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That'll be because the Baton Twirlers have told them that if they are on the Llangollen they can claim their £400 heating grant.

Looking at you tube everyone is on the Llangollen.

It's not so much of having enough power to go, you also need enough power to stop, Those aircooled ebay specials are v noisy, old seagulls are quite polluting but you can get biodegradable two stroke oil, I suspect that a lot of the suggestions on here are maybe more than the OP was hoping to pay

Plenty of boats through at the weekend now the ice has melted. Think the main obstacle to it being used at the moment is hire boats moored on lock landings. Kudos to the owner of the unoccupied hire boat in Willow Wren livery for deciding that blocking the lower lock landing wasn't obstructive enough and putting in the effort recently to move it to the lock landing above, so that (with help from an ABC boat) it prevents use of the landing for the (open) services as well as the lock. Maybe the old training company's been replaced by someone running a How Not To Operate a Narrowboat course...

Thank you everyone for your replies. I was considering solar as an option. I've got a couple of small panels and control units from a previous project, but there's not enough sunlight at the moment to test everything fully. Another battery would be cheaper than an outboard, but as BilgePump says, there is not a lot of surface area, plus I just can't shake the idea of having a more traditional back up. I'll keep investigating this avenue though. Attached are pictures of the diesel engine, a Penta MD1. Knackered, in this context, means well beyond my skill to repair and un-economical to pay someone else to do it. I have no idea how much it would cost to get a boat yard to haul the engine out, get it up and running, and put it back in again, but I suspect it would be more than I paid for the boat. Same with having it removed and replaced. I wonder how much I would get for it as scrap? From a manoeuvrability POV, the electric motor has reverse, so as long as I didn't completely flatten the battery I could use the petrol engine for the long straights, then the electric for docking. Going through my photo's I have discovered that the outboard bracket is a Seagull. Maybe a clue as to what engine was used in the past.

Yes - they were the only ones answering the AD and they bought it, ( a couple of days before Christmas) no survey, paid cash, climbed aboard and headed for London. Apparently starter battery failed near Northampton but apart from that arrived safely and enjoyed the liveaboard lfe, (It was only 30 foot !) I accept it was just 'luck' that someone was looking at the for sale ads just when I posted it, and, that it met their budget and requirements. I don't know how long the for sale ads stop on the forum - maybe it is still in the archives ?

One approach would be to elevate the solar panel on stands like a gazebo and use it as shade/rain cover for the cockpit. This would depend on beam at the stern end but you could probably put a 365w panel or something up there if done right. Watch the bridges if used on the cut though. Cross posted with booke23. Great minds like a think.

Where there is a will there is a way! It would be a squeeze without elevating the panels like the above example. But I think you could just get 2 x 75W panels on each side of the roof plus a 50W transom mounted panel. Hard to know exactly without seeing it though. There is a guy with a grp day boat moored near me and he has what looks like a 200w panel mounted on the transom (don't think you could get a panel this size on the OP's transom) and an electric outboard. He goes for trips up and down the canal on summer evenings. His mooring has no electricity so the panel provides the power to charge his batteries.

Do members get a discount ?

A lot of retro installs use a separate diesel tank fitted in the well deck so gravity feed is achieved. This would be IMO the best way to go. Not the best idea to use the same fuel tank for engine and diesel stove.

I didn't know that. and with that level of technical knowledge you can see why renovating an entire engine might be a bit beyond me!

I'd already mentally planned to fit an inline meter with cctv to record all domestic fuel transferred into the engine tank............................

If you claim it on the form, I wonder if CRT carry out any checks to see if the boat qualifies?

Sandra took her boat and dogs to Ireland about 3 years ago here is one of her blogs The Happy Hippie Convoy by Daquiri | Golden Boyz Narrowboat Blog (wordpress.com)

We bought our narrowboat for £90000 in 2007, sold it through Rugby Boat Sales in 2020 for £80000 and it's just been sold again for £87500. I was very surprised and happy with our £80k and think RBS commission well deserved.

That's bizarre! Surely the BSS guideline (not requirement) for twin wall flues only applies to solid fuel stoves, so not in scope for a diesel conversion.

Yes, I've been saying for many years that for those sticking with bitumen (no pun intended), the use of a single pack underwater primer makes sense. A couple of coats of either Jotun Vineyguard or International Primocon (same stuff) which can be used around the waterline or over bare steel patches can help extend bitumen lifespan for about an extra year. Your bitumen may get scraped off or eventually degrade with UV light but the primer will stay on for longer protecting the steel. There's no problem going over existing well adhered bitumen either - around the edges of a rust patch you've taken back to bare metal for example. I used to thin the first coat down with 10% thinners. I can't remember what the correct thinners are for these primers but it's definitely not white spirit. I think it's xylene based.

Ignore the prices this was the info from 2 years ago... Epidac 116 Black - £49.27 per 5L composite pack (4L base + 1L activator) - this is the product to go over Comastic. Any areas of bare metal with the comastic would ideally be spot primed with our Epidac 115 Aluminium which is £52.34 per 5L composite pack. This gives the anti-corrosion protection to bare steel

It's over 30yrs since I last saw the view in that first photograph. It hasn't changed! Alec

Fazeley Mill is not looking very full at the moment, I would have thought they had room. Just put their prices up though, £50 per foot per year. So they will probably be even less full soon! If it's an old working boat, Alvecote might be a better bet. They like that sort of thing!

It sounded like the fire was going to be in the front of the boat and the tank at the back so possibly there will be a water tank effect. Indeed some (not all) boats do tend to be slightly higher at the bows at all states of trim for aesthetic reasons.

It was more complicated than that. The original increase in the number of cones came after the EU introduced Set-Aside, where farmers were paid to take land out of use. This was aimed at reducing the wine lakes, butter mountains and so on. The British government saw an opportunity and reclassified the countries motorway and trunk road network as agricultural land. They then took miles of dual carriageway and motorway lanes out of use with rows of cones, allowing them to lie fallow and pocketing the EU cash. A welcome boost to the vital road cone industry, so almost every one was a winner. Excepting people driving of course.

Crab and lobster pot buoy ropes and long line fishing gear can wreak havok and they are all common around UK waters. Howard

We cannot live our lives worrying about wether we sold or are selling too cheap/at wrong time/hang on till things book up, etc etc etc. We have one short life, wasting any of it trying to always come out financialy " On Top " is a fools errand, just get on and enjoy as it all ends too soon.