magnetman

There is someone on fb marketing a product with about 4 or 5 element filters and a uv lamp plus I think they night have a small RO and high pressure pump. Not a good idea to drink reverse osmosis water as it removes minerals so can cause problems if routinely used as drinking water. OP is looking at drinking bottled water which is sensible. Another good thing for any sort of water filter is chorine tablets like aquatabs as they wipe out nasty parasites.

One would probably need to have a proper sand filter system like swimming pools use and/or a settling tank to take out heavy sediment before it hits the element filters. Loads of people do it on the River and I know someone who had his system tested and it was cleaner than tap water. Not sure about canal water. I suppose one could time it and extract water at night after it has settled. When I lived on Limehouse cut it was sometimes as clear as a swimming pool but if a Boat went past it was seriously mucky so would definitely want a proper sand filter. I have not done it but I think a beer keg might be good for a DIY sand filter. Two beer kegs on the cabin top. First one empty fed by a bilge pump from the canal and a timer. Leave water in this for 24 hours to settle heavy silt then draw from part way up then refill. Periodic removal of silt buildup ideally have a decent sized drain in the bottom with a tap. Second beer keg arranged as a sand filter then on to the other filters and UV lamp possibly by gravity. Could work but limited throughput of water about 30 litres a day assuming a settling time of 24 hours and using half a keg each time. It would probably extend the life of the disposable filters though.

Alas thought I and my heart beat loud How fast she nears and nears Are those her sails which glance in the sun like restless gossameres?

That would be excellent but 'legitimate presumably means adhering to societal norms. I think it is plausible that there would be a lack of demand for this. In policy terms it seems more likely that a perceived or real 'problem' about people living on towpath moorings would be solved by applying regulations to make it much more awkward. Obviously canals are suitable for housing some people and Boats are nice but that would be better done on the other side or in areas where people do not want to moor or patronise the wildlife during the course of leisure activities. I think you are wrong about London. I know the UK is currently on a downward trajectory generally but London is a beautiful city with a lot to offer and the Regents section of the Grand Union is a marvellous heritage treasure of enormous worth which should not be annexed by squatters. It's a bad sign in general societal terms when this kind of shared asset is degraded by people who are just complaining. That does not lead to positive outcomes. In fact over time it leads to privatisation.

" What will the Commission cover? The Commission will want to understand what licensing issues exist or can be predicted, evaluate options for mitigating them... ------- I think the clue is in the bit I put in italics. It is not all about what is happening currently. It will also be about what is likely to happen in the future. Just normal organised control freakery.

Rubbish Sewage Water it is marked on the canal maps. I don't. It is easy to be convinced And the real problem is that using canals for residential porpoises degrades the amenity value. People need space to enjoy leisure time. Canals can provide this much needed societal value but if they are full of squatters with entitlement issues whose only aim is to complain about paying then its not going to go well. In this circumstance the aim will be to lose the squatters. It's obvious.

I decided against going to France today after all.

Probably allow THe CRT to be harder to satisfy. Everyone knows what cc ing is or was originally meant to be. It is about traveling around the system. It is not about remaining in a small geographical area and circumventing the need to pay for a mooring.. Well it -is- about that but that is not why the no home mooring licence exists. This is what is meant by '"change of use". User behaviour has changed and therefore it is likely regulations will change.. it all makes sense. Although commercially sensitive so maybe not available an interesting statistic would be how much the CRT spend on RSW services compared with say 2012. More people using vessels more intensively and emulating living in apartments will be using more fresh water and disposing of more waste and used food. All of which must be paid out of the CRT coffers.

With London it's Zone 1 or 2 people want.

i reckon modeling has been done and predicted a rapid increase in the number of people taking on 'no home mooring declared' licences. If that was the case then your idea could be a snowball situation. It seems far more likely given general societal trends that living on towpaths will be made more difficult rather than facilitated. I have always advocated putting in more on line moorings with services but that would mean expensive moorings and its -just possible- people actually don't want to pay to moor. That is sort of the whole point in a way. Also there is a lot of resistance to adding more on line moorings from leisure users as it gets a bit tedious.

