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Detling

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Everything posted by Detling

  1. When mine was blasted the removed the weed hatch and blasted up the hole they also blasted the bottom plate which sits in the water I don't know if it has a name but it stops the prop wash scouring the weed hatch tunnel.
  2. The main problem I have found on the Thames is 'git gaps' 30 foot gaps between boats, most narrow boats cannot fit, and as most people seem to move in the morning and start mooring about 12-12:30 by 1:00 o'clock it is almost impossible to find a mooring anywhere for a narrowboat. As said many many landowners have put up no mooring signs, due to abuse by long term boaters staying for weeks or leaving mounds of rubbish., they take the easy option which is no mooring. Cookham is a lovely village with several pubs and it has quite a lot of moorings, there is (last time I was there) a nice lady who walks her dog and collects the fees twice a day.
  3. Yes there is and if any surveyor was to use another typr on my boat he would be getting a bill, it was shot blasted, zingered and epoxied at great expense not for some cowboy to grind it off and if lucky, stick some bitumen on in the hope it will stay on when the boat is floated a few hours later. The intruments are not cheap but probably a lot cheaper than a lawyers bill.
  4. How are you measuring the voltage and amps? do you have a battery monitor? If the 12.7 volts was with the engine still on, it is suggesting there is no charge from the alternator at all, is it connected? including the exiter lead with bulb not lit? If it was it just after the engine was stopped, it is still very low the surface charge should last for a good hour or so at 2.3 amps load. It also seems strange that the current drops when you switch the inverter on, often they take and amp or 2 doing nothing but being ready.
  5. BSS regs are relativly mild and mainly aimed at preventing your boat blowing up, or damaging other boats. The Recreational Craft Directive is a different beast altogether, It is aimed at making your boat safe for you and other users, the person who commisions work or does work is responsible in law to ensure it is done to the required standard. All major changes need to be to the required standard. It is the building regulations and electrical/gas standards of the boating world, it potentially has teeth, which can result in a fine or jail for non compliance, but is not well policed, except in the case of serious injury or death.
  6. The chances are the red would stop the radiators working as the water will take the easiest path, In my system the calorifier is connected across the flow and return just like the radiators but before the valve so closing the valve cuts off the radiators and still allow water to flow through the calorifier. If your system is as shown with the calorifier in series with the radiators then you either need two valves (one as shown and one on the red pipe) or a changeover (threeway) valve which would be positioned where the red pipe joins the radiator circuit.
  7. I have seen 1/2 inch rope used to form the eye in the concrete, bowline tied in rope knot end into small bucket fill with concrete leaving a half loop sticking out. It is useful to have 2 mudweights, they act as portable ballast to correct the boats trim, in the OP situation drop them 10 foot apart at the bow would stop it swinging, one each end when moored up in an area where the locals think it is fun to untie you at midnight, they can also be deployed on the anchor warp/chain 20 foot from the anchor to reduce the amount of rope you need because they change the angle of pull nearer to the ground and if there is any waves it stops the boat snatching hard making the warp into an elasticated spring.
  8. Good then I can send the footage of the guy who came up the left side past me and the lorry in front when we were stopped at the lights. Both in a left turn lane, both indicating left, when lights changed cyclist got angry with lorry because it turned left and he wanted to go straight on, he was lucky not to finish up under the rear wheels.
  9. Debdale are a law unto themselves, I have had a night there before they lifted out for bottom paint, strange rules and they seem to be enforced.
  10. I think all marina companies with more than one marina do, but with restrictions on length of stay, and certain dates you can't have (crick boat show, cropredy festival) and availability is obvious, if they can sell the slot why should they let you have it, this is particularly true for marinas south of Tring, where there is usually a waiting list.
  11. We used to heat our house, when I was little with, anthracite grains l(like stone chippings, large pea size) in a hopper fed boiler, it produced a lump of climker round the air inlet where the fan fed the fire. This was dug out once a day and was a donut shape large sausage sized lump. The boiler used about 6 buckets of anthracite a day and the only solid waste would barely fill 2 inches at the bottom of a bucket.
