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Probably had about 15 or so.. mainly small stuff.. Still got a couple to see and some replacement bungees to drop off, but it didn't eat up as much time as we thought, hence why we can do it again this week. Hopefully that should of been the last of the big ones for a while.. It was terrible here, flooding left right and centre. The Canal actually joined up with the river!

Hi Guys. WELL!!! That one was a wet one!!! Just to let you know we have the ability to run last weeks offer into this week to help those affected by bloody Dennis!!! I wont lie, it made me feel really happy last week being able to help. This forum really got the word out along with the Facebook narrowboat owners group. If anyone wants the link I think this is it. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2812160008899803&id=168353263280504&sfnsn=mo&extid=APa7JjW5gWTjUjAl If anyone can add the link that joins this with last weeks post. I'd be grateful, as would anyone affected that needs help. I'm not sure how to do it.. Cheers Ian

House sale all going to plan with contracts exchange this week and just 11 days to completion date then 5 more days before I actually start moving stuff onto MY boat and a new chapter in my life will begin..... not that I’m counting

Don't think that link worked, Here's the text. LONG AND SHORT OF IT, FREE REPAIRS. After the worst of storm Ciara, many elderly, physically impaired, students or low income people, can't afford to replace their covers when they are storm damaged, leaving their boat less secure and colder. So for the rest of this week we are offering FREE small cover repairs, to anyone in this demographic who may be struggling, and have to decide between bills or safety/warmth. This shouldn't be happening, so we will try and get as many covers repaired this week as possible. All we ask is you call us to arrange and then bring the cover to us. Our company is at a size where we can just afford to give a little back, and that's what we intend to do. Please spread the word as we will financially and physically only be able to do this for about a week, while we are unable to get out onto the boats due to the conditions. After that the bad weather should start to decline and we can get back out on the road making new covers. Would also like to thank Midland fencing and aggregates who initially gave us the idea. If you like our page on facebook then more people will also see this post. SHARE, SHARE, SHARE LIKE, LIKE, LIKE. www.kinvercanopies.co.uk 01384 394469

Living on the canals will not just be about the children especially being a couple. I don't know where your going to find the answers your after or certainly an honest answer. Most active posters on here either live or have a narrow boat, so they are all for the life on the canals and will tell you it's the best life and they all enjoy it. To get a true reflection you also need to speak to the couple's who have tried it, didn't like it and moved off. These people are probably not active on here anymore and want nothing to remind them of the mistake they made, so on here you will get a bias answer to the question unless couples are truly honest. Also you will get advice from Single people living on a boat, their life on a boat is a complete different scenario to that of a couple, remember that.

I use a deeper yellow undercoat than Ratcliffe’s Chrome Buff, usually Albany Amber U/c 10, oil based, from Brewers. Light oak scumble over it gives a honey coloured effect, as if the oil lamp is lit before it is. Craftmaster Clear varnish to follow for me.

A boater with three licences. Who are you?

Disagree. I consciously abstained as so little info available and no effort made by ANY candidate to engage with me. I suspect a lot of boaters felt similarly unable to make an informed choice.

Many years ago I read an item in Practical Boat Owner about two young lads who had been sailing offshore in a wooden centreboard dinghy. A few miles offshore the wooden centreboard casing started to leak around the joint between the casing and the deck. They didn't have anything on the board to stop the leak to allow them to get home safely until one of them remembered that they had brought some processed cheese sandwiches. They chewed a couple of sandwiches to form a thick, putty-like substance which they successfully used to plug the leak. This allowed them to get back to shore safely and they decided to defer repairing the leak until the next day. However, they forgot all about it and the cheese sandwich "putty " remained in place, and was still there when they sold the boat many years later! The moral is, always have a few slices of processed cheese on board - you never know when it may come in handy! Howard

I managed a project to make several millions of older, high sulphur red diesel compliant with the ULSD standards for BT. I found a company that would collect the old diesel, take it to their storage facility at Duxford airfield, filter it, dilute it with USLD until it met the minimum standard (some had a sulphur content of 5%!), add a lubricity agent (to help the older diesels in BT's estate), and return it. Each litre cost less than paying for most companies to take it and dispose of it, because the old fuel was considered hazardous waste if it was to be disposed of.

