Paul C

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

I don't believe any professional installer would do this, because its a BSS fail and basically not done on boats. Its possible, but....

No immediate problem then. May as well leave as is and get a bit more use out of the batteries.

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.

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.

Personally, I use a Topdon Artibattery 101 and just follow its on-screen guideline.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you mean HS2 or keeping the Oxford Canal navigable to the well-off on boating holidays?

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.

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.

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).

It would affect the hydrodynamic drag too much?!??

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!

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.

"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?

But who has the necessary recognised qualification and holds the appropriate insurance cover?

You could go down a complete rabbithole and look at Bratch.

Limited post count means you can't initiate a Private Message conversation, but if someone PMs you, you can reply to them.

Buy a boat and try it then?