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Spot on! Would you be happy for me to use this as a quote in a future freight piece for publication?

Response from Scottish Canals: "We have made concrete blocks from segregated dredgings recovered from Laggan Spout on the Caledonian Canal. There is an aspiration to utilise dredgings from Ratho as well but I haven’t had the feedback from the university yet on the suitability of the material. We are also moving closer to producing a topsoil – not quite there yet but I remain hopeful! "Plan is to install the blocks at Bowling to trial their durability in tidal waters. I’ve attached some pictures of the blocks which have been produced so far."

A couple of years back Scottish Canals had a scheme to turn dredgings into the equivalent of breeze blocks for the construction industry. It looks like this has ........ er ......... sunk! Might ask the COO about it now that it has come to mind.

Boat Dwellers - There may be some good news regarding receiving the government £400 towards helping with energy bills. Please see below...good news is that the consultation findings say that: Households without a domestic supply contract Some households will not receive EBSS from a supplier if they do not have a domestic electricity contract with a licensed electricity supplier. Affected groups would include those who pay their electricity as part of an inclusive charge with supply through a non-domestic contract. For example, residents of park homes paying a site owner, properties on a private electricity network and those who are not connected to the electricity grid. Evidence suggests at up to 400,000 would not receive EBSS support due to these circumstances, compared with approximately 29 million that will. For these affected households, funding will be made available as soon as possible. We are developing approaches that will ensure they receive £400 equivalent support for energy bills this winter, working with local authorities, the devolved administrations and commercial partners. An announcement with details on how and when these households across Great Britain can access this support will be made this autumn. See https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/technical-proposals-for-the-energy-bills-support-scheme and https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1096205/energy-bills-support-scheme-government-response.pdf

Isn't it a freshly caught eel?

Fair dos!

It's just that some people can't tell torque from mutter ............ (been waiting years to find an excuse to resurrect that one!)

I think that's a pretty realistic analysis Ian and I suspect that is the sort of default position CRT keep in the back of their minds in their current negotiations with DEFRA to set the next round of funding for the waterways, beginning 2027. I believe their are currently 3 scenarios based on possible funding outcomes that CRT have tentatively outlined, and a couple of them are not terribly palatable from the boaters point of view.

I remember that there was great rejoicing when the two Scottish Lowland Canals were reclassified as Cruising canals about 10 years ago, following their restoration in 2002. Whilst this greatly increases the likelihood that they will be maintained, it certainly doesn't guarantee it, nor for that matter does a Commercial designation guarantee that a waterway will be maintained for commercial use, dredged to its original depth. There is a wee clause in the wording of the Act that says something to the effect that the relevant minister (currently George Eustace) can over ride this requirement. I suspect the same is true when it comes to maintaining a navigation as a Cruiseway.

Looks like good starting point:

I shared the video with Scottish Canal's chief operating officer and we agreed that retaining his deposit might be good starting point. The clown passed my mooring boat this morning on his way back to the hire base at Falkirk.

Please could you post a link to the New Scientist arti New Scientist article Peter. Sorry if you've already done so.

Thank goodness for the generosity and time of all those with knowledge and experience in this field. Without it, and the willingness to share, the world (and this forum in particular) would be a be a far poorer place.

Currently ............!!

All good points. Their gravity feed system kit that I've just tripped over, however, is simply screaming Legionella at me!

As I can't get a sensible response to my queries I'm going to shoot up there as soon as I get a minute and that is a question near the top of my list. However, given that it's closed circuit the doesn't come into contact with the water that we use, how much of an issue is it likely to be? There isn't a great deal of difference between it and a domestic solar thermal set up. Whilst it's a pretty funky website, it's rather short on data and performance figures (even taking account of all the inevitable variables).

https://www.solariskit.com Will be trialling these over the next few months under the auspices of the IWA Sustainable Boating Group and will report back. For many of us with a diesel or solid fuel stove with a back boiler there is a summer "hungry gap" when it's too warm to light the stove but one still needs hot water. Hopefully this is when the sun is shining to these fill that gap with the aid of a couple of these. I intend to plumb a pair into the engine coil in the clarifier c/w a couple of two way valves and a simple differential controller. We shall see ..........

An interesting perspective Peter and, again, very informative. I spent a fair time chatting with the Lynch people at last year's Crick show and came away feeling that they were very straightforward, helpful and would be an excellent firm to deal with even with the 'remoteness' that being based in Central Scotland tends to generate. I can see it's very much horses for courses and I understand that the early Lynch motors were of very low efficiency but things have clearly changed.

A very useful round up Ian – thank you. On a point of detail, could you share your observations on DC v. AC drive motors? I believe the Energy Solutions option is DC as are the Leech offerings (that you haven't referenced). The received wisdom that I have so far gleaned seems to suggest that, on balance, AC is the way to go. I'd be really interested to know more .........

The 60:40 split is familiar from the point of view of duty and HMRC. Much 'further back up the line' DfT have adopted it as a way of pricing the fuel based on whether it is used for propulsion or domestic purposes. Propulsion use attracts two RTFCs (worth around £0.40 each) whilst domestic use attracts nothing. A purely arbitrary arrangement but one that if applied kills the use of a 90% carbon neutral fuel on the inland waterways.

