jonathanA

Or slightly further on, there are a few pubs at rosegrove (moor at the BW yard /services.) never been in them but they are likely to be local boozers and a really good little butchers shop. If you moor up at rosegrove then walk through the BW yard turn left over the canal then left onto the towpath up to next bridge (past your moored boat - 200 yds if that) there is a new modern pub (think its one of marstons) called the sycamore farm just behind a modern office block at the side of the canal - usually a selection of guest ales and reasonable food. Its hopeless trying to moor up on the two path side along there so you might as well tuck yourself up at Rosegrove services and fill up with water while your there.

hmm I'm not entirely convinced about that and suspect there relatively small production runs probably account at least partly for the higher cost. Anyway the point is they were selling stuff so you could speak to Mr speight get his advice and then decide whether to buy his product rather than just come away with a glossy and then have to find a 'stockist' ....

we came, we saw, we bought .... we didn't buy any food - although it looked better than previous years if a bit pricey - we always bring a picnic lunch as we have to take our purchases back to the car at some point anyway.... had a couple of coffees(instant) at £2 - but we could have done without them so not complaining. I'm amazed by the boat related trade people who don't have anything to actually buy on their stands - e.g hempel and rylard not a can to be bought yet Craftmaster selling their exorbitantly priced paint like if was going out of fashion... bought my lister filters etc from the nice fellas at Marine engineering Services (a stand that sells) - said hi to my insurers (one of the few you can speak to face to face) quite happy with my brand new 110Ah domestics for £65 each and some nice brightly coloured mooring lines at £1.50/metre (I can do an eye splice myself) Had a look round a few of the boats and am amazed at the price differences (a 25ft Nb for £52K ? ) could nearly have bought the 60x 12 fat boat for that... (was it £57K can't remember ?)

unplanned interuptions are something the (toothless) watchdogs take seriously. If you had an outage a bit ago and another quite close together I would get stroppy with power companies customer services, I got £50 off United utilities after a string of planned and unplanned power interuptions (including one for tree cutting) in a fairly short space of time ( IRC 3 or 4 in 6 months) when I berated them for thier incompetance. Not a life changing amount of cash but very satisfying when I got the cheque.

still a low power device - highly likely its the 2.1mm dc connector. I have not looked for a panel mouning version but made up a load of extension leads for christmas lights last year using an inline (or cable mounted) socket version.

one piece of advice i received from the local bobby some years ago, was that my 4 cell maglite could be considered an offensive weapon, where I to use it to hit someone, whereas if it was switched on it would merely be my torch... whilst dealing with marshalling/car parking for a local charity one evening and we had some boy racers trying to cause a problem, guess carrying a big torch during bright sunlight might be difficult to explain...

for low power (non laptop/tv) devices a lot use the very common 2.1mm DC connector. CPC have them in a variety of types (plug/inline/chassis) for a few pence each. They also do a 2.5mm (I think) version so you could a order one of those just in case. CPC were doing free P&P last week so you wouldn't get stung with their minimum order of £45 for free P&P if the offer is still on. these 2.1mm connectors are very common on a lot of plug top psu's thse days so it be worth giving one a try for your modem (modem - who uses modems these days ?)

I have a vague recollection that in the previous hysteria around this subject there was something about the BSS would require refillable bottles to be removed so that the inspector would not be put 'at risk' but as the current test requires you to disconnect gas bottles and these appear to be on sale and comply with all the relevant legislation I can't see why there would be an issue any more than if i decided to use 'BOC' propane bottles rather than Calor...

how about this for the low tech 'no batteries required' option. a bit pricey from screw-u-fix though... http://www.screwfix.com/p/surestop-remote-stop-cock-push-fit-15mm/48604

that will be at normal atomospheric pressure presumably (which is why it needs to be under pressure to be liquid at normal temperatures) The real problem is that the water vapour that is inevitably present, freezes in the small aperatures of the valves and regulators and on more than one occasion I've had to warm up a propane regulator with hot water (and in dire circumstances by peeing on it !). this used to be a regular winter morning ritual on a bulk tank we had (taking a kettle of hot water to the tank regulator) to get the gas cooker to work ! Nowadays Calor put some additive in the gas in winter to prevent this happening.

wouldn't it be good to have the fridge conencted to the batteries so that the sterling charger would go into float but occasionally the draw of the fridge would kick it into charge mode, assuming the sterling couldn't meet the demand of the fridge which unless its the 10A version I can't think it wouldn't be able to.. so the issue then becomes what happens if the mains fails..and as SMPT says you could fairly easily arrange a mains operated relay to say overide the fridge circuit breaker on your 12V distribution panel. a neat trick would be to make it a self latching relay that needs a push button (momentry type) to switch it on, but if the mains failed the fridge would be disconnected until you pressed the button again, so you'd know the mains had failed at some point. Guess coming back to a fridge with ruined stuff in might be preferable to not knowing ithe fridge had been off for a while, but depends on why you need to leave it on i suppose.

well I can't agree with that I'm afraid there are other considerations such as water conservation, and accepted practice but thats been the subject of other threads. I think I would have been as perplexed as the OP, I'd like to think I would have carefully moved his boat out of the way, but probably would have thought it bad form to interfere with someone elses boat and just waited.... now SWMBO would probably have moved it and scuttled it whilst giving him a glare that curdles milk at 100 yards...

don't think they've made it this far north yet... would be really handy on the wigan flight, although i bet no one would want to hang around blackburn locks all day either...

