trackman

We have had a Rule pump with the inbuilt sensor for years. If it takes any current at all when in standby mode it's infinitesimal. Before we had solar panels we'd leave the boat with the pump operable and never noticed any battery discharge caused by it. Now we have solar we don't really care, but that's not the point!

As I recall he was reportedly using a cutting torch, but I'd personally be just as worried using a disc cutter or angle grinder given the sparks they make. Some of the incidents in mills and grain silos have been put down to electrostatic sparks, so it doesn't take much in some circumstances.

Yes but a guy died a year or so ago cutting up an empty 45 gal drum to make a barbecue. Gas air mixture inside reached explosive proportions and off it went. Be very careful! As already implied, the danger is when there is a gas filled void with fuel and air mixed. As an aside, flammable dust is as bad as fuel vapour, hence the explosions that occur in flour and textile mills now and then.

There was a pike killed recently near our mooring at Beeston Lock just off the Trent. I didn't see it whole, just the head after something (rats?) ate the rest, but was told it was a similar size to the OP's. The head alone was pretty impressive! Apparently when first spotted there was a big chunk out of it, just behind the head, and the theory was that a boat prop had hit it. I wondered whether it might actually have been bitten by an otter. Who knows?

Not much chandlery at Redhill is there? Unless they've improved a bit since I last asked.

We have an angled collar on ours that keeps the chimney vertical on the curved roof. It will have come from Midland Chandlers as that's where our builder gets his bits. As already said, the flue should not be rigidly fixed in the collar. If it is, expansion in the heat will cause it to damage something, most likely your expensive stove! It should be packed to centre it in the collar with glass fibre rope and high temp silicon seal should be applied over the rope to seal flue to collar. To stop tarry condensate on your roof use a lined chimney & insulate the chimney liner with high temp spray foam or glass wool. Ensure that the liner extends down inside the top of the flue when the chimney is in place on the collar. Do not use a "coolie hat" when the stove is lit. If you do tarry stuff will condense on its underside and drip onto the roof, nicely undoing all the precautions described!

It was a common enough length in the past I believe. Why 57 or 58 ft? Our current boat is nominally 57' but many others are said to be 58'. They are all pretty nominal anyway in my experience given how inaccurate shell builders seem to be. And don't even start on whether the length includes fenders or only the actual shell!

What kind of fuse is in the battery connection wire? I had a blade fuse in mine that failed intermittently in the summer. Didn't notice until it caused a longer term failure but it could easily have caused similar symptoms to those described.

If everything is switched off by the isolators then 250W of solar will more than compensate for self discharge unless you've a huge battery bank. We found that our original 68W panel easily coped with keeping our 440Ah bank fully charged in winter when the isolators were off. Now we have over 200W it's well more than enough to do the job in any weather. The only risk might be heavy snowfall cutting off the light, but that seems unlikely this winter!

Decent solar panels will keep up with a bilge pump in most circumstances even in winter. When we had only one 68W panel it would push our batteries up from 70% to 100 in a few days with everything isolated. I reckon this would have kept a bilge pump going a very long time if operating intermittently.

Never heard of them, but the blurb isn't encouraging. They don't seem to know their amps from their ampere hours. Could just be poor translation from another language but it is off putting. Conversion of petrol generators to LPG is done quite commonly anyway.

We've had 2 real leaks in almost 10 years, one a failed water pump under the front deck and the second a split in the calorifier under the bedroom wardrobe. Both soaked the bilge area affected pretty thoroughly. Neither area stayed damp for long after basic mopping up with disposable nappies and/or cloths. We have good access points in the bedroom floor both sides at the rearmost end of the cabin adjacent to the bulkhead by the engine room. After each flood the residual damp dried out naturally without forced ventilation. Our boat has nice clear spaces below the floors with no ballast so air can circulate freely. The ballast is under the back cabin floor where the extra height for the prop shaft makes it very accessible, as is any water or condensation under there. We do get condensation there in winter if we leave the kettle boiling too long on the back cabin stove!

We gave up on Taybrite a few years ago after we started finding it had become to ashy. We are now at Beeston on the Trent and get New Burn from Murfins of Derby. They deliver to the area fortnightly. Probably little help in the Soar of course, but if you do come across New Burn, give it a try. It's cheaper than Taybrite & we get very little ash from it.

We live aboard a lot in winter and I'd definitely have double glazed windows if specifying another boat. Plastic film "double glazing" makes a big difference to draughts & condensation on the windows but it's fiddly and messy. Re 10mm glazing spacing, iirc from my physics it's not worth increasing much above that since if you do convection currents can begin to form in the gap and reduce its effectiveness. The answer is to fill the gap with a gas that transmits heat less well than air. Good panels use argon I believe. Wide gaps are better for sound insulation though. Frames with a thermal break are essential, as already mentioned. Otherwise the frame causes heat loss and condensation.

