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I had a composting toilet fitted in January 2019 and at the time, promised to let the forum know, after the first year, how I had got on with it. There is a fair bit to say so I will copy Sir Nibble and post it in sections. (No I won't - it won't let me!) Views on toilets are very mixed and several bits of this will not meet with complete agreement. All I can say is that I did not go the composting route entirely by choice, it was a decision partly driven by circumstances. This is an honest description of my experience in the last twelve months. I have absolutely no axe to grind here and have no connection with Nature’s Head nor with any toilet supplier. Background I have a 70’ Orion tug, built in 2003 and which I have owned since 2013. My wife and I are retired, we don’t live aboard but spend about 7 months of each year on the boat. Our time aboard is split into roughly 6 week spells. When I bought the boat it had a macerating pump-out toilet and as there was space, I added a 365 Cube porta-potti for emergencies. This arrangement was OK for five years though I never really trusted the pump-out, for one thing, the ‘full’ indicator never worked properly. Late last year I had a lot of work done on the boat to re-position the engine. As a result I had to get rid of the pump-out toilet, as the holding tank was removed to accommodate the repositioned drive-shaft. I could have replaced it with a cassette but decided to experiment with composting instead. We bought a new Nature’s Head composting toilet at Crick, Debdale installed it for me as part of the engine move and other work which they did on the boat. The company from which I bought the toilet is no longer in business and I am not sure if Nature’s Head have a UK distributor at present. You can certainly view the toilet on the net and may have to if you want to completely follow what I have to say. Installation and use Installation was exactly as per the manufacturers instructions except that the ‘screw down brackets’ which fix the unit to the floor were not used by Debdale and I have not fitted them since. The old porta-potti was not fixed to the floor and I have found no reason to fix the Nature’s Head, in fact it’s simpler to use if not fixed. A small 12v computer fan extracts air from the toilet and pumps it out through a skin fitting. The fan runs 24/7 when we are on the boat and not at all when we are not. I had planned to use one of the old pump-out exits for this but Debdale preferred to cut a new hole and skin fitting instead. The manufacture says some substrate should be used and we selected coconut coir. This comes dehydrated in blocks (20cm x 10cm x 5cm) which I buy in bulk from Amazon. I also purchased a number of 30 litre clear polythene boxes from Wilko. These had lids and I cut a large hole in two of the lids, hot-gluing nylon fly screen over the holes. The boxes were intended to hold first the reconstituted coir and ultimately, the ‘product’ while it finished composting. The boat has an enormous (1700 litre) front deck locker which is of limited use (you can’t easily reach the bottom of it from the deck). It may have been constructed partly for a bow thruster which was never fitted (but who knows, Richard at Orion had some eccentric design ideas). Anyway, my original plan was that I could use part of this locker to stack some of the Wilko boxes - those with fly screen lids - while the ‘compost’ matured. The Nature’s Head has a horizontal stirring bar about half way up the solid waste container. The manufacturer’s guidance is to start by filling to this level with coir. I prepared the coir by placing two of the blocks in a Wilco box and adding 7 litres of very hot water, putting a (solid) lid on and leaving it for 24 hours. The next day the coir had expanded to about 10 litres and become crumbly, it was slightly moist but not wet. It takes about 70% of the prepared coir to fill the toilet to the recommended level, I left the remaining coir in the Wilko box which was stored in the engine room. In use the Nature’s Head requires a little practise, it is very important to keep liquid and solid “deposits” completely separate. So you need to be careful where you are seated on the toilet but it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. Urine goes into a removable bottle which can be easily changed, we had 3 spare bottles and needed to change one every day. Obviously they are straightforward to empty in an Elsan or even in a public toilet, as there is no mess involved. The nitty gritty We find that with only two users we need to empty the solids box every three weeks. Not because the container is full (in fact the level does not change much) but the material becomes denser and the stirrer gets difficult to move. Here we depart from the manufacturer’s instructions. We decided to do this because the stuff does not smell unpleasant and does not look like a box of turds. The appearance is rather like garden leaf mould and the smell is similar. So we proceed as follows:- Move the toilet out into the centre of the bathroom Remove the liquid container Have an empty Wilco box ready Trowel out the material using two garden trowels and put it in the Wilco box (*1) Put new choir in the solids container plus a sprinkling over the solids in the Wilco box Put the liquids container back, close and replace the toilet Cover the Wilco box with a fly screen lid and put it in the engine room (*2) The whole operation takes 10 minutes. *1 Emptying after 3 weeks results in about 15 litres of waste so you can just fit 6 weeks worth into a single Wilco box. *2 The original plan was to put the box in the front locker but as there was no smell, we experimented with storing it in the engine room to see if the heat would speed composting. As we go home roughly every six weeks and only produce a single Wilco box of waste in that time, we just take it home with us and add it to our existing garden composting arrangements. This was a major departure from our original plan but I think we could have managed with the locker. The difficulty for anyone without ‘hands on’ experience is believing that the quantity of product is so small and that my claims about smell are true. I know, I was surprised myself. Also, of course the system might be unworkable for live-aboard’s with limited locker space - in that respect we have an advantage. But neither of us would go back to the old toilet arrangements and would recommend composting to anyone with the necessary space and an unfussy attitude to getting familiar with their waste.

