jonathanA

but then neither are portable appliances.... would you be happy running an electric heater in your bathroom at home plugged in outside the bathroom - probably not

isn't the answer that the inverter should be neutral-earth bonded and the incoming earth connected to the hull bonding point (after the GI/Transformer or the other hyperspace drive warp engine thing that willaway quoted) and earthing the inverter 'locally' bad practice (but would prove the hum thing) I found that CPC sell 6MM tri-rated on a 25M roll at a reasonable price to answer the original post diving for cover as a barrage of opinions head in....

Marina T&c's - interesting one i guess, Our marina never actually made me sign anything - does that imply I've agreed to their T&c's... I recently won a battle with BOC (gas cylinders) where I challenged them to prove I'd agreed to thier T&C's they couldn't produce anything with my signature on... game over (for them) I too had a good experience of buying my first and so far only boat via harral last year and found them very helpful and friendly even finding moorings for us. Like the previous poster I never considered the funds going missing and operated on 'trust' - something i wouldn't do again although I'm not sure how we could have done things differently. Maybe by insisting on paying the buyer directly his 'balance' and the broker his fee separately - would have thought any reputable business would understand that. I also met Dave Massey (he builds a few boats a year at wincham) and looked at one of his new builds he seemed a decent sort of chap and seemed to know the canal business although at the time I did wonder how Harral's business model could work and assumed he'd worked out a good deal with wincham wharfs owners. From the comments on this forum and in the press evidently not....

yep the proper 'key' isn't expensive - it looks like a short length of hex bar (13MM AF at a guess) with a flat bit of metal fixed at right angles to make a 't' shaped key. the hexagon shape opens the pumpout and the flat bar opens water/diesel big old screwdriver or blunt chisel would work most places that sell diesel sell them.

wow £480 for a year thats steep, I don't pay that much for my whole house in a year.... although if is a flat fee then i suppose you could use a s much as you like in winter m limited by the supply i suppose. I'm not livaboard but i reckon I spend less than £40/year on electric at my marina although I've never kept a proper check on it.

Well i don't think i've even seen that up here hence the willingness for volunteers to give up thier time to do it... in fairness BW should be commended for making the work boat available for use by volunteers and they do get rid of the rubbish in skips which cost money to provide. This does look like the model for the sort of volunteer/partnership that hopefully the new trust will not only support but actively encourage...

assuming they are 12v (and a lot of them are) then I don't see why it wouldn't work... Some of the more sophisticated LED lights require a proper 'driver' but they tend to be used in more professional uses (from what I've seen) and i think the previous poster is right the voltage/current characteristics of these are different. However the 'theory' goes that 12V leds (like the direct replacement for MR16 halogens) won't operate on a boat 12v system where the voltage can vary from slightly less than 12V to maore than 15V, plus there are reputedly lots of voltage 'spikes' from things turning on and off and starting the engine etc etc which will frazzle your cheapo 12v leds. (think there was another thread which wnet into the argument/counter argument in great detail...) I bought some outdoor decking leds which are 12V to place around my rear decking for when I return in the dark. and thse are 12v ones run off a transformer, I just cut all that junk off and connected on my domestic 12V supply and so far no problem. There is no doubt the 'pukka' ones have a clever bit of electronics to do dc-dc conversion to provide a stable 12v supply for the leds regardless of the 'input' voltage (usually 8-30v is quoted) so you get constant light and protection againt the varying boat voltages/spikes etc. i guess some of these circuits have been the cause of radio interference some users of LEDS have suffered from. my view is the 'standard' ones are so much less than the 'marine' ones it must be worth trying the cheapos to see how long they last but I have to confess to having no direct experience (other than the decking ones which are fine so far) I did look into the dc-dc stablising circuits and to buy the relevant chip is about £4 but would run upto 1A worth of LEDs (i.e a boatload) so in theory you could provide a 'stablised' 12v supply for all your LEDs via one bit of clever electronics and use 'standard' 12v leds on it. Can't help think this is still new technology and will continue ot get better/cheaper as time goes on...

well not sure if this is the right forum but seemed the best fit... no doubt someone will point me in the right direction if I've got it wrong. just thought I'd share a picture of the 3 builders bags of rubbish and other assorted junk hauled out of the L&L last sunday by volunteers between Rose Grove and Inn on the wharf. hope the pic appears as i've never tried posting a pic to this forum before ! Jon

Thats my reading of it and also what I was told by the marina operator in our marina. (think its 13P/unit, with no standing charge or any other service charges). They can only charge what they are charged... the problem is how do I know what that is, anyway 13p in our case seems about the 'going rate' each berth has its own meter which you feed with a card bought from the office.