definitley worth taking to a recycling place that pays for scrap. i tend to save up my batteries, plumbing fittings and offcuts of copper tube from the DIY jobs and when there is a reasonable amount take them to the local scrap yard. I'm lucky there are a couple within 10 minutes drive. even old central heating radiators are worth a couple of quid, basically if its metal don't throw it away. Last time a I took a couple of old car batteries, a 85ah leisure batt and some small sealed lead acid alarm batteries and was very pleasantly surpised at the money I got for them. (and it was cash which I don't think they are allowed to do now unless you are a gyppo)

possibly but if a big dog came running up to me and mine and looked abit unfriendly then not sure I wouldn't do the same, the owner would have to accept that they were a least partly responsible by not having the dog under control. I say this as the owner of two dogs and I would not allow the border collie to be off its lead when other people/children are around, where as the labrador will just want food/fuss so I'd be less worried, but I some people just don't like/feel comfortable with dogs and any responsible owner should recognise that.

Yep I have this problem and its really irritating. I thought it was my PC but can't find anything amiss. seems to have happened since the upgrade to new software. I've now tried it on two machines and its the same.

I'd be tempted to just buy a new gauge and sender off fleabay for about £10 - they don't need an external stabiliser. The only issue you might have is that the Ebay ones are usually automotive and have a 1/8th NPT fitting which is quite common but not universal - oh and its not compatible with BSP fittings.

there is a small difference I think its butane is 28mbar and Propane is usually 37mbar (sometimes 50mbar) - bear in mind that 1mbar = 1/1000 of a 'bar' and a br is about 15psi. so the pressure after the regulator in a butane or propane system is not very high at all and I don't think swapping from one to the other would warrant a soundness test in its own right. But you might have to change the jets on your applicance (not my area of expertise- check the label on your applicance) but I have operated lots of gas applicances (camping stoves etc) on whatever gas i had to hand without any issues. Obviously you'll need to change the regulator and so you may need a gas safe chappie to come and make sure you've done that bit right. For completeness there are some propane applicances which operate on high pressure at 1 Bar (big blow torches and the like)

I have similar fittings to yours. mine don't have the offset pins but the BA15d dual contacts (one Pos one neg). I've bought replacement direct fitting LEDs from Puffer parts, one of the other well known LED suppliers at Crick show and also 'ebay' chinese cheapies. The advantage of buying from people you can talk to / visit is is you can see the colour/brightness. There is a lot of nonsense talked about voltage regulation and so on which may have been relevant with the early units but is IMHO a load of tosh. I've had a variety of cheap ebay units and when you are only paying £1.50 as opposed to £10 then I'm happy to change them more often. In practice none off any supplier have failed so far. (nor has my boat burst into flames, radios stopped working or the dogs left home) As you've realised G4 refers to the type of lamp fitting (dual pin for G4) and not the actual lamp itself. simarly with MR11 and MR16 which are usually fitted to downlighters (low voltage) so would not be any good in your fitting. if you search ebay for BA15d or BAY15 LEd lights there's loads of chinese sellers so its worth ordering a few up to see what they are like (given you can usualy get 2 for someting like £3-4)

just to add that its usual for the starter battery to be separate (electrically) to the domestics so you would need to charge that separately anyway. You wouldn't want to leave a simple car charger conencted to your batteries for weeks on end but a day or so if they were very flat would be ok.

sometimes these fans get a build up of dust/fluff over time and gently vaccuming to remove any build up can help with airflow and may reduce noise (or at least how long the fan runs).

good point Tim, but of course switching the begger off/on would reset it and it would start its cycle again. (and if it was clever enough to spot you doing that I'd throw it in the cut as being too clever for its own good)

Dean - I'm not quite sure i understand why you think your vharger can only manage a 200Ah battery. If thats what the seller told you he probably had bottles of snake oil for sale too... The measure of a charger would be its output in AMPS e.g 20A charger. the size of charger is nothing to do with the size of battery bank, its about how long a charger of a given size will take to charge a bank of a given size. so a small charger will take longer to charge a bigger bank. so your current charger that you say is sized for 200Ah bank will charge a 400Ah back it will just take twice as long (simplistically)- which may be the issue of course if your relying on a gennie. (which you aren't 'cos you haven't got one yet) Whilst i agree with your approach of several smaller/cheaper units its worth bearing in mind you are decreasing the time between failures becuase you increasing the number of units and therefore the probability that one will fail. (but the impact of the failure will be smaller hopefully)

bet them car drivers waiting nearly 15 mins thought it was a fine bit of boat handling too...

A couple of things to add to what ditchdabler said. i had the glow plug relay fail in the on position, in my case it light up the heater light, but i didn't notice in the bright sunshine for an hour or two... The offical Lister part is around a £100, fortunately the glow plug relay/timer from a land rover discovery is an exact replacement and I got one for a fiver from a scrapyard. The other thing to be aware of is there is a multiway plug on the side of the relay box which all the wiring to the start panel goes through. in my experience this is easily damaged and the pins can get tarnished, so worth carefully disconnecting this and cleaning the contacts and then make sure is properly mated so all the connections are good. There is another one just near the panel itself, but as thats usually inside the boat its not quite as vulnerable, but still worth checking. You'll also find there is a 'spare' wire next to the water temperature switch which is for a temperature gauge sender and goes all the way back to the start panel, where it's left disconnected unless you have the start panel with a temperature gauge fitted. (it does make adding a temperature gauge easy though )