magnetman
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Posts posted by magnetman
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1 hour ago, David Mack said:
But still not a good idea. What happens if you get a leak?
Bad things happen if you get a leak.
There is a way around it which is to fit a timer which will cut the water after X minutes regardless what the consumer is but that could interfere with washing machines and people who like long showers.
The boat I was referring to is in fact registered as a houseboat but they still had to re-do the fittings between boat and pontoon bollard tap.
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5 hours ago, Steilsteven said:
Exactly. As all hoses are now only attached temporarily the risk is reduced, in my eyes at least.
The big question is, have the water companies insisted on the current set up or has EA just gone ahead on the assumption that what they've done will pass any inspection?
My guess is the latter.
Keith
A slightly different story but a neighbour on the residential mooring where I keep one of my boats had his boat directly connected to the mains water supply. Straight through. Bad idea on principle but I guess it gives good pressure.
CRT owned mooring on a CRT managed ditch.
Anyway as the allocated land addresses are reversed compared to the physical mooring locations it was me who got the letter about it.
It was from Thames water and it was serious including the possibility of criminal proceedings if the problem was not sorted out..
They do take municipal water supply seriously. Which is good because it is public elf we are talking about.
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The way to sort out the bike problem is for pedestrians to have a zero tolerance attitude. Just don't get out of the way. Carry on as usual.
There are generally more pedestrians than there are cyclists and few if any cyclists will be out to deliberately hit someone with the bike.
Let them pass when it is safe and appropriate.
This way the data they upload to the servers will indicate slower speeds and people on a mission might take other routes.
Pedestrians DO have priority over cyclists. It's obvious but jumping out the way is NOT the right approach at all!
Cyclists occasionally do the "reclaim the streets" type of thing so why don't ramblers do the same on footpaths.
Bad cycling on towpaths removes a very valuable amenity from locals. It's sad really as the towpath could be a very pleasant place to be especially in inner city areas. But it isn't because of a minority of mindless scum.
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8 hours ago, David Mack said:
Does that mean a boater needs 5 hoses to fill up in reasonable time?
No five buckets. And staff for bucket carrying duties.
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3 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:
There is a reader's letter and photo in the latest ( September 2021) "Waterways World" that includes a comment on the problems associated with the new taps: 1 3/4 hours to fill a 150 gallon tank, and wasted metered water (estimates say around 25%) spraying everywhere in the process. Evidently a half-inch hose was used with no bicycle tyre inner tube or whatever around the fitting as recommended by posters here.
I've been to Lechlade and now on way back to Monaco on the boat and have noticed occasional queueues for water and also at one point did see the water coming out of the side holes.
Don't stop that often for water as my bulk supplies come from the cat 5 river via settling tank and filters but it's definitely a dodgy situation in terms of potential for micro conflicts between boaters.
Not an expert on management but I would have thought on a waterway based on leisure and pleasure you would make some moves to minimise conflict between users.
A manifold of taps seems sensible but at £50 a pop those arrowvalves things could get expensive. Needs some sort of roll pin system to make them awkward to take off. And 5 taps per outlet.
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Too many weeds growing in the gates. Why is nobody clearing this vegetation?
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My favourite Tom Lehrer song is "I hold your hand in mine".
I played it to my kids who are 9 and 11 and initially they thought it was quite sad but now they find it is really funny.
My mum introduced me to Lehrer about 20 years ago. Funny man. Maths genius.
A beautiful love song
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6 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:
They use to put fires out doing
Years ago someone was selling fire buckets at the car boot sale which used to be held at ricknansworth station car park. They were proper ones round on the base so you couldn't put them down. Also had the effect of holding more water.
Used to see them by Thames locks too but not noticed them recently
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3 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:
If you are comparing like with like, you need to compare how long it takes one of those silly taps to fill a bucket and compare that with the time taken using a hose on a silly tap.
Thats a good point.
The fact the silly taps slow the water flow down so much probably makes buckets less effective.
My comment was a response to the @Paringa problem of not having the correct fitting for a tap which had been vandalised by removing the silly arrowvalves item.
Ironically this resulted in a high flow outlet where buckets would have been very effective.
Buckets take out the uncertainty in life. Think of it as a rule in life in general.
if you are in trouble, whatever trouble it could be boat related or not boat related, what you really need is buckets.
one day this will save your life.
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9 hours ago, Bacchus said:
I have a 400 litre water tank. I don't think it would be that quick.
I reckon it's faster than using hose on one of the taps being discussed which have holes in the side of the fitting.
