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To be honest about all this, and having suffered target management for years, it must be said that this target stuff is nonsense anyway. Targets are ALWAYS unrealistic, as they are only set to make the setting management look good. If they are finally shown as met, it's almost always because someone has massaged the figures to make it seem so. They never, ever, reflect a genuine state of affairs, all they do is waste a vast chunk of everyone's time and energy (and creative processes). And of course, monitoring targets, achievements and progress costs a small fortune, all of which is wasted money that could be better spent elsewhere. Anyone who has worked in this kind of firm knows all this, and I imagine everyone at CRT has heaved an enormous sigh of relief that they won't have to spend most of their time filling in forms with fake figures to please their immediate boss any more, but can actually use the time to get on with the job. So I say, good on them for scrapping them. And, finally, my argument with my bosses was always that a target is something to aim at. By it's very nature, sometimes you're going to miss it. No archer ever hits the bulls eye 100%.

I thought I would update all those that were gracious enough to comment on my last post. On the final day of the notice period, the company in question agreed to a partial refund to cover the difference in the cost of the equipment from that advertised and what is actually fitted. Thankfully this issue is now resolved

Reminds me of when we got stuck in floods at Sileby many years ago - only the balance beams of the lock were above water as we approached it from upstream - and a boat came up the river. The lock keeper (they had lock keepers then) asked the steerer if he knew the river well. The steerer replied "No why do you ask?" and the lock keeper said "Because you've just come across the fields, the river is over there"

We are getting all that mental health and wellbeing stuff on an almost daily basis where I work. It's making me feel depressed !

You are all wrong and too negative about their motives. This declassification and removal of finicky measures ensures that a continued feeling of wellbeing is enjoyed as the top managers receive their bonuses again without feeling guilty about pesky red boxes on their annual review.

No. It just means you will run aground in a different place!

I would agree with you if the management of CRT hadn't decided to rebrand everything with a blue half sunken tyre....telling all and sundry that it only cost £60k originally - and things would only be replaced when they wore out - within 3 months every vehicle, staff and volunteer uniform, and thousands upon thousands of signs had been replaced. Not only that, the signs on the island outside the Sea Life centre in Birmingham have now been replaced (at least) 3 times since May 2018!!! I would agree with you if I hadn't been officially informed that the "Close Season" is now an official event, cascaded for public information from above. I would agree with you if there wasn't a flagrant waste of public funds being wasted whilst stoppages get more and more due to the lack of preventative maintenance.

This is normal in almost all situations and not because they were being nosy about your boat or life style. They do it for numerous reason but some that I know of and have been taught to use are to distract the "patient" and help keep you calm, also to keep you focused on them and not on your medical issue or your family / friends who might be worried and distressed and in turn might upset you with out meaning to, to see how compos mentis you are with out making it obvious they are checking and tracking you and to monitor how you are responding over the course of time that they are with you. Quite frankly they probbly didn't give two hoots about your boat or your lifestyle at that time, but I suppose that form of keeping up dialogue becomes habitual.

It’s all this cheap Chinese coal that’s not made with the same trees as good old fashioned British coal. I know this is true because someone down the pub has a mate who used to go out with the sister of a chap who’s cousin was a coal miner.

^^^^^Wot he said.Except for the steric hinderance bit,cos that is utter bollox,oh and the reactive reagents bit,cos he made it up. Did you have a brief encounter with wikipedia this morning Doc?

Speaking of earth, I recently stumbled across a very tidy electrical installation...

You have a leak then!

I would add to Alan's request that you take some trouble to lay he diagram out in such a way that we can see the high and low points in the system together with any parts where the pipework slopes downwards (like in the photo of the pump where the outlet might have a slight downward slope). This is because at present the main suspect is trapped air and without an idea of levels and where air might be trapped a diagram will only get us a small way forward. To try to help you work out the pipe runs: If you look at the top photo you will see the end of the calorifier has three pipes on it that you can see. One larger one at the top and two thinner ones nearer the centre. Those thinner ones are almost certainly pipes that connect to the coil inside the unit but at present we do not know for certain if it is the inlet and outlet for one coil or the inlets OR outlets for two coils. If there are no similarly placed pipes in the other end they will be the (single) coil inlet and outlet pipes and if so both the engine cooling circuit and Alde circuit must be linked if BOTH can heat water. I suspect you will find two similar pipes at the other end. Now if you run just one heat source (engine OR Alde) then if its all working one pair of hoses should get warm, the inlet one first and then much later the other one. This will not happen if the calorifier coil is air locked but tracing the pipes back to the heat source should allow you to find which is hottest close to a T piece (Alde) or where it attached to the top of the engine. That will be the supply to the calorifier and if the other pipe never gets warm you have an airlock in that part of the circuits. This job will take time and care but at the end of it you will understand how your system is supposed to work and what may be wrong with it.

