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The're not here to reply, so it's only fair to mention that the Foxes were content to use their cassette toilet until they discovered the many benefits of a separating loo as an alternative and they did, in fact, have a spare cassette on board. Most of us have emptied toilet cassettes but I doubt that many of us enjoy the smell and the occasional splash back and the sheer frequency of the less than pleasant process. I struggle to criticize someone for finding an alternative that has no smell, very little weight to carry, no foul containers to rinse out and no danger of having to flush splashes of human waste out of ones eye. In common with many or maybe most users of separating loos, the Foxes make no effort to compost, but the CRT, a very short time ago, praised such toilets and encouraged their users to deposit their 'dry' toilet waste in their bins. Composting loos are so much nicer in so many ways to use and manage than either cassette or pump-out toilets, that I'm pretty sure that those who don't like them haven't first hand experience of them. If the CRT embraced the trend towards composting and instructed Biffa to supply occasional bins for the purpose, before too long, the convenience of separating loos, I believe, would soon see them in the majority. Pump out facilities must be a complete pain for the CRT given the frequency with which they are out of order. The maintenance and replacement costs of these facilities must be considerable. There is little doubt that, even after the ban on putting toilet waste in CRT bins comes in next year, having been encouraged to do so, some people will ignore the instruction. At some point the CRT may have to provide a proper facility for disposal to avoid penalties from their waste carrier.

These are the metric dimensions of my friend Leigh Wootton's barge in France. A tonnage of 1454 needs a draught of 2.72 metres, more than the old canal beside the upper Seine can handle. 1,000 tonnes is thus the present-day limit here. What got Leigh his present contact however is the ability to get the boat back with empty containers on board - thanks to this ballast tank, and one aft. Together they take 90 tonnes of water, enabling the vessel to get beneath the bridges with millimetres to spare (They sheared the head off a rivet once at the bridge before Nogent). Here they are on the way back to Nogent-sur-Seine. :

Our composting is done elsewhere outside of the toilet. That's why they shouldn't be called composting toilets. We could call them many things: waterless toilets, dessicating toilets, anything really, I don't care. If it keeps you happy call them "crapping in a bucket half-full of wood shavings" toilets. Perhaps we could also change the name of the euphamistic cassette toilet to "weeing and crapping into a sealed container then every couple of days wheeling the container down the towpath to a smelly horrible elsan point and pouring the contents down it so you can check on said contents again then for someone else to deal with those contents" toilets.

I would have no problem with CRT provided dedicated dessicated poo disposal points, the problem I would imagine would be people, let's be honest here there's enough who seen to think pouring engine oil down an Elsan (or whatever mad, stupid Elsan blocking product) or seem to think throwing their rubbish in the general direction of the bins is OK, to generally bugger up the new shiny poo disposal approach

I see your point, it is certainly much easier, more pleasant, odour free and a huge amount lighter to put ones 'dry' toilet waste into a bin than lugging a heavy, foul smelling cassette of sloppy toilet waste to an Elsan point. I'm not sure what you mean by "type of newbies", but your doing a great job of promoting composters over cassettes.

Having done a bit of detective work and with help from Alan above, the disposal of toilet compost isn't actually much of a problem at all. The CRT have 220 sanitary stations, which are stations that have either Elsan or pump-outs or both. If at every station a dedicated 'compost' bin was provided there would unsurprisingly be 220 of them. If each of them were to be emptied weekly then that would be 11440 emptyings per year. If Alan's figure for emptying is correct at £23 plus vat, then the cost to CRT would be £263,120 plus vat. Now, the CRT advertise that they have 35,000 boat licence holders and state that this number is increasing every year, meaning that the princely sum of about £7.50 per year per licence holder would cover the cost. A tiny percentage increase on the licence fee that most of us pay I hope you'll agree. As Alan mentions, the CRT should be able to negotiate a decent discount on the above figures and in reality, such bins wouldn't need emptying weekly anyway. The CRT, having made it easy for people to convert to separating loos have encouraged the trend, so they will have to do something to avoid the contamination of their bins and the environment that will inevitably happen from January of next year. Supplying dedicated bins may be the best and cheapest option.