I'm a great believer in the KISS principle - keep it simple - stupid. so simple relay for me, but then I've got a simple unsophisticated system with a single alternator. At some point I'd like to fit a second alternator, in which case the relay will become an 'emergency connect the battery banks together device'. or I might just put a bigger alternator on... suggest you go and look at the smartgauge.co.uk website for lots of technical pros and cons for just about every option. then you can decide what's appropriate for you depending on what your going to be doing - for us holiday use, marina based the simple system is fine. if we were liveaboards or continuous cruisers then we'd need something different. As an aside when we first picked up the boat it had neither split charge relay nor diodes, all 'batteries' were a signle bank and I just used to manually isolate the starter battery (once i realised their was no split charge system of any sort...)

I've done both ... I wasn't comfortable leaving conencted all the time without some form of isolation to protect against galvanic corrosion. I'm not convinced that all the boats left hooked up have isolation but thats up to them.... I would only leave hooked when we on board, and disconnected when leaving the boat. Obviously had to check on it every few weeks and charge the batts. I've now fitted an galvanic isolator and a multistage charger so happy to leave hooked up knowing the batteries are going to be fully charged if we decide to go for a cruise. Also we'll be using a cheap oil filled radiator for frost protection. last year before I had the GI I just plugged the radiator direct into shoreline (via a 16A to 13A socket lead). I'm sure the purists will tell me that I risked certain death or worse doing that, but since the marina bollard has an RCD (and is tested every year) and I was very careful to ensure that only the radiator was plugged in with no metal/metal contact I was happy enough. Jon

quite right for professional work.. But i don't think its right to scare monger and then be irritated when someone pulls you up... (sorry thats how I saw your post, even if you didn't intend that) I'll remain skeptical as thats always wise with any forum (however good) and make up my own mind whats right in my cirumstances.

leave out by the road and see how quickly the gypos will take them... that'll give you an idea of whether the're worth anything or not :-)

Doesn't the BS 6500 say its good for 300-500V ? Frankly I'm somewhat skeptical of a post like this as it makes no sense and if it were true we'd all be running round ripping out our 'blue artic' grade cables and all the professional users (hire companies, TV/Stage crews you name it ) would all be throwing it in the bin. now lets look at the thread the argument says the cable is no good because it can only deal with '55-0-55' i.e centre tapped to earth isolation transformers as used in building sites and workplaces (some). so this means the insulation between the L an N is still 55+55 = 110V so kind of knocks a hole in the post to me ? further more and I'm not an expert here but in my experience the blue cable is used on the INPUT (i.e 220v side) side of most 110V tool transformers and the yellow on the output whatever the the technical arguments the fact is the ubquitous blue and yellow artic grade cables bought from reputable suppliers is to BS6500 and safe for up to 500v according to that. From a quick check on google BS6500 seems to apply to domestic and light office applications, artic grade is deemed suitable for outdoor use due to its low temp characteristic but it clearly isn't designed for heavy duty use /abrasion etc where tougher cables would be needed. so you pays your money and takes your choice...

only thing I'd add is that the simple horns should have two terminals (insulated return ) and not be 'earth return' as most car types are. The cheap simple ones (£12-14 online £16-20 at chandlers) don't take very much current, think i measured mine at less than one amp and consequently aren't terribly loud. I fitted a second, mainly becuase the first went faulty so bought a new one then found the old one was very easy to repair (just needed to clean the 'points' inside it) so with two its now loud enough for me to hear at the back of the boat.... I noticed a BW work boat with two small horns recently too. Also with a small current draw you don't need to run a huge cable front to back. some two tone air horns need a big supply (10A+) to power the compressor to run them.