Contracts exchanged today so looks like it’s all systems GO

Removable "narrows" might be the way to go. Removable by CaRT under special dispensation. The Rochdale canal was built for broad beams. When it was restored a farm access culvert was converted in to a new route to take the canal under a motorway that had cut the original route. The towpath for this is a set of floating pontoons, which narrow the available space so only narrowboats can get through. If you want to take a wide beam, then you need to give CaRT some notice to send the boys and girls in blue to remove them. With the N Oxford, you could allow wide beams to leave, but generally not to come back. Might also work for the Braunston and other tunnels that require special passage for wide beams. Part of that would be CaRT removing the narrow just before the boat goes through. Would prevent narrowboats unexpectedly meeting a broad beam coming the other way, with no way to pass. Jen

Swerving off at a tangent, the Blue Plaque scheme run by English Heritage has recently identified the house where the inventor of toothpaste lived for most of his life. They decided however, it would be appropriate for the house to have no plaque.

Well not that I’m counting but finally I can say my house completion is on Monday 16th so 6 more days to go before I pay for my boat and start moving boxes of my worldly belongings aboard. Why the delay? The buyer decided 10 days before original completion date of February 28th to start trying to find issues with the house in a bid to reduce the price but we have finally got that stupid issue sorted and both solicitors have confirmed it’s happening March 16th. iv allowed myself a few days to unpack and get stuff put away and will be starting my new life on the water as from Sunday 22nd when Misty (Labrador) and me move aboard Freedom currently moored at Mercia Marina. I will update you on how the move went once I’m sorted.

...but it wont work as well as a log periodic (£10) once 30-40Km from the mast.

I dunno, last time I was there so was @Dr Bob, and then @tree monkey 2 days later.

What do folks reckon to sweet potato chips? We love them. Had some tonight with our rib eye steak. Air fried and tossed in smoked paprika. upload

Mercia is a long way from here. Stockton is not?

Doesnt time fly when you are enjoying yourself?

Getting through that gap in a widebeam would be a doddle compared to whatever you’d need to do to arrive there heading south in a widebeam in the first place. JP

I think its safe to say he knows what he's doing!

Sorry, that is too much for me, I will stay with pump outs. Besides I don't have a trowel.

And the diagonal planking does rather add to the "Jaws" teeth impression.

You can't make brass plaques out of china they will crack when you screw them to the wall

The second image in that Ebay set show the stanchions laying on the deck, so they must be fairly easy to detatch. I recall his son was autistic? It may or may not have been why stanchions were put up.

Blue plaque?

Lots of good advice here. I've ended up doing all the ways in except for the GU at various times and had an interesting time exploring the BCN. All I can add is that none of the ways in to Birmingham are as pleasant as the ways out of Birmingham. ?Jen

If you are nervous about mooring in Birmingham get round behind the Sea Life Center on the Oozle Street loop, that is where all the security chaps go for their fag break, its also very handy for the centre and no one much walking by.

Sounds to me that there is more to this story than the partisan report cited indicates.

I see no ships! Howard

14.1v isn’t high enough, even if read correctly. You need to be at at least 14.4V for long enough for the Amps to fall to 1% of capacity, as Mike says above. You will destroy your batteries if you stop charging as soon as they reach 14.1v, or 14.4v, or any other voltage you choose. You have to carry on until the Amps fall to the appropriate level. In a similar way, if you get a Smartgauge and stop charging when it reaches 100%, you will almost certainly destroy your batteries. You should also charge to full every other day as, for some/many/most, once a week isn’t enough. and so it goes on ....... Whatever you do, you should be prepared to by new batteries every 2 or 3 years. Any longer than that is a bonus

My own version when fixing boilers is "It's working now so It's time to stop mending it." if a customer starts on the "while you are here" stuff they didn't mention on the phone, during the manically busy peroiods. E.G. "Can you service it too please while you are here?", after I've packed up my tools and written out the bill.

Seldom a good idea to buy direct from Morris. Can usually be found cheaper elsewhere. Without trying too hard, it is £95 from Classic Oils, with free delivery. https://www.classic-oils.net/Morris-Golden-Film-SAE-30

I have never heard the term 'Sister Boat' before, and I can not help thinking that this is an enthusiasts term - and why are you singling out ILFORD ? Is all of the above based on Alan H. Faulkner's booklet FMC which states "Between May 1912 and April 1914 Braithwaite & Kirk of West Bromwich delivered 24 iron composite butties for £190 each". Mr Faulkner used the generic term 'butties' throughout the section of the booklet where the building of unpowered boats is concerned. Personally I think you are taking this too literally. I also have a very good transcript of the F.M.C. Ltd. Boat Register and there is no suggestion of the Braithwaite & Kirk built boats being intended for use with Steamers, although four horse boats are described as being intended for the Dickenson's paper traffic - two paired with Steamers and two later paired with Motors. As a businessman it makes no sense to me whatsoever to build a number of unpowered boats and reserve them as buttys to Steamers, of which there were relatively few in thei F.M.C. Ltd. fleet. I would want these boats to be fully employed to give me a return on my investment, and I can not imagine that the Directors of F.M.C. Ltd. would think any differently. This would mean operating them as a single horse boat, one of a pair of horse boats or behind a Steamer or Motor. My own understanding is that Steamers worked with any unpowered F.M.C. Ltd. boat that was heading in the same direction, and only occasionally operated as a 'long term' pair, and this is certainly substantiated by period photographs and period Inspections carried out by local Sanitary Inspector's. If you would like to see a photograph of a Braithwaite & Kirk horse boat being towed by a horse then please see NarrowBoat magazine Summer 2007 page 38 - "The horse drawn pair JAMES and VERBENA in Cassiobury Park, Watford, approaching Ironbridge Lock on 29th July 1928". This took me about 2 minutes to find so I imagine it will not be too difficult to find more