'Lock Reserved for Tree Monkey'

That job needs tree fellers not two.

My wife and I, when we had a separating loo, needed to swap it for an empty one every 8 to 10 weeks. You, with a pump-out need to empty every 3 weeks. Composting bins for toilet waste wouldn't need to be more frequent than pump-outs as they are needed a lot less frequently. Of course they'll be abused by mistake and deliberately, but if CRT provide no suitable bins, what do you think will happen then? With a pump-out, once your tank is nearly full you have to find a pump-out facility urgently, but when you're composting, as you add fresh material, what's already there dries out and or decomposes, so the receptacle is incredibly slow to fill. Therefore, when composting, you can be nearly full for literally weeks, so there would never be an urgent need to find a legitimate CRT supplied composting bin, so such bins needn't be any more frequent than pump-out facilities. I would hope that the vast majority of boaters would be responsible, but I accept not all. I would suggest that those boaters who are not responsible will ignore the new ban and throw their toilet waste in the Biffa bins anyway, which may cause more problems for the CRT than accepting that composters are here to stay and providing a facility for their users.

I don't think C&RT ever praised composting toilets or encouraged users to deposit their waste in Biffa bins. They accepted that a few boaters had installed compost toilets and when asked about disposal of the humanure they said to double bag it and put it in the Biffa bins. At that point there were very few such toilets in boats and the C&RT advice was based on this. I don't think anyone realised just how many would be installed by boaters and that the quantity of humanure being dumped in bins would cause a problem. Compost loos are fine if you have the facility to properly compost either on your boat or on your own land. Have you ever used a pumpout loo when you say that handling your own waste is nicer than a pump out? With a pump out, if properly installed and managed there is no smell, you forget about your output for several weeks until the tank is getting full when you pull into a boatyard where someone else connects a hose to your boat and empties your tank. What's not to like? OK you have to pay for it but you also have to pay for proper bags for double bagging and sawdust or similar to mix with the humanure. The ban on humanure in Biffa bins comes into force this December, not next year. haggis

For those of you advocating a dedicated inverter for the fridge, please consider its location relative to anything supplied from another inverter. Ideally they should be at least 2 metres apart. This is because the outputs of the two inverters will not be in phase and voltages of around 400 volts can appear if you get across the outputs of the two.

Looking at their Vlog on the first time they emptied their cassette toilet sums up a lot of the type of Newbies your getting on boats, they can’t handle emptying a cassette type toilet and find it easier to deal with a bag of sawdust and solids mix, that they can just seal it, put into another bag and into a bin. They have no interest in composting and the time involved, they just can’t handle seeing and smelling their own crap.

Then the CRT are guilty of encouraging people to avail themselves of the services of another company without checking that the other company was happy with the arrangement first. The CRT are without doubt at least partly responsible for the increase in the proportion of separating loos on the cut.

It's not a catchy title, but if it pleases you. The fact remains that separating loos are infinitely nicer to deal with than cassette toilets. Had both types of toilet been introduced at the same time there is no possibility that the cassette toilet would have survived. I've never heard of anyone who changed from an Elsan toilet to separating loo and regrets it. Yes, the problem of onward composting/disposal needs to be solved, but the solution is simple and inexpensive given the will to do so. I suspect that the CRT has left it too late to reverse the trend towards switching to separating toilets. People now own them, love them and are enthusing about them to their friends. Perhaps it's time to accept that they are here to stay and to make proper provision for handling the waste produced.