So crusing on the Lancashire/yorkshire border we have to cope with digital only, analogue only and both depnding on where we are etc.. the boat came with an umpteen element 'jodrell bank' sized domestic aerial which had to be pointed in the right direction, raised on a pole and somethimes changed form vertical to horizontal polarisation (which way the 'vanes' point up/down or side/side). I usually had to use binoculars to see which way any houses had thier aerials pointing etc etc... Anyway as our TV is mains powered and thereofre we have the inverter on, i bought a little magnetic aerial thing from CPC for less than a tenner and that comes with a little 5v power unit that powers it via the aerial feed and I reckon its as good as the huge thing that I had to put up/take down point in all directions swear at, bang my head on an loose an eye every time i went past and I don't have to store it and its mast and cables... or remember to take it down before setting off... http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=AP0220507 when it doesn't work we sometimes have to resort to speaking to each other or getting the board games out....mind you when it does work the programmes are so rubbish....

its more about lining up with the right satellite and configuring the equipment, guess if you had a compass wouldn't take too long, as we had some other issues and only did it the once it took us quite a while to get it working properly. At least one high street supermarket uses Satellite to get stores open quickly, whilst they are waiting for landline services and move about a dozen sets of equipment round the country as needed, but thats done by professional installers so its doesn't take them long. no doubt practice will make perfect ! The other post is quite right the bandwidth is more limited compared to broadband these days and the fact you have to bounce the signal off a satellite 20,000 miles away means there is a latency. so you would find skype pretty useless for instance.

I can remember seeing wagon drivers lighting fires (small) under their diesel tanks in winter to warm it up when I was an apprentice a couple of years ago (ahem decades ago!) and I know petrol used to be mixed in during winter to help stop waxing, when I first got a diesel road car some years ago a mechanaic told me the winter diesel had additives in to stop waxing (i guess thats why all those peugeot taxis keep running through the winter) I don't know about Red diesel and suspect the previous poster is right it all comes from the same couple of big refineries and gets the 'additives' added either in the tanker or when its being delivered. since the farmers near me all seem to b able to keep their big tractors going through the winter I assume its not a big problem for red diesel these days either. (i'll have to ask them when they stop counting their EU subsidies )

Thanks All creosote (or its metric equivalent ) it is then. (after being carefully drained and allowed to dry of course) There's always something new to learn on the canal ! Jon

Hi, i've recently been given some new rope side fenders, made frm natural 'sisal' type rope - lovely straw colour. The guy who made them said they need to be dipped in something to stop them rotting when they get wet. He suggested 'creosote' or 'old engine oil' - neither of which would really be environmentally friendly in the cut.... Does anybody know what should be used if anything ? they are things of beauty and the guy who made them does button and front fenders too as a bit of a hobby. any advice/wisdom from the forum gratefully accpeted... Ta Jon

I used their previous 2mb service upto about 6 months ago, because we couldn't get ADSL on the land line. (13Km from BT exchange !!) - satellite was only option as we couldnt get a 3g mobile service either.... I doubt it would be suitable for canal boat use as the dish was quite big (think it was 0.8M) and had to be aligned carefully to pick up the satellite. once it was working it was ok, and we only stopped using it becuase we managed to get an ADSL2 conenction eventually which gave slightly more bandwidth but was much cheaper. so I'd check the size of dish required and make sure your'e happy to fiddle about if your on the move. jon

There's no doubt that a transformer is the best option, however the 'safeshore' galvanci isolator seems to have a good reputation. you can get them off ebay (sometines going for less than the new price) or direct from http://www.safeshoremarine.com/ They're really helpful people if you ring them, I bought the unit with a remote status display and it cost about £95 in P&P I think. Jon

we were slightly luckier, in that the existing name was already in vinyl and so could be removed easily enough. we had a new name and 'scroll' bit made in vinyl and applied by M&I Marine in northwich and are very pleased with the result. I've seen a couple of paint manaufacturers offer to match colours to samples, whether that would be any help in your circumstances i don't know but might be an option to allow you to paint over the area having removed the current name. Jon

the smallest (blue) butane cyliners (the little dumpy ones) are still screw thread (male, need female on regulator), anything bigger have a 'quick disconnect type' as per your link. just be wary because there are also 'patio' gas bottles now (dingy light green) which I don't think are compatible with the butane fittings. I'm suming thse are 'calor' bottles as other companies may have thier own different sized fittings... slightly confused by your description 'hose spigot' type which doesn't sound like the clip on type you get on the larger butane bottles. Presumably you can check what the connection on the top of bottle looks like anyway. The only problem I've ever had with small/cheap regulators is that they ice up if you draw too much gas through them !expanding gas draws heat out of its surroundings which is why you sometime see a line of ice round gas bottles. hope that helps Jon