Leaderboard

What on earth are you saying? Since when has having children been a legitimate reason for thinking you can ignore rules?

Update. We have had a period in dry dock, skin tank fabricated fitted and tested. Sucess. Cruiser stern deck board supports all renewed and now removable for 'injin ole' access. Additional rotten metal removed and replaced. Base of both gas lockers cut away replaced and gunnel uprights at stern repaired. Lots more work than first thought. Lots of other little niggley things requested (as the welder was switched on anyway) done. New calorifier and additional expansion tank fitted and tested. Boat now finished and ready for another 30 years of living aboard. The crew and I are very pleased.

You need three pieces of information. What is the maximum current that could be drawn, or fed to the batteries with everything connected switched on? What is the voltage drop you are prepared to accept, or that your equipment can cope with? Perhaps 4%? This varies with the equipment. 12V fridges are particularly susceptible. How long are the cables going to be? The voltage will drop more with higher currents, longer cables and thinner cables, so you reduce voltage drop by increasing the cable diameter. This is much more of a problem on boats than overheating cable, though that can still happen. Remember that cable length is there and back, so a battery bank 4' from a bus bar will have a cable length of 8'. You can use an on-line calculator to work out voltage drops for different cable sizes, lengths and currents. The Boat Safety Scheme gives a minimum of 25mm2 for battery cables, but if the distances are long, or you have a big inverter, then you may need to go up to 50, or 75mm2. For example, on my boat, the battery to battery cables are 50mm2, as is the cable to the 1600W inverter. There are cables to the bus bars for other 12V equipment like lights and pump and these are 25mm2. All protected by a 250A megafuse. For bus bar selection, work out the maximum current by adding up the load on them if everything connected were switched on. A reputable supplier will give the recommended maximum current for their bus bar. 12V Planet and Vehicle Wiring Products are good places to buy this stuff. The bigger marine chandlers too, ASAP, Midland SwinChandlers etc. Jen

Update. Contacted Staffs Police, asking to speak to the Wildlife Crime Officer. Spoke to a nice guy, explained, and gave him directions, he was very sympathetic and said it wouldn't be very nice for people to see wildlife in distress on the towpath. He said he's going to get someone down there tomorrow. Not much more we can do, As an exercise, I might ring CRT to see what their thoughts are. Thanks for you advice everyone

the 'good people' apparently made their decisions about location and not having a mooring before they had kids of school age. it would seem they couldn't plan their way out of a paper bag.

I would be a be tad concerned that Mrs Rusty is fully supported at the moment, considering recent problems, is she ok to venture outside?

Each to their own but I can never understand the mentality of choosing whether heat is needed by the calendar and not the thermometer. They don't award medals you know.

I would never stop a boat engine until she's secured by rope. Starters do fail and automatic systems hammer starters, not just from frequent use but also the inevitable overrun on every start. The starter clutch is not designed for it.

We have seen this boat a few times, and nothing wrong with that name. The fact a group of psychopaths have hijacked the name of a Egyptian god is irrelevant. Personally I would rather our media used the derogatory term Daesh, especially as apparently, the twats it refers too don't like it.

How many times does it have to be said: it is not the case that a range of 20 miles is acceptable but that one of less than 20 is unacceptable.

The cheats and free loaders of this world will always find any excuse to make their way of living seem plausible. But at the final analysis they are bums who are abusing the system and everyone else.

It's not shiny, it's as is came but as you requested

We used to have trouble with crankshaft thrusts on old Rootes group vehicles, mainly due to the heavy to disengage spring clutch pressure plates. We took the centre main bearing cap off chucked the half moon thrust away on the flywheel side and built up the face with Sifbronze braze and filed to fit. Did the job well.

Two cars on the drive, nowt in the fridge.

So was I You're welcome

Bimble's suggested arrangement.

Not quite. The usual advice is that the fuse should be as close to the battery as possible but outside of the battery box.