Re the flies. We now have three 22 litre buckets of in your words "fresh crap" on the roof of our NB. The lids aren't sealed and there is a stick holding each lid open so there is ventilation. There are NO flies around any of the buckets. There are many people on this forum who have no idea of what the contents of the solids bucket of a composting toilet look like or of its consistency. It's nothing like "fresh crap". It's mixed (i.e stired in) with at least 50% cover material (we use dampened wooden cat litter) before it even leaves the toilet, it doesn't smell because there is no wee in there and it doesn't attract flies, at all, ever! There are lots of assumptions about composting toilets (and I wish they weren't called composting because they don't compost but we seem to be stuck with the name) made on this forum by people who have no experience of them at all.

True. I have to get the boat first... I have put a deposit down and having her lifted on Tuesday week, followed by a river trial. If all goes well I will need to get her moved from the Great Ouse to the Thames on a low-loader, but I am stupidly excited. My current boat is lovely - good looking (much admired), comfortable accommodation, very well behaved, and everyone (self included sometimes) is wondering why I want to change her, but I am looking forward to a boat I can do different things with. Change. Change is good.

Today was one of those typical October days, cold, overcast, drizzle just the sort of day to get the heating on, mug of tea and a bun, curl up and watch TV and have an afternoon nap. Come 4:00pm the Sun came out it warmed up and I got some sanding (paint prep) done ready for a 'perfet painting day' (ha ha) tomorrow.

Started this morning in full waterproofs getting lashed in the face by rain, finished up in short sleeves coming down the Atherstone locks regretting not having put shorts on before starting ‘em 😆 Happy Yorkshire Day!

Too complicated for me. I'll go back to original plan of getting someone competent to do it!

But as I indicated, you are still required to pay a 'retention charge' for the weeks the bin is not emptied, view it as a 'rental charge' so who is going to fund the additional (say) £50,000 per annum for the service. How would they be charged for ? Maybe 'toilet type' should be a requirement on the BSS, then C&RT can identify who has composting toilets and add (?) £100s onto the licence fee. I think you have much higher expectations of boaters acting 'responsibly' than I. Some certainly will, but a fair majority won't.

Are you seriously suggesting that C&RT should provide additional BIFFA bins at every waste point across the system ? I'm sure that C&RT will get a reduced charge due to volume, but we currently pay £23 + VAT (each) per week to have our Biffa bins emptied. Lets underestimate and say that C&RT have 500 bin compounds across the whole of the system, that is over £1000 per week for an additional bin - and - then you still have the problem of people using the wrong bin as the 'composting bin' becomes full of general-waste, and the general bins get bagged 'poop'. During C19 lockdowns we put our bins 'on retention' which meant we didn't have to pay to have them emptied but we had to pay £15.75 + VAT (each) per week to keep the bins on site A composting bin may not need emptying every week, but unfortunately humans being what they are, if the general bins are full what will they put their waste in ? C&RT are not required to provide any services, and, if they wished, the Waterways Act actually allows them to charge for services provided, but again, if the Composting bins are 'charged for' and the general bins are not - where will the bags of 'poop' end up ?

Standard CRT operation procedure. No joined up thinking, no joined up plumbing 🤣

On this day 2020 - Coventry Canal near The Plough at Huddlesford

No doubt C&RT have run out of stripey warning tape and blue signs so asked Fountains to ensure that no one could use the lock. They just don't know how innovative boaters can be (do they !)

No rain here today although some dark clouds threatened for a while. Even tired the dog out (daughters dog not ours)

Whilst I'm no lover of C&RT I don't think you can lay blame at their door for this one. I think Biffa allow a small amount of such waste in bins and I wonder if its more likely that C&RT just didn't understand the situation or expect the volume to rise to the point where Biffa would complain.

We had flooding last Sunday in my husband's home village in Kent. Friends of ours ended up with their ground floor totally flooded - they'd only just moved back in after extensive smoke damage caused by a house fire. We're fairly safe where we are in Ashford, but it does worry me when it tips down with rain. You just can't be sure any more.

