries.....You'll get done for assault and battery!

Thanks MtB for your valuable endorsement of my engine choice. The 2 VTH in Sui Generis is coupled to a hydraulic BRB engineering marine gearbox and at only 100 cu in. capacity is working just sufficiently hard to keep from glazing cylinders and runs virtually without any exhaust smoke. And of course its pretty light and a beautiful bit of Great British engineering too. Just love it. Well done Casp. for sticking with a Ruston!! Cheers. Mick

Ed Shiers.

It might surprise you but some people choose to live in caravans. Not because they can't afford land based accomodation but because they like the lifestyle. Much the same as choosing to live on a boat. It needn't be due to the housing market.

You’re doing it wrong. The coal is supposed to go on the INSIDE. Where are you going to put your Ecofan?

They must be bad if they fail even when just on a shelf. ?

Is the flue pipe straight or has bends? I would try to clear it if it is in good condition rather than have the hassle of changing it. With a lot of patience and a few odd shaped bits of steel bar/strip you should be able to hammer it away. I don't use a brush to sweep our flue anymore, found them to be a waste of time. I have a length of blue plastic water pipe with 3" stainless steel screws driven half way through all round like a crown of thorns, that rips out the clinkers well. Sam.

New Starrett hole saw, oil, slowly, with constant pressure is the way. Cast iron cuts well but you must keep it cutting from the word go, once you polish the bottom of the hole it stops cutting. I drill a small hole on the cutting circle first, gives it a fresh edge to pick up on.

Ok, so it's not very fast, but it does get there.. to get around the governed max rm of 1000, I have fitted a separate wire throttle off the top of the governor arm which allows more revs when needed, (got the idea from a friend's Kelvin J2 which had one fitted) only really for getting loose when aground or stopping, though it did achieve 4mph with about 1200 rpm along the moss straight.. Going to fit a slightly bigger prop too and then i'll leave it as it is.. My friend has a fully recon HR2 he's trying to sell me, which will fit the engine hole, but that would be quick and wouldn't sound as nice.. I get a lot of comments from passers by, one chap was telling his wife about the steam coming out the chimney, lol, another asked if it was a standard diesel engine? and one chap asked if it was a bolinder...!! I wish... Casp'

Only if he’s pouring it out flat on the bar top...

What dredging? Do you know something we dont know ?

You mean a little bit like this....

And he gave up boating over 3 yeas ago.

Why would it be fraudulent? Provided that they spend at least 30 days away from their mooring they are doing nothing wrong. They have provided an address and they are abiding by the terms and conditions of their mooring agreement. This happens at moorings all over the country. Look at any CRT long term moorings and they are the same. If you look more closely at your own marina you will find someone living onboard. It isn't unusual in the slightest.

Sorry I was just trying to simplify it for you younger 'viewers' who may not have been edumacated in proper units and fractions. Imperial gallon = 177 and 2/5ths cubic inches Grain gallon = 268 and 4/5ths cubic inches. Roll on Brexit so we can get back to real units !!!!

I don't clean the terminal's either and one does seem to get a little furry.. I've also starved them a few times as well, poor things were in the 10volts. ?

Jon?

I thought all you tree monkies had a̶d̶a̶m̶a̶n̶t̶i̶u̶m̶ steel fingers and toes anyway?

Yup, easily although I'm talking round and flat files for chainsaw sharpening I thought that was just me, I also used to have fingers covered in small scars from chainsaw sharpening because I always forget my gloves

No, they don't. This is a combination of superstition and misunderstanding of normal practice, as well as a bit of maritime history that simply doesn't apply to a steel narrowboat. CRT uses the index number to identify the boat, although it does keep records of names too. What you have to do is: (1) go to the CRT web site and log into your account. (2) edit your boat details (you can change name and 'home' waterway yourself) (3) display the new name on the boat. That's it - nothing else. It is traditional to mark the occasion with an alcoholic beverage but it's not compulsory. In any event don't pour the stuff over the boat, drink it!

Not that extreme, a few lights, water pumps, phone charging. That can't be taking more than 10ah from the batteries. So 1.5 hours a day should be plenty to put that back in, unless he has the smallest alternator of all time. Of course, if he runs his fridge than he's probably taking about 50ah a day in total so 1.5 hours a day wouldn't be enough. When I first had a boat, I had no idea at all what I was doing. I had 3 leisure batteries and I had no idea how old they were. I used to leave them until the inverter howled at me and then run my engine or genny for about 3-4 hours. Then carry on for a few days and repeat. I managed ok on those batteries for about 2 years. Was I doing things 'right'?- no. Do I care? - no. Was I enjoying my boat? - yes. Would I have enjoyed my boat more if I'd bought a smart meter and checked it every half hour? - no!