Not as easy as hose but if done right it will be swift. I reckon one bucket takes less than a minute to fill and empty on a normal tap and using a sensible funnel. 15 litre buckets so about 25 minutes for 400 litres. How long does one of these silly taps take with a hose?
My boat carries over a tonne of fresh water in 5 separate tanks. The idea is to add a bit regularly rather than wait until it is empty. Having said that I now use settled and filtered river water for washing purposes so don't need so much from these supplies anyway.
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10 hours ago, Paringa said:
Any of you heading to Shiplake lock for water will find the tap has been "vandalised" by the removal of the valve.
I didn't have a fitting to attach so couldn't get water.
Trying to report it to the EA is very hard. Andy (lockie) reported it on the 29th for repair.
I will now have to carry various fittings to go on waterpoints that may or may not be working.
Only a matter of time before this happened.
Buckets.
Two of them. Just normal ones B&Q do the orange ones. I prefer black ones.
Place bucket #1 under the tap, fill. Remove and place #2 under tap. Manually transport bucket #1 to boat and pour into funnel directed into water tank.
Rinse and repeat.
Good exercise and gets the job done quickly with no need for hose nonsense.
Those arrowvalves fittings are just screwed into a normal male tap thread. I suspect a lot of them will have become slightly less well screwed on with time. Don't like seeing vandalism though. Put back on after use.
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I think I remember that boat moored near Cropredy in the late 90s. By the bloke who used to so the fenders and the old wooden narrow boats. Maybe getting confused.
It was a boat of the same name anyway, looked like an old boat but obviously not specially old however it was a nice job.
ETA I think it was another one as did not have the long stern deck and extended tiller.
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11 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
How would that work as the boat floated and swung around with the tide / currents.
Mooring at sea is very different to tying up on a canal tow-path.
This plot shows my boat movement at anchor over (I think) a 14 hour period each red dot is a movement. We travelled 2.36 miles over the period, whilst attached to 25 metres of chain.
Out of interest have you tried doing the same recording with the gps unit in a fixed position?
I'm sure you know this but there will not only be one dot.
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That's when one uses the helicopter!
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6 minutes ago, blackrose said:
Does anyone actually know of a narrowboat that has come down on a tidal mudbank and hasn't risen with the incoming tide?
It might be possible to do a calculation if one knows the buoyancy of the boat and has some idea of the tensile strength of the vacuum formed between steel plate and mud/area2. I guess it's the properties of the mud that are the unknown factor.
The late Nigel Moore recounted a tale where a narrow boat was aground in mud and the tide came up almost over the sides then the boat suddenly lurched upwards.
One approach I have seen used down near Brentford on the Thames was to put a load of old tyres around where the boat lands when the tide goes out. That would in theory break up the mud effect.
Whether this is allowed I don't know and I think the tyres would all need to be chained together and anchored so it could end up being quite a complicated process.
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On 08/07/2021 at 23:32, Steilsteven said:
It's been recovered
Nice one. Interesting to see Frisby wagon there. I used them for a heavy boat transport a couple of years ago. Good company I would recommend. Based out of Peterborough if I remember right.
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I've got one of these units. smarty £10 a month SIM in it. App on phone. It's excellent just needs 12v supply and cell signal.
Programmable via app to send notification to phone of any movement (phone vibrates) in a user defined area. This sensing won't work through windows so the unit has to be exterior of you want this feature. IP67 if I remember right so no problems. Its nice and quiet looking and low profile which I like. Also has on board recording to SD card.
A feature I did not expect but which is handy is that it makes its own hotspot so you can use this as an in internet connection for other things. That's quite handy as it gives extra data and a second network plus if it is mounted outside high up better chance of good signal.
Pretty good image quality as well.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313471752716
£160 although that price does change a bit sometimes. There is also a cheaper one available around £85 but I don't think the camera is any good on it and some listings put 4G in the description when what you get will be a WiFi non-sim type.
This is mine right now. I am actually beside the boat but could view this imagery anywhere my phone works, obviously.
There arrr no ongoing
costs other than the sim data plan. The app is free.
Another one with more features is the Reolink with remote pan and tilt but I would be nervous about one of these being a theft risk unless you can mount it in an inaccessible position, because it is so obvious and valuable.
All the above assuming you don't have a network already running all the time on the boat. If you did then WiFi cameras seem better and a lot cheaper.
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46 minutes ago, canalboat said:
Well said - Covid aint the only severe sickness around.
5G is almost as bad !
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It's a poll situation really.
People going out on boats on canals have changed over the years.