Ivw heard about canals being converted into railways, but not the other way round. ?

Without targets you cannot be criticised for failure to achieve them ! From Narrowboatworld. CaRT scraps its targets Published: Friday, 25 October 2019 FOLLOWING a disastrous 2018/19 year, Canal & River Trust has not set itself targets for its current year. Allan Richards explains how the Trust measures its success and progress against Key Performance Indicators (KPI) but has now scrapped them after missing almost half its targets. What are KPI’s? See: http://allanrichards.net/CaRT/KPITargets2018-19.pdf For many years CaRT has measured its success by its performance against key indicators. Yearly targets are set by chief executive, Richard Parry, and agreed by the board. Progress towards KPI targets is presented at bi-monthly board meetings. A traffic light system is used such that the board can quickly identify where progress towards target falls short of what is expected: Green—on track to achieve full year target Yellow—risk that full year target may not be achieved Red—unlikely that full year target will be achieved/full year will not be achieved KPI reports now include how long a KPI has been red or green and the person or document providing the KPI figure. For example, “WEM report” is what most boaters would know as the rolling monthly survey which provides visitor/visit numbers and satisfaction statistics. For 2018/19, CaRT split its 22 KPI’s into four categories: ♦ Defra Waterway Targets ♦ Waterway measures ♦ Other measures ♦ Financial measures The ten fails Whilst not made clear in CaRT’s last annual report (2018/19), the Trust failed to meet almost half of the 22 targets it set itself. The ten fails, compare to seven the previous year (2017/18) and just three the year before that (2016/17). Worse still for boaters, in the important “waterway measures” category, CaRT failed to meet five out of six targets. The only target it met was that for non boating visitor satisfaction ... The target failures The following is a list of the ten KPI’s where CaRT failed to reach target: Number of individual visitors to our waterways in typical two-week period (over last 12 months) Public safety—number of reported incidents due to infrastructure Combined employee, volunteer and contractor RIDDOR accident frequency rating (accidents per 100,000 hours) Customer satisfaction rating of boaters № of days of unplanned closures to navigation within our control (individual instances over 48 hours) % of employees engaged as per employee engagement survey result № of adoptions of our waterways (each adoption scheme roughly equates to 1 mile) People aware of the Trust № of active Friends attracted and retained, regularly donating £ million secured from restricted statutory and voluntary funding, philanthropic and individual giving and contributions in kind I will concentrate on just two of the above believing that these are the most important to boaters. Visitor numbers CaRT’s claims regarding visitor numbers have received much criticism over the years in narrowboatworld. CaRT does not help itself by sticking to a single measure and the public is given figures in the millions and hundreds of millions with little or no explanation as to why they are so different or where they come from. Suffice to say, the figures come from a rolling survey which asks participants if they have visited an inland waterway within the last two weeks (it is suggested that if a longer period is used then people tend to forget). Further questioning determines how many times in the two week period they visited. Taking the KPI “Number of individual visitors to our waterways in typical two-week period (over last 12 months)”, CaRT say they achieved 4.1 million visitors last year. This is well down on the target of 4.5million and less than the 4.3 million achieved in 2017/18. The fact is that, over the last four years, KPI visitor numbers have been in decline. CaRT claimed 4.5 million in 2014/15. Today they give the figure as 4.1 million. It is even worse with CaRT’s non-KPI figure of the number of visits per year. In 2014/15 the Trust claimed 402 million. It’s 2018/19 annual report shows this has dropped to 349 million. The reason why this matters to boaters is to do with future funding which government states it wishes to reduce. Unless CaRT can demonstrate that its waterways are providing greater benefit to the general public (i.e. more visitors = more wellbeing = greater benefit), government has little incentive increase its £50 million per year grant when the agreement ends in March 2027. Indeed, it is likely to be reduced or be removed altogether. Unplanned closures In 2017/8, CaRT had 490 days lost to unplanned closures missing its target of 400 . For 2018/19 it set itself a target of less than 450 lost days. In the event, it again missed its target suffering 649 lost days. However, reading the small print, the 2018/19 figures it did not include 265 days lost due to vandalism which the Trust claims caused the Middlewich Branch breach. (Pictured.) Likewise it did not include 396 days due to “drought conditions”. These it considered to be outside its control. Research carried out a year ago indicated that, whilst the number of days lost to unplanned closures has risen year on year, CaRT has changed its “days lost” KPI to exclude certain closures such that it appears that days lost are reducing. What started out some years back as a simple KPI for the number of days lost to unplanned closures has morphed into “№ of days of unplanned closures to navigation within our control (individual instances over 48 hours)”. That is why CaRT are now so keen to blame vandalism or the weather for its inability to keep its waterways open. However, with the latest KPI figure, CaRT can no longer keep up this pretence: No targets for 2019/20 Faced with this declining ability to meet yearly KPI targets, CaRT has has simply scrapped them. Hidden away on page 41 of its latest annual report are some “eight broad measures of success” which will replace the 22 KPI’s. However, CaRT say these new “measures of success” will have no targets set against them this year. Obviously, if the Trust does not set itself targets it can not fail to meet them. Likewise, if it changes how it measures its performance, comparisons can not be made with previous years. Do you get the feeling that CaRT is just changing the way it measures its success and progress to avoid being held accountable for its deteriorating year-on-year performance? References: CaRT’s performance against yearly KPI targets are documented in May board minutes (some scrolling will be needed to find them): 2018/19 (see page 11 of 46) 2017/18 (see page 35 of 60) 2016/17 (see page 11 of 44) (Note: The 2018/19 figures show “Customer satisfaction rating of boaters” as “Outstanding”. The actual figure was later given in the annual report as 61%. This is both a fail against target and down on the previous year.)