If it's a river surely the EA would have to be consulted about any proposal like this and it could not legally proceed without their consent. It's possible that this might also apply if it's a navigation, I'm not sure about that though.

See my comments on the other thread about Surecal calorifiers which have non return valves built into them on the cold water inlet. They are almost impossible to drain in my experience!

We have 3 Unisolar panels, the "peel n' stick" American ones. Contrary to Matty40s view, the oldest of these is about 5 years of age now iirc. I was sufficiently convinced by the first to add 2 more later. They are made to be stuck onto metal roofs in the USA and so are designed to cope with the temperatures that go with that. As already said, the temperature issue is pretty irrelevant to the power output anyway. When the sun is strong enough to heat up the roof seriously the panels deliver their rated maximumm. As for the durability effect of it, ours have shown no sign of trouble from the heat. As far as tilting goes, who ever actually moves their panels to follow the sun? As others have said, I reckon the loss from this issue too small to bother about. The main concern is cost, they are far more expensive per watt than the usual rigid panels. I felt the benefits of panels flat on the roof, secure against theft and the risk of being blown off or swept away by branches was worth the extra money. They won't break if hit by stones and can be walked upon if necessary. It's a personal choice in the end.

Chewbacka is right. If there's a non return valve in the cold supply, as on Surecal calorifiers like we have, it's almost impossible to drain the calorifier. When our first calorifer developed a split and leaked badly, I was still unable to empty it even after removing it! I left it overnight, on the bank outside, split side down. It was still partially full next morning & had to go in the skip about half full. I tried tipping it every which way to no avail. So, the chances of emptying one in situ are minimal if it has an nrv. What I do is to drain everything else after isolating the water tank & turning off the pump. It's probably not worth draining the main tank, but do that if you want to be sure. I leave all the taps and shower turned on to minimise the risk of pressure building up anywhere if ice forms.

I fitted one of these a few years ago to a BMC 1.8 on a boat I used to maintain. I know the current owners of the boat. It has been brilliant, so easy to change the filter without a mess. I'd love to fit the equivalent to my current Beta JD3 but haven't found a reasonably priced kit yet.

Is it under a mushrom vent? Ours drip with condensation occasionally when it's cold outside. That could have led to damp in the middle of the floor perhaps.

Ours is nearly ten years old and over 4200 hours running. It's been brilliant. The advice of an expert who repairs them was that it should do 6000 hours before needing servicing. It does depend which type of alternator you have/get though, he said. Ours is an Iskra iirc (not on board tonight so can't check) and they were said to be good. Earlier ones (Bosch maybe?) were good for only 4000 hrs as I recall from his advice. I worry about the bearings & bushes, but a recent quick check suggested no oroblems with ours yet. The drive belt is a chunky multi-vee job. I changed ours after about 5 years and 3000 ish hours but the old one was perfectly good to keep as a spare. Ours is in a traditional style engine room, which does mean it's kept warm and dry mostly, and may help compsred with installation under a cruiser stern deck.

It means you hold one nut still with one spanner & tighten the second hard against it. Done properly it stops either nut from turning. In this case you hold still the nut nearest the pusher of the stern gland, so you don't move that from its carefully adjusted position. You tighten the nut nearest the end of the stud (the lock nut) down hard against it.

Boats moving draw water from in front of themselves and push it behind them. I'd estimate that when moving at 4 mph ours drops the water level in front of it by at leadt 4" at the point of maximum disturbance. When 2 boats meet, both are drawing water in this way from the area in between them. So the drawdown of the water level in between the boats can be quite dramatic as they get close to each other. If the channel is narrow, then it's not hard to see how the outer edges of their baseplates might ground on the canal bottom and tip the boats towards the centre of the canal. Of course, if both boats slow down, the drawdown effect will be reduced. If only one slows, it will be thrown about more by the one that kept moving faster.

Can't imagine why HS2 would need to do this. I could believe they might dig ditches to drain water from their sites but not to take it to them!

I'd make 2 comments to that. First, the makers say the stick on panels are much less sensitive to the direction of incidence of light than the commoner types. They need to be since, as you say, they are stuck down. We find that they do seem to perform better than I expected when the sun is low, on summer evenings for example. Secondly, how many users really go out and change the angle of their panels during the day? Very few on my experience. So tnose whi don't are still missing out on power most of the time. We find that in summer it really doesn't matter, there's plenty of power. In winter it's pretty irrelevant as there's very little power anyway. In between those seasons it probably just means slightly more engine running time.