Eastern

I was cruising the Caldon Canal last week and saw a steel boat out of the water. It had its hull below the waterline painted with red oxide primer, and even the anodes had been painted over! It does make you wonder.......

Hi Gary, Is that the 30cm or 40cm dome? East

Phew - I think I'm safe. I do sometimes wear a hat, but not a bow tie. I like to consume G&T but not at a golf club (dreadful places). I don't insure my car with Priviledge Insurance. Pip Pip Old Friut Don't ya know!

Nice post Honey Ryder! You now have me worried. Perhaps I'm a toff and don't know it? How can I tell? East

As someone far wiser than I said "If you can't measure it - you can't manage it" So I would have:- A battery/power monitor A water and waste tank level meter A fuel gauge as well as the engine gauges already mentioned.

Why not look at all the topics on this site, including the archives? Thats what I did.

Well Claire if you want some form of controllable and automatic system, then I would consider the following:- Hurricane heater from Calcutt Boats. A 12v model. Harworth Heating Pressure Jet boiler. Was in a 24v model, but now only 240v. This uses standard UK oil boiler parts, so that there are no problems with servicing. www.oilstoves.co.uk Kabola Pressure Jet Boilers. Come in 24v and 240v models. Non standard UK parts and £200.00 to commission. All of the above are expensive, but you will have gathered that anything that is 'boat' specific usually is. All should be capable of providing heat 365/24/7 with reliablity. IMHO the vehicle type heaters (Webasto et.al.) do not have the reliability to supply a liveabord with heat all year round. East

Totally agree. Except that it doesn't have to be an ac geny. Fischer Panda also make a 12v and 24v dc geny, which I prefer as the speed of the geny can be varied as the batteries are charged. Ac loads can be supplied through an inverter. Peachment can supply a directly coupled generator (dc or ac) to their Nanni propulsion engines - no drive belts and alternators - as it is run off the crankshaft. This may be an option to me if it will be possible to claim the fuel used in the 'red' diesel tax bracket.

A note of caution on bringing a case to court. You may win your case, but if the company does not have the assets to settle the claim its rather a hollow victory. And you still have to pay the court fees.

I don't know if you know that you can get a radiant or a convector Squirrel stove? Same output, but you can put the convector model nearer to combustable material (the wall) 'cause the casing doesn't get as hot.

And of course the cheap model is built by a German manufacturer with a world wide reputation for quality products, and the other is badge engineered by Shoreline.

Interesting. The A++ energy rating is the lowest (i.e. best) rating of any fridges. The testing regime is independent of manufacturer and is applied to all white goods in the EU to allow a comparison of energy usage between different models. On the Shoreline site a 12 v fridge (model RR155W) with freezer compartment running at 12v takes an average 1.3 amps/hour (15.6 W/h). Multiply this up comes to 137 KW/h per annum, and its more expensive than the Miele. The Miele is about 10% more efficient than the 12v Shoreline model.Of course its not an exact comparrison as the Miele is smaller at 131 litres agaist the Shoreline 150 litres. The Miele does however have a 4 star freezing compartment agaist the Shoreline 2 star, and auto defrosting. http://www.boatfridge.com/index.asp?Col_Ca...mp;productID=81

If you check the Miele web site www.miele.co.uk An undercounter size A++ rated larder fridge uses 83.9 KWh/annum and a icebox type A++ uses 124.1 KWh/annum. These are, of course, 240v only.

I bought one from Alex after seeing it on Sue's blog (Hi Sue!). Prompt service, well made piece of kit. I would recommend one for that very stiff paddle.

Well Mr or Mrs Kamper I can only speak of Challanger's narrowboat operation of which I was very happy with. As to " who in their right minds would buy a share from a company, when the title to ownership was actually held by an investor. You would have to be barking mad to do so. Again, who would sign a contract which contains a clause forbidding them from contacting other share owners, or mentioning the companies activities on websites or forums." Apparently you yourself are such a person! Strange that you only joined the forum to post the demise of Challenger though. Perhaps you have a hidden agenda (that you might like to share with us)?