It's entirely plausible that the majority do actually see locks as an obstacle to be overcome preferably with help rather than the whole point of going boating on a canal.
As mentioned earlier there might actually be quite a lot of people on boats who would go for fully automated rather than have the hassle of physical work.
More predictable, get where you are going at the right time etc. GPS.
I remember graffiti on a canal bridge somewhere years ago "Stop motorway madness on canals" how astute that was.
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I got into a discussion (totally unheated as it was an "out of interest" discussion with a lock keeper and related to another Part time lock keeper on the Thames who is incredibly irritating.
Anyway my question to the real lock keeper, unrelated to my boat, was about single boats in locks and how the relevant legislation specifically says you can leave engines running if yours is the only boat in the lock.
It also says you have to follow instructions of lock keeper "if reasonable". In this instance the irritating part time keeper was shouting at the person on the only boat in the lock that he had to stop the engine. I was just walking past and as I know the real keeper who was in his office and he's cool I asked him about it. He was unsure but interested and said she (part time lock keeper) was indeed a bit of a ballache.
Got me wondering if one person's reasonable is another person's unreasonable and this could apply similarly with the volockies.
Giving them full control like that is unreasonable.
Also if you disobeyed a volunteer and the result was an accident which dismembered and killed dozens of children and disabled people then what would the insurance say about it?
Similar the other way around ie are the volockies adequately insured to be in charge of boats while in locks?
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3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
I assume that everyone has read the new Licence Terms and Conditions, you know, section 11.2 the part where it says "The Boat Licence does not give You any priority of passage on the Waterway. You must follow the directions of Our employees and volunteers".
That can be read on a number of levels, and is one of the several remaining requirements that NABO are trying to get removed or amended.
Slippery slope here.
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Did CRT consult boat users about the "volunteer lock keepers" before they were introduced? I can't remember if there was any sort of proper consultation and taking of feedback about the whole thing or if it is just done to make the corporate image better.
It seems very inappropriate for these people to not be identifiable.
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13 minutes ago, nicknorman said:
I think you are conflating two different things. Under certain circumstances where organisation is required, such as thames locks with 10 boats to get into 1 lock, I have absolutely no problem with being instructed by lock keepers, voluntary or not. Without them, it can be mayhem!But that is quite different from normal practice on a flight of narrow locks where one boat goes up, one goes down and nothing much needs organising. Problems only arise when someone such as this volockie tries to make things hapoen differently from normal, eg by making us wait for absolutely no good reason.
Of course it in itself isn’t the end of the world, but I feel that (a minority of) volockies are a creeping menace and if we tacitly condone their bad behaviour, it will only get worse.
I reckon this sort of thing is enough to stop some people bothering to take the boat out.
Arguably that is a Good Thing but it might just be that the people that are put off are those who are very enthusiastic about the whole canal thing and understand it and get pissed off by clueless idiots.
I personally hate being helped at locks. I have refused polite offers to assist on numerous occasions because I really like doing the whole lock and associated boat manoovers myself. That's the whole point of going on a canal boat !! It is often better to single hand everything as it all gets done faster without anyone running around and no communication agro. Some people really don't know how it works.
Some boaters may view the locks as a sort of barrier but there are other views and if you physically can't do the locks then maybe think about another hobby ?
Anyway I don't boat on the cut any more probably never will and am lucky enough to have done a lot of canal boating before the invention of volockies. Self operated locks with one or two boats do not need lock keepers. Adding volunteers is simply accelerating the dumbing down and idiotisation of people.
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Electric cars
in General Boating
Posted · Edited by magnetman
I didn't see this thread before but surely electric cars are fitted with collision avoidance cameras linked to the brakes aren't they?
My little petrol Suzuki Ignis (2018) has dual camera brake support and it will stop the car automatically if someone walks in front of it too close.
It has an alarm once it picks up the object then the brakes deploy themselves to avoid a collision.
It does actually work and if screen is dirty it switches off with a warning on dash that it is not functioning.
It's done it's job once or twice in my 10,000 mile ownership. The most impressive was when a van just stopped dead in front of me perhaps trying for a deliberate accident and the car stopped itself. I was on the brakes as well but it assisted me.
I would have thought all new cars would have these safety systems but perhaps not.
An extra pair of eyes like that can't be a particularly expensive addition to an electric vehicle which is already somewhat more expensive than other vehicles on account of it being electric.
Tesla have loads of cameras so I'm sure they have got it but then the driver can switch it off. I never switch mine off as I like the idea of it working at the right moment.