Paul C
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Posts posted by Paul C
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1 hour ago, blackrose said:
I wonder how they determine which boat is being used as a primary residence, second home, leisure only?
Also what's the difference between charging someone council tax on a boat used as a second home and on a motorhome used as a second home which is parked away from the primary residence?
There's two answers: one is a motorhome and the other is a boat - it could be argued that being a motorhome squarely puts it into "chattel" category, and it is not considered for council tax to be levied on it. One could cite the fact that motorhomes predominantly do move, quite extensively, compared to boats which often end up not moving for long periods of time.
The other answer is, there is no difference and they may seek to charge council tax on people who reside in motorhomes, which may very well have a negative knock-on effect for those with larger, and eventually smaller, motorhomes too.
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What's your address? I mean, don't type it out, but do you have a land-based address that isn't the mooring? Its a pointer in the right direction, but ultimately its the valuation office at the council who determine if council tax is due. You'd think it were linked to planning permission, or housing benefit, or whatever, but it isn't (officially).
The "stay at the moorings 3 days/week" maximum rule - who sets this? Your mooring provider? It sounds like its a non-residential mooring and they apply that rule to demonstrate compliance.
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1 minute ago, Heartland said:
I wonder if Uber can be sued?
Why? Uber themselves didn't do it. The drivers are self-employed. No doubt the driver (if it indeed was his fault....) could be, but I suspect an insurance payout has already been done for the physical damage.
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9 hours ago, dmr said:
Yes, Mondeos (mundaneo's 😀) do appear to easily do 200,000 miles, (and you can get one for £1000), I assume because they are often used as motorway cars. I was always told to avoid low mileage small cars...used for local shopping trips or the school run.
Using a car once a week, for a run that does 7-10 miles (so it warms up fully) and does about 40mph (so it uses all the gears) is pretty much ideal. The issue with low mileage cars is they may have been stood for a long time, and things like suspension rubber bushes, tyres etc degrade worse like this. But then most cars which aren't new, and even them before its first owner gets it, will have stood at some point.
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Thank you for getting back to us. Looking back at my fumbled guesses, I wasn't a million miles away but still missed quite badly! Well done for getting to the bottom of this.
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It’s not been a waste of time, it has revealed:
1 the “battery monitoring” regime is poor here, but there is a voltmeter which is better than nothing
2 the voltmeter shows that the battery is capable of supplying useful energy through the night
3 combined with the inaccessibility and the non-standard location and possibly wiring layout, it’s not worth altering anything just yet
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12 minutes ago, Gybe Ho said:
The negative return of both circuits could have been achieved by using the hull.
I don't believe any professional installer would do this, because its a BSS fail and basically not done on boats. Its possible, but....
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No immediate problem then. May as well leave as is and get a bit more use out of the batteries.
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Voltmeter isn’t much use to determine battery state of health (actual capacity as a percentage of capacity when new).
It’s better than nothing though, and can show if there is a clear issue. Voltage reading first thing in the morning before sunrise/solar charge would be useful.
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5 minutes ago, LadyG said:
I think we are OK, as the bow batteries are the biggest consumer, and are furthest from the alternator, I think I would probably manage with replacing them.
Im trying to get my head round the amp meter, but at least the voltage on that voltmeter seems OK.
Everything seems to be working.
I think your ammeter is connected to show alternator --> Bow thruster battery current (except its wired backwards, so negative values are current going in). Since this is only one "half" of what is going into and coming out of the batteries (and might be less than that - where is the solar connected) its somewhat meaningless in itself.
Which battery bank is the fridge connected to? The fridge is the biggest consumer.
A battery in itself, isn't a "consumer" in the sense that things either charge up batteries ie convert other energy into electricity; store electricity; or "consume" electricity by changing it to something else eg lights, fans. Talking of a battery as a consumer is just confusing terminology.
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Personally, I use a Topdon Artibattery 101 and just follow its on-screen guideline.