I'm sorry that you seem to have had a bad experience. As a co-owner I meet the other 11 members of my syndicate every year for the AGM, and four times a year I meet owners of other boats loading and unloading their personal possesions after their holiday. No one has ever said anything, good or bad about the administration of the boats. It was just done and we enjoyed our weeks cruising. So are you telling me you bought a share in a Challenger boat for many thousands of pounds and never used it? Never attended an AGM? Never met your co-owners? And you still paid your admin fee, share of the licence and maintenance? With the greatest respect I think you are on another planet. And I'm on Earth.

Not too difficult to understand. Challenger sent a list of all co-owners in a syndicate to all other co-owners. This list included address, fixed and mobile telephone numbers and email address. Of course you know where your boat is. How else could you pick it up for your four weeks a year? On the issue of the 4% share. Each boat has 2 weeks winter maintence each year. That allows the boat to be taken out of service every year without going into somebodys 4 weeks cruising.

Gary, I know very little about steel, so this may be a stupid question.... Does bright steel have have mill scale? Eastern

I've been told that all steel boats should be left unpainted for 3 months after building, in the open air, to rust down and let the mill scale bubble. They should then be shot blasted and painted. If this isn't done you can never get a decent finish on the paintwork. Any comments please?

Hi Pagan, I would agree with you about fat blocking waste pipes, however most of this comes from washing dishes etc, when as you say the warm liquid fat coagulates on cooling (yuck). I don't see how you imagine that this comes from washing machines, and how would the waste water flow through the soap powder dispenser?

Angela Eagles reply to Chris is just the same options that were in the consultation document that we all responded to before the end of October. The important points as I see them are 1. Red diesel is just some other form of diesel that has been dyed red. 2. It is usually a form of diesel with a high sulphur content. 3. The high sulphur content is a requirement of (most?) marine diesel engines, and certainly vintage marine diesel engines. 4. Sulphur is deemed to be an environmentally damaging pollutant, so following the principle of the polluter pays, a higher duty is charged on high sulphur content diesel. 5. Most cars are designed to run on Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel (ULSD) and therefore the conclusion must be that filling station prices will be lower for diesel than those charged on the cut, due to the higher duty charged and a lack of competition. At current prices we could be paying, perhaps 125p/litre? The IWA was pushing for a 25% rebate on the diesel as this was a proportion of fuel they estimated to be used on electrical generation and heating. 'Cause don't forget its only on propulsion that the full rate of duty is payable. If I have twin fuel tanks fitted to my boat, one for propulsion and one for heating/electrical generation (from a seperate geny), then how does anyone know which tank is being filled? So how will anyone know if I have paid the duty or not on the fuel in each tank? HMCR document suggested that the total duty payable on propulsion fuel was such a low amount in the general scheme of things that it was not worth spending a lot of money on enforcement. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Hi Goldtone, The answer to your question is twice as much power as you first thought IMHO you need to research the question on the archives of this board and the net in general. Its not difficult to find/construct a spreadsheet to determine your power requirements. Don't guess! If you discharge your batteries below half way every day you will not have them for long. Batteries are not as straight forward as you might expect, as the charge and discharge curves are not the same (Peukerts equation etc). As to finding your ideal boat. The only sure way is to have it built for you. You will find that a 60' narrowboat will go everywhere on the system and a 70' will go to most places you will want to go to. All info available on the web. Anyway, plenty of words there for the search engine & Good Luck

And I hope, recoverable - or not even payable in the first instance- for pleasure boat users who have seperate tanks for non-propulsion use (such as electrical generation and heating). BTW Chris, did you respond to EPD? I did (by email) and I've heard nothing - not even an acknowledgement.

Yes, I agree with everyone. Because the wood has a high moisture content then more of the energy in the wood is used to dry it out before it will burn well. Morso recommend that wood is stacked for 2 years before being burnt. They also sell a meter that measures moisture content. Less than 18% is ideal IIRC. Seems a bit excessive to me! Hope you are all keeping warm in this current cold snap. Eastern