  12. Buy the drill and batteries at the same time if not going for a premium brand, such as Makita and De-Walt. In our family we have 3 Aldi 18V drills they have been excellent and two have worked very hard for 2 years now. Although they look the same on 5 of the 6 sides, and even have the same slide and latch mechanism, every one requires a different charger and will only fit into the drill it came with, minute differences in print size and spacing. I agree with the comments on a battery grinder, I have one with two batteries and a fast charger it takes 15 minutes to empty both batteries and a hour to charge one. If just cutting a nail sticking out it is brilliant cutting the odd pipe etc very convenient, but cutting steel it paving/brick I get the mains grinder out
  13. No CRT tried to be accommodating but the problem has now grown to big in some areas. Putting it in a hedge etc means you are breaking environmental laws about pollution and safe disposal so you could be taken to court and fined.
  14. You would probably do better with the panels in parallel to cope with partial shading. I have 6 x 100 watt panels but I have a 40 amp controller. Panels are wired in my case as 3 serial pairs in parallel. I have a monitor on the solar and the maximum current I have had in the last 3 years is 33.6 amps on one day in 2019, usually daily max is under 30 amps. A MPPT controller will just lose any extra watts it can't pass on to the batteries and limit you to 30 amps maximum you would need to check the manual for maximum permitted overload but in the UK I doubt if your 600 watts of panels would ever produce more than 500 watts.
  15. There are usually several boat fires a year so existing practice isn't perfect. Often this is not helped by stoking the stove up and ambling off to the pub leaving the vents open. Generally insurance companies work on getting x pounds in the kitty from boat/car/home owners, provided claims are well under x pounds they don't care, near to x they get picky, above x and they will find any way of not paying. Recently selling my house I had big problems with the woodburner, to the extent I nearly ripped it out. The buyer and surveyor kept on about Hetas certificates and approval. Eventually I got them to understand that as Hetas was founded some 8 years after the woodburner was supplied and fiftted there were no certificates from a non existent body at the time. Following the Hetas guides on a narrow boat really is not possible unless you fit a 10 foot chimney on the roof etc, we can only try to take the important bits and do our best.
  16. Exactly, if they were intended to be varnished they would be mahogany or walnut. Occasionally teakp but mainly mahogany. One thing I love about our old doors is the hall side of the door to the kitchen, and scullery has nice mouldings etc on the posh hall side and no mouldings on the other, also the posh rooms have rebated door latches and locks on the servants rooms that are all surface mount.I same upstairs on the doors to the servants bedrooms. Interestingly it would also seem that the owner and his lady never went to the toilet as that is in the servants area and cheap thinner doors, the new facilities are better placed.
  17. I used to worry when approaching Bunbury, from the Chester side after passing the 10 boat lengths of triple moored anglo welsh boats, was to see the gates open and reveal a the bows of a coal boat and his butty, no way was he going to reverse.
  18. If not sure of how many or what size cable, just run a length of trunking with a bit of string in it to ease fitting later.
  19. I tried a USB charger by accidentally reversing positive and negative, the results were similar to your description and the Bush charger was dead and had to be replaced, I made sure I connected the next one correctly.
  20. The BVM has a correction factor for peukert which is going to distort that figure, it results in a good educated estimate for lead acid batteries not the exact number of amp hours. If you set the peukert factor so as not to affect the amp hour count (as you should for lithium) you will find it not as accurate with the varying loads large and small for lead acid. There is also a charge efficiency factor built in which alters the charging amp hours so again the raw amp hours are not displayed, again this results in a good indication for a lead acid battery, but needs changing for lithium.
  21. I was insulted by a cyclist for closing a lock gate, when I could see him coming 100 yards away, this meant he had to slow down to negotiate a route round the end of the balance beam. The lock was half empty by the time he got there. There will always be one.
  22. Not a bad ball park, which would make it 48 to 60 ton range. As Jen said the material used for the hull is irrelevant it is the amount of water displaced that matters, a 50 foot narrowboat will displace 12 - 15 tons depending on its draft.
  23. Try fitting that on a narrowboat.
  24. Won't help lumpy waters boaters, northern ireland will now be another place you cannot have red in your tanks as a visitor without risk of prosecution.
  25. Sorry to say since 2017 the legal liability lasts for life, serious accident deemed due to non standard work you may finish up in court, even 20 years later.
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