This reduces the amenity value. I wonder if DEFRA want to subsidise people living in low cost unsuitable housing without security of tenure or planning permission. Sounds more like a DwP thing but it is DEFRA who provide the CRT with the extra money they need.

maybe something to do with people using public access amenity land and heritage infrastructure for living on. Lets face it if one could live in a bus in the local park a lot of people would start doing it. Mobile internet and cheap solar panels made living off grid easier than ever so there will be an increase in numbers. Couple that with government policy to endlessly inflate house prices and its obvious what will happen. If the aim is to provide a source of low cost housing then why use waterways? Its one of the most inappropriate ways to house people. It would be much better for government to buy land and place containers on it and house people in those. provision of basic services is problematic on floating containers because water needs to be replenished and the lavatory needs to fight against gravity which is a basic flaw. Also canals are effectively public amenity land accessible to all so the question must be asked about what is and is not appropriate behaviour.

I don't think it makes all that much difference whether there has been a massive increase of whatever. I do know that when I first moored in central London my Boat was the only vessel between the top lock on the Hertford union and the junction with the Regents section of the Grand Union. That was in June 2009. One Boat. I would suggest there are more like 30 there now or more. So yes it is regional. Whatever the statistics if organised groups start asking in loud voices how they should be using the land (canals are land with water on top) then whoever it is who owns the land is going to start thinking about how to answer. It really isn't rocket science ! It's been coming for ages. OK some people think it is water not land but at the end of the day the canals are in fact not natural. They were constructed to make people with money get more money. Capitalist system. If money is now withdrawn from canals as advocated by certain user groups who do not want to pay more money then they will go derelict and guess what happens. It turns into land again and the water disappears. Drainage and water supply is a red herring because this can easily be dealt with using pe tubing. It's not at all surprising. I remember when BW introduced the winter mooring concept in the late 90s or early 00s. We were moored below Cowroast and a BW lady turned up and said we could pay x amount of money (not a lot) and not need to move from below Cowroast lock until the spring. Obviously we were more geared up to moving around all the time so not interested but it did occur to me this would pull people out of marinas because it is a good deal. Move every two weeks in summer and pay protection money for winter. This was before the TV shows and subsequent very large increase in people living on Boats tied alongside canal towpaths. I expect some of these people did not so their due diligence and now there is a theme where it is someone else's job to do that.

Monthly renewable licenses could be fun. Fail to satisfy the board and you get a two week NTM or better still a NTR if not complied with the vessel is taken into the processor for conversion to raw materials.

I bet you arrr only going for the fit birds NBTA have been seeking clarification of the law for years. They do not want it to be wooly and relaxed they want clear instructions. Parenting is not easy.

It will be about behaviour rather than costs. If people start behaving inappropriately and getting all shouty something needs to be done to put them back in their boxes.

I found it hilarious when one of my step sisters whose grandfather was a Scots clan chief multi millionaire with a street of houses in Kensington and a couple of stately homes got herself involved in class war while she was at her 25 grand a year private school. It's just really funny. She wanted to have a go at the rich !

Class war innit Basically a load of middle class people pretending they can't afford to house themselves and rebelling against a perceived authoritarian state. With designer dungarees.

Also worth remembering the NBTA is primarily a political movement and therefore they are publicity whores.

Almost spilt the tea. It would be interesting if regions are discussed by the Commission. Also waterways layout is reasonably interesting. Two significant areas which seem to be publicised quite a lot are the western K&A and London. Neither of these are part of 'cruising rings' in that one must retrace ones route or exit via a tidal passage.

principle not principal however it would be quite a good Freudian slip ! Winter moorings were withdrawn in the London area around 2012. I had the misfortune to be stuck in London for several years from 2010 and initially I was able to pay the protection money for my second Boat to be moored on the towpath as well as the expensive CRT residential mooring but once they withdrew the winter mooring potion I was clobbered with enforcement and all that shit which made me want to throw bricks at people. I have paid more money to the CRT than the other 9 out of 10 people yet they still wanted to have a go at me. Never mind. It is a lot more relaxing on the country estate ! The NBTA would love me

The fishing lodge at Hedsor and the Joshua tree always look nice at this time of the year. Also a generic sunset photo from earlier today just upstream from the lodge

One can satisfy the board by paying them. It's the oldest trick in the book. I'm amazed it has taken the blighters this long to realise they can do this all year round for everyone on the towpaths. Talk about slow on the uptake!

That is definitely an issue. Tricky one to handle from a management perspective. Maybe the managers should have inspection launches and know what they are doing. Oops I seem to have forgotten reality for a minute there !