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8 minutes ago, Tonka said:
If he fills the tank up to the brim and then undoes the H blank and nothing comes out then does that mean there is a stand pipe. Or does it mean that the fuel level does not go that high. Because I can't see the other side of that bulkhead I can't tell
Surely the tests would be:
1. Full tank - open H fitting: nothing comes out --> its blocked/nonfunctional, diesel comes out --> its connected somehow to the tank
2. Tank contents below level of fittings - open H fitting and arrange some pipework to apply vacuum (suck on it): air comes out --> there's no stand pipe, diesel comes out --> there's a stand pipe of some kind.
I believe it is good practice to have a diesel heater stand pipe just above the engine fuel supply so that if you're really low, engine has priority.
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I wouldn't use self-tappers into steel. Its possible, but you'd need to get the diameter exactly right so its not impossibly difficult to get the screw in, while not too big that it just flops around and doesn't grip. The steel and screw are just so different hardness. Aluminium, is another matter.
If you really wanted to screw directly into the scaffold pole then drilling then tapping an appropriate size hole would be better - but obviously you're dealing with a hard material, see above.
It makes much more sense to use scaffold clamps as shown above.
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14 hours ago, Gybe Ho said:
I think you are wrong,
That’s absolutely fine, it’s my opinion and it’s fine to disagree. You’re probably right that there is a core of very active members but whether it’s 10, 30, 60 or whatever isn’t a big deal, because there’s many others who are less active, for various reasons. The forum is wide ranging and many things to many people.
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2 minutes ago, Gybe Ho said:
I concluded months ago that the forum is sustained by 30 core posters. It is the forum trajectory I question.
I'll ask again - where did you get the number 30 from? Because you say you've looked at this thread. Then you say you've looked at other threads. But you've not looked at the whole forum, or even a reasonable percentage of it. I know you haven't because it would take too long to manually scrape the figures from the front end. The back end is powered by SQL and IS of course, queryable - to a much greater degree than the front end.
Let's just say "in your opinion" there's 30 regular posters.
"In my opinion" the distribution of activity spreads widely across many hundreds and thousands of members.
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1 hour ago, Gybe Ho said:
Intuition confirmed by a quick scan of this thread.
You're extrapolating the figures from one thread to the entire forum? That's a big distance to extrapolate into.
In any case, the 30 figure is fair enough for what you might call "regular" posters. There's many, many hundreds/thousands more who aren't regular, and range from semi-regular to very occasional (remember the smooth bell curve of activity).
"The Forum" doesn't need to worry about number of posters, or activity, or bandwidth, so long as there's enough contributing (with knowledge and financially) to keep it self-sustaining. Allow me to make my own extrapolation, that pass success might well be the indicator of longevity.
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On 06/09/2024 at 07:32, LadyG said:
It was obvious from Day 1 that the whole venture would be an expensive project which might benefit a few people travelling from London to Birmingham but that it would be outrageously expensive and create chaos, disrupt lives, etc etc.
There is little doubt that the rail network needs upgrading, but the approach chosen is so wrong that it defies logic.
Do you mean HS2 or keeping the Oxford Canal navigable to the well-off on boating holidays?
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1 hour ago, Gybe Ho said:
A discussion forum cannot be sustained by lurkers and 30 people who agree with each other that they know everything about narrowboating.
Where do you get the 30 figure from? When I administered the forum, I had access to the statistics on number of forum members, their varying posting rate, etc and it was actually very difficult to determine how many active members there were, because the distribution curve of (for example) "days since last post" was a very smooth bell curve. Its entirely dependent on how you define active/inactive, as to how many active members you think there are.
Better to go off data rate/time as a measure of forum activity, ie GB/month bandwidth the server uses, since this determines a lot of other behind-the-scenes things.
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Part of the problem is the forum has 2 basic metrics for the "quality" of the poster - whether on not they're a Patron; and their post count.
The latter shows quantity, not quality, of posts!
There is room for refinement there but I have no idea if Invision's crappy software has any easily-done facility built in to it.
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Personally I think its a daft idea but there's elements of good intent there.
Its a daft idea because 1) you'll immediately lose steering when in reverse - and you want steering, because its narrow, to get the boat (including of course the stern) through the bridge nicely, 2) when you don't have conventional steering ie with the rudder/tiller, bank effect is much more prominent. And, the banks approaching a bridgehole can be uneven, leading to the boat pulling to the side as you approach if you didn't have rudder authority to correct it.