Probably got an overstay notice from CRT ........

I have imagination and desire - please send cash!

Well I am staying ont CART run system. After all there is no choice if you love cruising the inland system. The system is without doubt in better condition than when I first moved aboard despite CART lol. Still GVFM. All forms of business are run badly nowadays, I read somehwhere that some police forces now give an opt out to police during training if they dont like foul language or aggression!! Ok I dont know where I read it but twas online so it could be true, in line with some universities apparently

Exactly. And thank you for the update, all too often we’re left in the dark after this sort of discussion.

Good management ploy, change the criteria so that you no longer can compare like with like.

Would it be better for the dinghy to have a 6V 20Ahr motorbike battery, rather than a 12V 7Ahr one, then charge it from the engine alternator as normal? The 12V stuff would be operated from a step up converter, connected to the battery. Say something like this. American Amazon, but something similar shirley available in the UK. The battery will then smooth the input in to the step up module, rather than having to operate from the spiky output from the alternator. For solar trickle charging, use a small 20W panel, connected to a 6V charge controller. Have a separate panel and 12V solar controller for the big boat starter battery. 100W is way to big a panel for the starter battery trickle charging. 20W is enough, even in winter to keep it topped up. Have the dinghy 20W panel either on the dinghy, or the main boat. The 6V solar controller on the dinghy. Jen

Fixed that for you.

Some solar controllers can be damaged if they are disconnected from a battery while they are receiving power from the solar panel. There is a risk you might wreck your charge controller it if you accidentally toggle the two way switch with the dinghy battery disconnected, or if you trip over the wire to the dingy and pull it out while charging, or forget to flick the switch back to the big boats starter before disconnecting. One way of avoiding it might be, instead of having a toggle switch, use a multiway socket with two plugs. Wired as below. Trailer sockets are seven pins, so two more than required, water resistant and cheap. This will disconnect the solar panel from the solar controller while swapping between boat and dinghy batteries and any other time no plug is inserted. Socket Plug 1 Dinghy charging Plug 2 Boat starter charging. +ve from solar ----------------|=== ---|---A connected to B ---|--- A connected to B +ve solar to controller--------|=== ---|---B connected to A ---|--- B connected to A charge +ve from controller--|=== ---|---C to dinghy batt +ve ---|--- C connected to D charge +ve to boat batt------|=== ---|---D not connected ---|--- D connected to C charge -ve to boat gnd-------|=== ---|---E to dinghy batt -ve ---|--- E not connected When plug one is inserted, then the dinghy battery is charged. When plug 2 is inserted, then the charging current from the solar controller is fed to the boat starter battery. If either is pulled out, then the solar panel is disconnected from the solar controller, protecting the controller fro m having no load on its output. Jen

Simply looking at the number of cycles. Say a battery is good for 300 cycles. Discharging from 100% down to 50% is half a cycle so it will last for 600 of 'your cycles'. Charging every 2 days means you will get 1200 days. Discharging from 100% down to 75% is one-third one quarter of a cycle so it will last 900 1200 of 'your cycles' (days) So, 'cycle wise' no difference. HOWEVER Leaving your batteries in a partially discharged state for two days WILL result in a reduction in capacity which will get gradually worse and worse until they have less capacity than you need to last for two days. Only recharging to 90% will exacerbate the situation even more. Personally I would go for recharging every day - use engine / generator / land line to put the bulk in early morning ( 2 hours ?) and then let the solar 'trickle charge' for the rest of the day and get back up to 99.99% SoC Winter is a whole new ball game.

Perhaps he didn't hit the GRP boat as hard as he had intended to?.. ??