IanD

The Black Lion at Consall Forge used to be absolutely splended, chickens and all, but they had a bad fire a couple of years back and AFAIK have not completely reopened, at least for the excellent food they used to do as well -- I presume the beer is as good as ever, anyone been recently to confirm what it's like now?

Of course a discussion was expected, but some of the complaints just don't make sense given that it was a general interest TV programme about the canals not an in-depth online tutorial for students studying industrial archaeology... 😉

Strawman argument again... 😉 What I said was that the programme is aimed at the 50+million people in the UK who don't live on or holiday on the canals or know much about them, not the 50000 or so people who do, some of who post on CWDF. Just like CART funding and priorities. Is this really so hard to understand?

I really don't see why you're getting your knickers in a twist about this -- and I don't think it was a sterrible as you're making out. You're not the intended audience, and neither am I, and neither is anyone else on CWDF -- and the same applies to pretty much every programme on the TV about canals, with the possible exception of Robbie's "Cruising the Cut" -- which people on here still nitpicked about... 😞 "It's almost as if the programme makers were trying to come up with easy-watching TV for watchers after undemanding entertainment requiring no familiarity with the subject. " is a good summary, and I think it was just that. If that's not what you're looking for, don't watch it 🙂

Welcome to the media world of today, especially broadcasting but also large parts of the press... 😞 However in fact the programme in question was (mostly) correct, not "twaddle" -- apart from the obvious (to CWDF posters) errors being nitpicked about -- and I would guess most non-canal people would have found it interesting and informative. Which is rather the point of making it, isn't it?

But it *shouldn't* do if it uses correspondingly less gas, especially since all the gas is fossil fuel and getting on for half UK electricity now comes from renewable sources. If the EPC doesn't take this into account, it's out-of-date and fundamentally flawed... 😞

That was exactly my point -- people on here complaining about either detail errors or it being "dumbed-down" are entirely missing the point, which is that *nobody* on CWDF is the intended audience... 😉 The same is true for pretty much any documentary on TV, to anyone knowledgeable about the field (0.01% of the audience?) they almost always gloss over the detail (or get it wrong) and present an over-simplified picture -- and this is true regardless of the subject, because broadcasting is aimed at the wider audience, the fact that the name includes "broad" should be a clue... 🙂 If you want something detailed and accurate, read a specialist book (or online articles) on the subject written by an expert in their field and targeted at a knowledgeable and interested (but small!) audience -- or discuss the subject on a forum fill of similarly interested people... 😉

For a program aimed at Joe Public not canal nerds, I didn't think it was too bad at all...

Kind of greeny-yellow, according to my son...

Hence the need to record it... 😉 (or watch it on streaming with a Pi-Hole removing all the ads -- brilliant...)

Is that why he became late? 😉

On the first canal holiday -- well, weekend -- I went on with some friends many years ago, the "experienced" steerer (whose idea it was) mostly treated the throttle as binary -- only two positions, (full) on and off. Well three actually, especially in locks -- full astern, off and full ahead. Cue lots of noise and smoke and thrashing water everywhere... 😞

It sounds like they had a badly designed installation so I'm not surprised they're unhappy, and I don't think they're the only ones going by some of the ones I've seen videos/descriptions of... 😞 Don't know for sure about their BT, but if they have a Vetus Pro these are a) throttleable (PMAC motor like propulsion) and b) will run for 10mins continuously at full power, or much longer (and more quietly) at lower power levels. Though under what circumstance you'd ever want to do this beats me... OTOH if they have a conventional (and much cheaper) on-off BT screamer, it's probably toast by now... 😉

I'm sure you know full well it doesn't imply that at all... 😉

Too many videos with too little actual content... Not impressed with the whining and prop noise their setup makes when cruising along though -- I suspect that even their new Engiro motor has too little torque at too high rpm and an eggwhisk prop... (because the higher torque/lower speed ones cost more...) Don't see how they're going to make use of a 14kVA generator either, they said they've got a Quattro 48/8000/110 which can only charge batteries at 110A which is about 6kW -- and going by mine (48/10000/140) I'm sure this will drop as it heats up if you run it for long periods of time.

Also 1 hour later on Channel 5+1...

https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64477898/ Might be worth a watch (or recording to skip the ads), or might not...

Not convinced about the gadgets, most of them use a lot less energy than either propulsion or heating -- even the things that use a lot of power when on (kettle, toaster, induction hob, electric oven) aren't on for very long, they shouldn't add up to more than a few kWh per day. Running a full wash/dry cycle on the washer/drier also took about 3kWh. So maybe all that together (with a wash/dry every day!) needs about 1h per day of generator running (6kWh) if there's no solar, which would burn about 2.5l of diesel. In comparison I reckon a full day of normal cruising -- allowing for locks and moored boats -- typically uses 15kWh, which is several times more than "gadgets", and would need about 6l of diesel for the generator -- again, ignoring solar, which is only a couple of kWh/day typical at this time of year. The biggest fuel use in winter would be heating; mine uses about 2l/hour when the CH boiler is on but this puts out 14kW (it runs in bursts), so in winter I'd expect this to be the biggest fuel user. But if you don't burn diesel you have to burn something else, and smokeless fuel isn't much cheaper -- if at all -- given how much heat goes up the flue from a stove.