I'm surprised no one has used this method.

Ok well that pretty much confirms what I’ve told Dr B - he has to suck it and see. I’ve suggested adding a small 1.2v NiCd cell in series with the top cell, and connecting the sense wire to that, so it sees battery voltage plus 1.2v. If that drops the charge voltage by 1.2v then there is hope for a more permanent solution. No point in getting carried away with detailed solutions until the principle is proven. I think an on off duty cycle would be feasible since the thermal time constant on these devices is significant, and presumably the alternator is designed to be able to produce full output for a while at least. So the duty cycle period could be several minutes at worst. Trouble is I suspect that if the alternator is fully shut off the light/alarm will activate so steps would be needed to prevent that being a nuisance. And if the rev counter was fed from that alternator, it would probably stop working. Overall it’s not a very elegant solution!

Sense wire disconnected on some units shuts the thing down, on some it goes to a default setting, on others it appears to have no effect at all! Frankly I am not at all confident without having the machine to play with. I would be inclined to bypass the regulator completely and use something either designed for the job or custom built. As for limiting output I can't see any way to do that except by reducing voltage or replacing the stator. Even that would only reduce current by dropping voltage. I don't have the knowledge of lithium battery charging to be confident in any advice I could give. Perhaps the only way to get the required derating would be a on off duty cycle of alternate full chat and shut down for cooling.

Do we need to put locks on our diesel fillers?

Ideally such a system would have a separate draw off from the tank, lower than the engine draw off and as close as possible to the lowest point of the tank, so that it would tend to deal with all the water and sediment that collects there. If you are only polishing using the engine draw off outlet you may well be leaving muck to get shaken up the next time you go out on rougher water. Any glass bowl sedimentor would need to comply with the BSS.

I'm glad someone else is losing the will to live. I fully appreciate all the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep this site up and running but in this recent case it has got so that there are so many opinions about what to do that it has become confusing. For example, I have faithfully followed the instructions to select between View new content and the alternative VNC including politics etc. I have tried a number of times on my PC and also tablet to select the one that excludes Politics, and each time I think I have cracked it but no - political threads keep appearing. Please, mods, will you have someone draw up simple and clear step by step instructions and pin them somewhere so we can follow them. I subscribe to many forums and I have never had issues like we frequently have here. It's enough to drive me to drink (no there's a good idea)! Howard

I'm quite sure Richard and Sue will have something suitable. http://www.primrose-engineering.co.uk/

If you stick about you’ll see this same topic crops up two or three times every year and the same misconceptions and articles - probably understood by nobody including the poster - get trotted out. We never seem to move forward in the collective understanding and to me it’s a subject which generates a degree of unnecessary worry within the narrow boating community. My post was triggered by your comments rather than in direct response. Folks have done that sort of calculation on the forum hence I asked if you had seen the same from a surveyor. I’m still of the view a rough calculation has the potential to be misleading for the reasons AdE gives and Keeping Up’s experience demonstrates. It’s mostly just something you have to deal with at the moment in time it presents itself. If my boat sinks it will actually be because it’s 52 years old, the hull was fabricated from 1/4” and 1/6” steel and was overplated 33 years ago. I also understand that I’ll get some warning of impending doom and will probably be able to do something it, and if not it’ll sink in two feet of water and nobody will die. Until it happens I’ll just do the obvious and enjoy my boating in spite of the list the chip induces. JP

Bloody hell. That's a hell of a lot of typing. I will condense it for you. " They don't work"

If we can, we usually pull them out and take them back to the "owning" supermarket.... Here our son David returned several from just one lock apron to a Morrisons beside the Rochdale canal....