IanD

Another way to waste water is to open the top paddles to fill a lock while not noticing that the badly-balanced bottom gate that you just closed has drifted completely open. DAMHIK.

Now who is being aggressive and putting new posters off (as usual)? 😉

It *was* a joke, you know? 😉

Yes, the existing laws refer to "smoke" because that's what they were designed to control. Any new "no-woodburning" law would presumably refer to PM2.5 pollution, because that's what it would be designed to control -- not (visible) smoke, because PM2.5 particles are invisible, they're too small so affect light. Which is also why they're so damaging to health... 😞 Of course the law doesn't have to say *why* it's the law any more than any other law does, it just has to say what the law *is*. Any challenge to it from pro-woodburners would be very unlikely to succeed since the health risks are now scientifically established. If you want to take the "I should be allowed to burn anything I want" view, then this is exactly the same reason smokers tried to use to fight the bans on smoking in public places and lost, because of the risks of secondary smoking which affects the health of other people other than the smoker. And if you don't believe in science and are a libertarian who distrusts the nanny state and namby-pamby society -- tough, part of the job of a responsible government (and society) is to stop people doing things that harm other people without their consent... 😉

It's not a smoke problem, PM2.5 particles are invisible to the naked eye (no smoke) but are probably the most dangerous of all the pollutants generated by burning stuff. How to get emissions of them down is another issue, but banning woodburning stoves -- even DEFRA-approved ones -- which generate the majority of them in urban areas (3x what road transport does) would be a very good start.

At least if the government sort out the subsidy issue it's more likely that HVO will become more widely available to boaters 🙂

That's what I said -- they'd either have to inspect the stove, or ask the householder to provide proof that it's DEFRA-approved, and this would waste a lot of time and effort on the ones that are approved. If woodburning is banned then -- like burning non-smokeless fuel -- all they have to do is prove what was being burned, which is easier and cheaper to do because *all* woodburners will be guilty... There are several reasons for all this kerfuffle and the likely ban; the first is the huge rise in the number of "lifestyle" woodburners in urban areas, the second is the recent realisation about just how bad PM2.5 pollution is for people's health, and the third is the girl whose death was ruled by the coroner to be caused by pollution -- which means the government are scared they'll be sued for massive damages if they don't do something to reduce urban pollution levels.

That's not what I said, please read again 😉

Isn't it likely that this is because wood-burning stoves *are* currently allowed so long as they're DEFRA approved, so the authorities have to not only prove that wood is being burned but also check what type of stove it's being burned in? If a blanket ban on woodburning in urban areas is brought in then detection/prosecution will be a lot easier, just like it is for non-smokeless fuel burning. Mind you, councils still probably won't have the resources to do this... 😞

Yes, all five statements are correct 🙂 But the top pound has also lost a boat-sized boat to the bottom pound, so the two cancel out. The mass of (water+boat) above and below the lock doesn't change if you swap the boat and equivalent volume of water over (e.g. using a crane and pump), so neither do the water levels. Which means that the boat moving through the lock doesn't in itself "use" any water, filling and emptying the lock does -- and this is always the same amount.

All that you've done is swapped 15 tons of boat over with 15 tons of water without any change to the water levels above or below the lock as a result of this -- you could do this with a crane and a pump without working the lock at all. Then you could reverse the process to put the boat back above the lock and the water below it -- and repeat this whole process as often as you like without having the slightest effect on any water levels or "using" any water. You could also empty the lock without a boat in while you were doing this and use up exactly one lockfull of water (volume=area x drop) Or you could dispense with the crane and the pump, use the lock to lower the boat, and still use exactly the same lockfull of water.

The problem is that as soon as you're a day's cruise away from home you're going to need another source of power, and solar's unlikely to provide enough unless you hardly ever move -- my boat's got about the maximum amount of solar you can get on a narrowboat roof (2kWp) which is projected to yield an average of 7kWh/day in summer and maybe 1kWh/day in winter. On a 48' boat you'd be doing well to squeeze out 5kWh/day, which is probably just about enough to power everything on board including cooking, but with little or nothing left over for propulsion and certainly nothing for heating. Of course, that's what the rules are there for... 😉

The BSS requirements for free-air ventilation on a gas-free boat with no stove (like mine) are tiny anyway, so mechanical heat recovery will save very little energy.

True -- but how much water is *in* the upper or lower pound or the lock at any point doesn't really matter, does it? All closing the gates does is divide the upper pound back into two parts, one inside the lock and one outside, as opposed to one body of water when the gates are open -- nothing has changed. What matters is how much water a boat going through a lock uses (transferred from upper pound to lower pound), because this has to be supplied from somewhere.

Or grab the roof rail fairly well forrard, shove off with your foot, fall into the water as the boat moves away and then get squashed by the boat as it blows back towards the bank... 😞

Yes, but this hasn't "used" any water -- no extra water needs to enter the upper pound to keep the water level the same.

Actually cooking takes far less energy than propulsion as well as considerably less power, because you don't cook at full power for eight hours a day. Heating with electric only (not a heat pump) is pretty much impractical especially in winter, this would use several times more energy than electric propulsion. Even without power from solar an electric/hybrid boat is greener than a diesel one because even if all the power comes from a diesel generator it uses less fuel for propulsion because efficiency is higher, typically around half as much (depends on exactly where/how you cruise). If there's any spare energy left over from solar (I expect about 7kWh/day in summer on a 60' boat) then that reduces fuel use further. Against this there's the CO2 burden from the battery manufacture, though to be fair this is only for the extra bank size compared to what you'd have in a diesel boat, not the total. But to be honest the CO2 contribution of boats on CART waters is something like 1000x smaller than cars in the UK -- so even if everyone on boats went 100% green (no diesel at all!) this is only equivalent to reducing the car emissions by 0.1%. So it's OK to see them as at least a bit green on a personal level, but electric canal boats are not going to make a jot of difference to even UK emissions. Depending on builder and internal fitout, I'd be surprised if the OP could get the 48' boat they want for less than £200k, and it could well be more.

Not *exactly* the same, I'd like to see you standing on the block of water (not ice!) like you can on the boat... 😉

Yes, that's absolutely fine with a 48V system, 25mm2 is the cable size recommended by Vetus for up to 124' cable length (maximum BT power is 3.1kW). I don't have an engine start battery as such, there's a small 12V one for the generator but that's in the stern along with the 48V batteries -- DC power for the rest of the boat (relatively low power stuff like lights, pumps etc.) is 24V from a DC-DC converter (and there's another small 12V DC-DC to charge the genny battery). So I'd have to run 48V to the bows anyway to run a battery charger there if the BT had its own batteries -- and in this case, I might as well have a 48V BT...

As well as being horrendously expensive it's also flat and not bendable, so problematic on a curved roof or hull sections.

An easy way to think of this -- imagine the surface of the water with the lock full is like a piston with a lump in it where the boat is. Now push it down by the fall of the lock, the amount of water pushed down and into the lower pound is lock area x lock fall, regardless of the size or shape of the boat lump.