jonathanA

Yes ! Unfortunately the idiot will still be an idiot and any number of woolly minded well meaning people thinking that more regulation will somehow make the idiot safe is just ridiculous. Of course the people running the gase safe / hetas/ competent person etc. schemes will be delighted at the opportunity to fleece us all. Personally I think people need to take responsibility for their actions and not look to blame someone else or feel the need to sue someone....

I wasn't impressed with bimble despite lots of people raving about them. I only had room for a single panel and found Simon at runbythesun very knowledgeable and sensible. Prices were good too.

Thank God and long may it continue We can do without more nanny state in our lives.

Unless you are a liveaboard you are at liberty to do this job yourself as Sir N says. Leak testing the joints is critical and you can get proper leak detection fluid for peanuts from screwfix. Personally I will not let any gas safe person not personally known to me anywhere near any of my gas installations as I have had very bad experiences from gas safe people who were anything but .... I'd recommend only using gas safe bods that someone you trust recommends from personal experience.

Well done OP I've often wondered this myself. I would say its the exception for the lady to steer at locks SWMBO steers at locks as she has mobility issues and I do.the lock wheeling. She quite often gets comments about her steering suspect a bloke wouldn't get comments. I nearly always ask the lady, and it usually is a lady, why she not steering and I would say.the standard answer is either "he doesn't trust me with the boat" or " I don't have confidence " which to me is basically the same thing. Don't generally switch the engine off and as others have said would be concerned about safety I usually steer between locks but we do share and if we have a crew then we might swap roles / share doing the locks depending on the crew

Your more patient than me after five minutes I'd have been out with the trolley Jack and moved the car ....

Remember the victron is measuring the voltage at its terminals, so even if it's doing nothing their is still a voltage for it to see from the batteries, charger or whatever else you have connected up, hence your bar chart readings

A trick I learnt a few years ago was to take a light line with a clip or small karabiner and drop it from the lockside to swmbo at the helm where she could attach the centre line and I could pass it round the bollard and return to her. Saves a lot of faffing and 5m of 4 or 5mm line is easily carried in a pocket

You could try Amtrim of Preston. Not sure how far they will travel but proper people who know what they are doing.

Yep the may 18 guide is the one I'd downloaded and saved but just happened to open the new version yesterday online and saw this thread later on... Seems CRT havent heard of version or document control a date or version number would be really helpful...

Actually it doesn't anymore.... it says SAILING WITHIN THE SOUTH DOCKS 8.1 Please feel free to explore the docks on your boat. There are a variety of recreational users on the waterspace, including swimming clubs and sub aqua clubs, please comply with any instructions given from these groups. Please observe the 5knot speed limit and be aware that there is a busy Watersports in Queen's Dock and activities take place on a daily basis. Restrictions on navigation may be in place during events such as sponsored swims or other water related events. thats on the latest skippers guide (I presume) on the CRT pages. I just happened to be checking yesterday as I wanted to update our August link booking to come into line with the Mon/Wed/Friday thing, but actually it wouldn't let me edit my booking so guess I'll wait for them to ring me up....

And your suggestion is ...... And your suggestion is ......

Gosh all a bit complicated... find a piece of cable of known size say 35mm and compare as a starter for ten. Buying one metre of say 25mm won’t be that expensive - a decent place would probably give you a sample for free. Or take one of your interlinks and compare....

Yes self evidently which is why I never even hinted at such a solution afloat. would be good if there was a similar system to divert excess PV power to the cauliflower immersion. My single 250W panel on the boat would make an impact on my cauliflower if I could use it usefully after charging the batts. With typical boat PV installations being 500W+ I actually think your mistaken or don’t understand the sort of system I’m referring to. heres the unit I have at home https://www.marlec.co.uk/news/new-solar-iboost-video/

Slightly off topic and not really relevant for boats... I have a PV solar system on my house and was looking to add a solar hot water system for hot water. Then I discovered the you could get a box of tricks that took the excess PV electricity and used it to power the immersion heater in my hot water cylinder. Today I got 4KWh of water heating which makes a quite a difference. No pumps no freezing no complex plumbing issues. Easy to fit been quite impressed so far