Don't you think that the CRT would prefer you to have a flushing pump-out toilet which blocks at the least convenient moments and then store many hundreds of litres of slurry inside your boat, taking up a great deal of valuable storage space? Instead of providing a small bin for dessicated human waste, perhaps the CRT would prefer to excavate and install huge slurry tanks, expensive and less than reliable vacuum pumps and associated housings and power supplies etc. to deal with your pump-out needs. Instead of having to dispose of human waste that is dessicated to a fraction of its original weight and volume, maybe they'd prefer you to actually increase the volume and weight of your toilet waste by perhaps 600% by adding valuable drinking water to it so that they can have it carted across the countryside in huge, polluting tankers. Is it possible that, if composting/dessicating toilets had come first, that both boat owners and the CRT would be horrified if someone were to suggest pump-outs as an alternative?

Actually, have a look at page 1 and see who first raised the subject of the RCD. I'll leave it now, just accept what the laws says and the fact that it is your choice to comply or not.

Finally had a chance to top balance the batteries on this trip. Just manually balancing for the time being, having got them properly in to balance it will be interesting to see if they go out / if I actually need to bother to write code to balance automatically. The cells were left all in parallel for months, albeit at a mid state of charge. So I was expecting them to be reasonably well balanced. In fact they were, but even a slight imbalance has a big impact at the top end of charging. The below graphs represent the 6 balancing cycles I went through - just taking a guestimate amount of charge out of the high ones at a time. My balancing gadget can take 2A, and the longest discharge I had was 30 mins (ie 1Ah) plus several at 15 mins for the top cells (0.5Ah). So in total probably no more than 4Ah (out of a 600Ah bank) was taken out of the top cell - less than 1%. I'm charging at the slow rate which is about 90A. The first graph shows that the charging had to be stopped at about 14.1v because cell 4 was going over 3.6v (which is the top limit I've set. Also interesting to note the short time between it going over 3.45v and hitting 3.6v - about 10 mins or 15Ah which is 2.5% capacity. Red line is total voltage on the RH axis, the others are cell voltages on left axis So a chunk of Ah out of cells 1 and 4, a bit less out of cell 2 gave this. Voltage got to 14.25 or so before hitting the 3.6v cell limit (The regulated voltage is set to 14.3v) So more current out in stages gave these. I changed the voltage regulation to 14.2 for safety in the next one, back to 14.3 after that. Close enough for government work, and the alternator regulator is hitting its limit of 14.3v. Over just a few minutes the current subsides from 90A to 30A (which is 5% of capacity) causing the BMV and the Mastershunt to reset to 100% and the alternator regulator to switch to float. I'm pleased with that, it means that whilst I will normally terminate charge on BMV SoC at 80%, I can flick the switch to go up to 100% to re-sync the BMV and Mastershunt.

I think it was a bit more than two nights on board, Peter 🙂 . Night one we were all on board at Tarleton awaiting our trip the next day. Day two, we crossed the link (keeping the keel cooling tank cool by throwing pails of water over it while Iain had a sauna standing on the step above) and moored at Billsborrow, day three we went to Tewitfield and had a nice meal out, day four we went down to Glasson docks and moored there overnight, day five we went to Preston before returning to moor at the top of the Ribble Link locks and day five we returned to Tarleton. It was a great trip and was the third time we have cruised the Lancaster, having towed gamebird down twice and cruised end to end. haggis

So to summarize: We have been telling you to do the wrong thing for years, including in our Boater's Handbook we co-produce with the Environment Agency. As of a month ago you had to stop doing this immediately with no notice, but now you still can until next year but we'd rather you didn't. Unless it's wrapped in a plastic nappy, then it's fine but plastic bags are right out. We had no idea how many people were using separating toilets because we didn't ask, but were stunned at how many people contacted us about correct disposal when we changed it a month ago. We are continuing to just repeat the same "We will continue to work with any boaters and others to seek, identify and promote sustainable solutions for the disposal of this waste" phrase we have been saying for 5 years but not doing anything else. I think that covers it.