Good point Ian. I'm afraid I'm away from base and the notes I made when I had my last catch up with Crown Oil. Supply problems with straight vegetable oil (and therefore waste cooking oil) are a very real outcome of the Ukraine conflict so for once waste oil prices tracking crude oil prices are a genuine reality in the world of commodity pricing. In the past I treated it as something of a (bad) joke! As I've said, I'm not expecting any sanity this side of the New Year when I'll be talking to Oilfast (GBF Ltd's agent in the Scottish Central Belt) who were very confused by the situation back in the spring, maintaining that rebated HVO would no longer be available. I took pretty much their last 1000 litres off them and made the decision to go to ground for the rest of the year!! I believe I heard a price of £0.97 (100%) in Yorkshire through another CBOA member a couple of days ago and your info makes think that's correct.

The last price I had was £1.82 (for rebated HVO) on 24/06/22 – while it was something like £2.18 for road use. At those prices you could use it for propulsion (in a commercial inland waterways boat and in a leisure boat respectively! Extrapolating from those prices, you would expect to pay about £2.62 for domestic use. Quite clearly a non-starter for all but the most dedicated environmentalist.

Note that these are all Crown Oil companies. Crown was supplying a couple of marinas until DfT instructed them to price their quotes on an arbitrary 60:40 split with the '60' carrying the subsidy and the '40' being full cost price: the exact reversal of the HMRC version!!! This pretty much killed sales stone dead on the inland waterways and totally undermined two years hard work on the part of IWA and Crown Oil who have gone way beyond the call of duty to promote HVO in what is effectively a very niche market.

Having spent the past two years testing and promoting the use of HVO on the inland waterways, under the auspices of the IWA Sustainable Boating Group, I can assure you that everything positive you've heard about the fuel (together with the details quoted above) is true. At 90% carbon neutral we have no hesitation in recommending it as an interim solution to fuelling the vast number of diesel engines found on the cut until such time as they expire or their owners find the not inconsiderable sums of money required to convert their craft to electric drive. However, there is a 'but' and that relates to price, availability and the somewhat barmy way the government has elected to subsides HVO given that it currently costs approaching £1 more to produce than its mineral cousins. The whole supply/availability situation has been skued by the major user (the construction industry) going onto non-rebated (white) fuel; the Ukraine situation (meaning that the raw material – {waste} cooking oil – has suddenly become very expensive) and the discovery that Government subsidy mechanisms will only support HVO used for propulsion and not heating, lighting and cooking which of course many boaters use their fuel for in one way or another. Two main fuel distributers supply HVO in the UK, namely Crown Oil (and their various distributors – Speedy Fuels in the Home Counties and Beesleys in the Midlands) and Green Biofuels Ltd (New Era are their main retail outlet) based at Dagenham. GBF Ltd do have agents in other parts of the country too but right now everyone is pretty cagey about supply as HMRC are permitting rebated fuel to be sold undyed so "red diesel/HVO" can in fact be "white" and compliance with duty requirements is down to the paper trail generated by the sale rather than HMRC physically dipping your tank. On the Thames it is now true to say that all the commercial operators are running on HVO (except the MPU which uses GTL) and supplies are pretty evenly distributed between GBF Ltd and Crown Oil. For my part I have simply filled my tanks with HVO and am waiting to see what the supply/price/availability conundrum is looking like in the New Year when I hope the proverbial dust has settled. However, in line with the escalating gas oil prices I expect it to be expensive and wonder if I will be able to afford the extra cost which in the past has averaged about £0.10 dearer than gas oil.

I guess you just follow the high dosage rate for contaminated fuel as long as you can initially devise a way to get the fuel to start flowing. As has been implied earlier in this thread, 'sticky diesel' is a slightly different problem from straight forward diesel bug contamination and back in the early days, when the issue first reared its ugly head via an RCR report, the chemists amongst the IWA Sustainable Boating Group took a long hard look at the problem. Digging around in past correspondence this is what I've turned up: "Transesterification (the process by which 1stgeneration FAME diesel is manufactured) produces some pretty decent glycerine as a by-product and I'm told much sort after by the cosmetics industry. As I said before, it's never 100% washed out, remains dissolved in the fuel and then starts to drop out if the fuel is unused for any length of time, particularly in cold weather I believe". "However, that’s only part of the story. If that’s all that was happening, the residual glycerol would re-dissolve when things warm up again, whereas this seems to be predominantly a one way trip with time. I think the dominant process (probably made even nastier and stickier by the glycerol add-on) will be various chemical decomposition reactions in the FAME itself. The most obvious one will be slow hydrolysis of the long chain organic esters that make up FAME, due to moisture in the fuel tanks. Irritatingly, this reaction is acid-catalysed so will be weakly auto-catalytic (i.e with time it slowly speeds up). The product of this will be methanol, and long chain fatty acids. These will tend to form a scummy ‘snot’ congregating wherever the acid end of the molecule can find anything wet with water, whilst the paraffinic end buries itself into the nearby diesel phase. In addition, the double bond in the fatty backbone will slowly oxidise, further linking to goo together. Add a trace of glycerol and you’ll get a vile mess. I was then wondering what to use to try and wash this horrible goo out of a fuel system, and I’m struggling a little. There are options for dissolving these things in the literature, but some of the chemicals involved would attack certain seals, and things like plastic filter bowls. Also very flammable/toxic. If you want me to come up with some suggestions, I could, but considerable care would need to be employed using materials like acetone, hexane or chloroform! Best bet is to get the wretched stuff drummed off the canal system asap"!!