Thanks for reporting back. So many queries on this forum get answered and never heard of again. It's good to know that the problem has been solved, along with the one of usually many possible solutions that fixed it.

I decided to go for a low price to err on the side of caution and to avoid forum know-it-alls arguing my point but saying they can get diesel cheaper. At 90p a litre my point is even stronger. Also many boats drink more than 1 litre an hour. Basically, there's a lot of tosh talked on this forum about battery charging and the received wisdom seems to be to charge for 2-3 hours a day 6 days a week and then charge for about 6 hours on a sunday. Even if you have solar for say 7 months of the year, that's about 20 hours a week for 20 weeks through the winter. That's 400 hours of battery charging a year (assuming no summer equalisation charges etc). At a guess I'd reckon about 200 of those hours aren't really to provide power as such, they're to keep your batteries healthy. 200 hours of battery charging is gonna cost (at 90p a litre and 1.2litres an hour) £216. So you could either spend £216 annually to try and keep your batteries good (and enjoy lots of extra noise, fumes, vibration, engine wear etc.), or you could spend £240 on a set of 3 batteries and, if they last longer than a year, have a little party to celebrate your good sense. Link: https://www.limekilnchandlers.co.uk/3-x-110amp-leisure-batteries-collect-only.html I'm sure there's some sense in carefully cossetting your batteries if you've just spent £2000 on 2v traction cells. But for the other 99%, it's probably a waste of money even trying. And when the red diesel goes, even more so. Now just let me nip out for some popcorn.

My concern would be that if a large enough number of people extracted heat from the canals to heat their homes, the canals would freeze over and I would have to swap the boat for a motor home fitted with studded tyres. ?

Oi! You changed that to 50kg while I was booking your delivery. I want sixty quid now...

We do quite a few Dorman LBs. The spares situation is not brilliant but not impossible either. The good thing is that you will seldom need anything other than service parts as they are an incredibly robust engine. One of ours has been in a hotel boat dragging a butty for ten years without missing a beat 10000 hrs and rising. I keep one in our warehouse just for me. If I ever get time to build another boat it'll go in it. A seriously under rated engine. Sound terrific too.The Chinese do make a clone LB, Not CE compliant though and has their own fuel equipment on it which is pretty much unserviceable in the UK

The interior of pram covers do get a lot of condensation at this time of year. We sprayed ours in March inside and out with 'wet and forget' (think it was Naughty cal who told us that) and it's been brilliant - and on our patio at home as well. No more algae or mould.

It's good to see a bit of jocularity (rather than some of the sour comments that often spoil a thread) /Pedant-ON/ what folks are showing are Nickel-Cadmium not-very-wet-cells. Mine are Ni-Fe or Nickel Iron (very) wet cells /Pedant-OFF/. Some years ago there was a mad professor (I call him that 'cos he had a grant from S'oton University to do some work on extracting huge amounts of power from a standard alternator by running it at 100,000 r.p.m. (!yikes!) He found a ready supply of used NiFe batteries from telephone exchange and signalling equipment standby setups and flogged them to boaters. He lived on a concrete sailing boat somewhere in the Solent creeks. I have fifty (50) of them. They are massive and each cell is quite heavy. I doubt that I could lift them up easily one at a time - but then I shouldn't need to. Top them up occasionally - as in every three years, as being industrial they are designed to be ignored. Disadvantages - cost weight size (per KwH) higher than usual voltage needed for a full charge Large voltage swing from discharged to fully charged. Potassium hydroxide is nastier to deal with than battery acid in a spill situation Nobody knows anything about them (except from peeps in the US who use them for off-grid living. Bimble sell them. Hope somebody finds something of interest in the above

It is not just a case of charging fine at tickover. Diesels like to run with some load so by setting the revs (and 1200 to 1500 is based on "typical" engines not old ones) will normally be better for the engine by putting more load on it AND giving a faster warm up. This is true for any engine, its just that yours probably ticks over at around 400 rpm or less and will be running fats at 600 rpm. Whilst I agree professional help is probably a good idea I do not agree they want a properly qualified Marine Engineer UNLESS the said engineer has several years small boat experience having stopped playing with big ships. I do not know any inland engineers or electricians that I rate who hold marine engineering qualifications but all are qualified in a related trade like vehicles or agricultural equipment. The problem for the OP is finding one who knows their stuff and will not rip them off. That is not easy so asking here is probably a good first step. If your batteries ever go flat you may hit the problem associated with large highly geared alternators where the load on the alternator prevents the engine revving up or in extreme cases may stall it.

So you've posted and said precisely nothing. Phil