The reduced draft (due to squat reduction due to no power on) is a good idea though. And the idea of not having power on when you encounter debris in the canal has some merit - although personally I've always just kept power consistent and hoped its minor enough for the momentum of the prop/other rotating parts to chew it up. I don't know if hitting some significant debris in reverse will lessen the severity of a prop jam or just be the same (or make it worse).
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It would affect the hydrodynamic drag too much?!??
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I've always thought that the version of the 'plug' like this:
is designed to be fitted to the UNDERSIDE of a caravan, so that the pins are more or less horizontal and the body of the caravan protects it from weather. Of course, its vulnerable down there to road salt/dirt etc and could end up in the grass on a pitch but its better than the side of a caravan where inevitably the rain/wind will get to it sooner or later.
Of course, completely misused on boats then!
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10 minutes ago, MtB said:
In my extensive experience those two things have little correlation with real life technical expertise in practical issues.
I know! In part, it was a trick question!! Surveyors are weird......there is no universally recognised qualification, I believe, for them in the canal boating sector.
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13 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:
I don't think that you understood what I was trying to promote. The problem is that now, and again we get a poster, usually new, who has a very authoritative and forceful style who poor, very poor, or incorrect advice. When someone tries to put a correction up, they double down and insist they are correct. All the older hands on here recognise the advice is not all it could be, but new and inexperienced boaters can all too easily get mislead. The question is, how can this be addressed, if it needs to be. It seems clear to me that many are happy for new boaters to mislead. do your question is academic. However, I never said that anyone should endorse any post or advice as correct, I said that those potentially incorrect should be considered and if felt necessary flagged as suspect/incorrect or possibly deleted. Abuse of the system needs guarding against so the idea is if any such posts attracts a complaint to the mods, the mods ask more than one accepted technical expert (I would suggest 3 where possible) to advise them. Then the mods have a technical basis upon which to any base further actions felt necessary.
I would suggest that you seem to think that anyone giving technical advice needs the necessary recognised qualification and holds the appropriate insurance cover. If that is the case, then you had better advise Dan that the forum rules need a massive overhaul to outlaw the asking of any technical instructions and to ban the giving of advice to these questioners. Is that really what you think?
"Technical correctness" needs to be defined somehow, for the mods to be able to discern which of two opposing opinions is (the more) correct, thus which one should remain and which should be hidden or removed (or perhaps a warning placed against it?) There's a few different ways to do this:
1. Proof from first principles
2. The acceptance of an industry standard qualification
3. Recognition of experience
4. Peer review
An easy example: say someone has a flat tyre on their car. If its flat at the bottom, on the car, and a picture is provided then its pretty much proved from first principles.
A more complex example might be, the tyre 'looks' fine but is underinflated - if someone came on and said "I'm a part-time mechanic, the tyre pressures are detailed on the fuel filler flap" and the OP sought a tyre pressure gauge and measured it - we've accepted the industry standard qualification of the mechanic and the accuracy of the tyre pressure gauge.
An even more complicated example might be if it looks flat but isn't - and an employee of Firestone came on and said "oh yes, the MRX-702 range of tyres were designed with a shaped sidewall, its normal for that tyre to look flat even when its not" we've recognised their experience.
And an even more complicated example might be when the OP reveals its not in fact a car, but a 4x4 trials off-roader, who use beaded tyres running at 1/2psi to gain an advantage, nurtured over a few years of experience amongst the competitors.
We need SOME KIND of distinction. Recognition of experience is one of those. The forum is pretty good at this, because you can see someone's previous posts - it takes an amount of research to do it though. Peer review is also done well, because others will say what a knowledgeable chap XYZ is.
BUT that approach precludes any newcomers, they'd need to "earn" their recognition over time, which might never happen. And it might also result in all the experts being aged 120.
Without personalising it, what would happen if an experienced surveyor joined the forum tomorrow and started posting useful stuff in reply to tech questions?
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Is there a blacklist?
in New to Boating?
Posted
Definitely. Just as, you can be "banned" from your local Tesco; or you can go to a car dealer but they don't/won't sell you the car you want to buy etc.