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We've had our lithiums installed for just over a year now and best investment we've made. We've been living off grid on our last boat with 1kw solar and 4x t105 batteries for 2.5 years, and this boat with 500w solar and 5x cheapo sealed batteries for 18 months, and now 1 year with our lithiums and 500w solar. With 1kw solar and the t105s we were just about coping from April to September with solar, but still having to top up charge quite often, and running generator if using washing machine etc. With the cheapo batteries and 500w solar we'd decided it wasn't enough as weren't coping except on long sunny days. Batteries were also completely knackered after less than a year, but managed to struggle on for a second summer. The lithiums have been a complete transformation for us living off grid. 500w solar is coping very well, and even allows us run washing machine from solar. As others have said, these batteries just soak up what ever charge is available from solar. I believe charge efficiencies of 99-100% are common with lithiums (our bmv is set to 99% and seems to track charge well). Yes they are more expensive, but the extra more than pays for itself in reduced recharge times. As mentioned above, they are available 2nd hand from various sources. When no longer suitable for ev use they are still fine for our light duty use (I got mine as they dropped voltage slightly too much under very heavy load, 200A+ on 160AH cells). They also have very stable voltage profile, ours are nearly always between 13.3-13.8v regardless of load or charge rate. As to installation and BMS, yes it needs some planning, but not too hard to do, and new products coming out all the time. There's some very slight changes I'd consider if doing it again, but would not consider having a boat without them now. Also never even bother looking at the monitor for days at a time in the summer, they just sit there and work as they should with no monitoring or fussing!

Some interesting stuff here: https://www.macearchive.org/search?for=Canal&has-video[]=1&from=&to=

Hi Arthur The Cheshire ring is a nice route but the bit through Manchester is fairly grim and to be honest, probably the worst U.K. city. Which is a bit of a disgrace considering how wonderful Mancunians think they are! Anyway, we have traversed Manchester a few times and never had any problems. So long as you don’t mind blokes having sex with each other in the middle of the day at the lock in the shadows under Piccadilly station etc OK places to stop are Portland Basin area, Droylsden marina (Top of Ashton flight), Thomas Telford basin (read small print on notice carefully - at first sight it says “no mooring” but a closer look reveals you can moor for 24 hrs) and Castlefield Basin on Bridegwater. The latter doesn’t have much space for visitors these days. Mooring in Manchester is not easy but that is no problem because in fact Manchester is a shit hole and no sane person would want to do anything other than pass through fairly quickly. Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds etc are all 1,000,000 times better!

Water pump up and running again. A simple fix, but not easy to find! Bex established that the switch and fuse holder were ok. So the problem was the cable between the switch and the pump. Much of this is under the floor so we discussed the prospect of replacing the cable, not great! Almost as an afterthought we checked behind the fridge, found a joint in the cable there. Bex did her magic there (continuity test by wrapping both ends of wire together at one end, probes on the 2 wires at the other, brilliant!), established was that the fault was simply this joint, one of those horrible scotchjoin things are whatever they are called. Bex was great, really friendly and helpful.

Some extracts of this film must be post March 1963 as QUAIL (owned by Willow Wren) is paired with SATELLITE (leased from British Waterways Board), and seen turning into the Northampton Arm at Gayton

A short train ride to Liverpool? .............Dave

Hmm... at the end of the day I think I'd rather be an early adopter of an expensive product that may underperform, than of an expensive product that may be unsafe if not carefully integrated into a management system installed by someone with a good deal more expertise than me.

Then probably cracked and lost the inert gas and oxygen entered to blacken the condensing tungsten.

Okay ish after 1 minute 20 seconds

I think you may mean the Cheshire ring. Ashton canal is best done in one hit, there are good moorings at either end. I have done it many times and had no problems but there are reports of scroats and druggies in places. You have to have a non aggressive attitude to the drunks and homeless who continually want a handout. Best to do it in a convoy if you can arrange it.

You might get in a pickle in Branston tunnel.

Not if he is an organic farmer.......

Fix It Again Tomorrow!!

All good fun. The film makers clearly followed their title character's remit and visited many places right along the GU. Hatton near the start, Brentford near the end; is it all in a north to south sequence? I'm fairly sure that from about 3:30 to 4:50 was all filmed at Stoke Bruerne; I was in The Boat there yesterday. Likewise the Globe Inn (at 06:39) has got to be at Leighton Buzzard, just googled it and the frontage looks unchanged. The EAFA site says: Featured Buildings: The Boat Free House [location unknown] The Globe Inn [location unknown] ...

I'll get some DVDs ordered, then let you know. Peter

Most of the locations are easily identifiable, and most of the boats are listed earlier in this thread including BERGEN, BORDESLEY, MALTA, RAIL, REDSHANK, QUAIL and SATELLITE

The film was produced by four friends in 1964, one (Geoffrey Hart) being the father of the university friend who got me into canals back in 1965. It was Geoffrey, I believe, who wrote the script. We at Audlem Mill released the film as a DVD a while ago, although we sold out a couple of weeks ago. We can get more done if anybody's interested. The film was shot about 1962-63; it took a while to process the film and release it.

This film is given as produced in 1964, but the questions must include when and where the images were taken. The boats are also of interest and include the BW 240 (Bordesley) and Willow Wren pair, Stills from this film would be of interest to historians

The trouble with boat fitting is that everything is connected to everything else. It's very hard to do it while living on it. When refitting mine I made the the bed six inches too short and had to dismantle the bed, a cupboard, half the roof and most of the kitchen to remedy it. Shortening my legs would have been easier...

Yes I do decide

Gets on my tips too!