Jambo

More problems! This Sunday we ran out of diesel and after a considerable amount of fiddling and cursing I managed to get our engine bled and firing again, much to my satisfaction. We'd gobbled up our fuel much quicker than expected, no doubt thanks to the Mikuni. But a few days before we ran out of fuel our Mikuni packed up. My partner switched it on last week and it didn't really get started and shut down in fairly short order. I arrived back at the boat about half an hour later and went back to the engine room and there was a bit of a burning smell. Now we can't get anything out of it. I've checked the cables from the battery to the control box and there's power. The troubleshooting flow chart in the manual suggests that the control box might be cooked. is there any way to test this? We're not getting any lights on the control switch so no error flashes. I took off the control switch to have a look behind it and the wiring looks ok although I can't get behind the panel the control switch is mounted on very easily to check the integrity of the wires other than right behind the switch. Is there likely to be a fuse for the control switch somewhere? Our fuses are all unlabeled. Given the burning smell and lack of any sign of life from the control switch, my first thought is it's an electrical problem somewhere but if the fuel supply to the Mikuni had run out could we have blown a glow plug or fuel pump or something? If it has run out of fuel, do you need to prime a Mikuni to get it going again or should gravity do the trick? As ever, any tips and advice gratefully received

I was renting beforehand and throwing away £850 a month for a small flat (London!) and the idea of getting up to my neck in debt for an equally small flat or house in an outer part of London that I didn't really like wasn't an appealing concept. So I started developing the plan to live afloat - it had been rattling around in the back of my mind for quite a few years but once it seriously took hold it happened very quickly. We have exactly the same mod cons that we had in the flat (telly, fridge, internet, washing machine, heating system) and we've gained a wood burner and solar panels. We have to think a bit harder about some aspects (water, toilets, electricity, heating, next mooring etc) but that's no big deal. But mostly our standard of living has increased dramatically because our wellbeing has gone up so muc: we are supremely relaxed and feel like we're on holiday all the time

We have a 10 week old kitten who seems to be adjusting well to life on board: We've made a shelf for him to sit on and watch the outside world before we let him out in a few months. He spends hours up there watching people passing and other boat cats. I was wondering about what to do if he falls in - I was thinking of hanging thick ropes off the boat so that they dangle in the water. Might make something to hang on the edge of the canal as well. Also we're thinking of not going for a cat flap and managing his entry and exit. Is that a crazy idea? We'll provide a nice, secure spot on the fore deck for him to hide and I work from boat so there's someone around most of the time.

Sadly thanks to the disgraceful state of UK libel laws there is plenty of precedent for websites / hosts being sued over content posted by others on the site (see e.g. here or here). They rarely get to court as the websites typically don't have the resources to fight it but it's highly effective intimidation. Much better to be safe than sorry imo.

1. Do you mean the murals in the centre of this view beside the lines of shrubs? I'd always just assumed they were artworks. There are shore hook ups there as well so I assumed someone originally intended that stretch as a private mooring but it was nixed for some reason.

Not read the report yet but just scanned through the slide deck on the LGA website and the recommendations seem eminently sensible to me.

I contacted them about the source of the biomass - it's olive stones and chaff apparently so waste biomass and therefore reasonably sustainable.

I don't think you can really compare this to dam based hydro - this is more comparable to low head run of river hydro. As Chop says it's likely to be quite fish friendly (although my understanding is that well sited reverse archimedes screw hydro is fine for fish as well). The main thing about this design that I can see is that you avoid a load of costly civil works which are bespoke for the site and usually form the bulk of low head hydro costs. Instead you could quite easily knock out loads of these to the same specification, tow them to the site and plug them in to the grid.

The old ideas are often the best - I can heartily recommend the fantastic http://www.lowtechmagazine.com for some brilliant (and beautifully illustrated) essays on the appropriate use of old technology. Regarding this idea I'm pretty sure retrofitting generation capacity into a weir would be a fair bit more challenging and expensive than mounting it in a hull and towing it to the weir. I suspect they're not getting any grants. I'm certainly not aware of anything that covers this kind of technology.

Cheers for the tips folks! We'll see what comes out when we poke around tomorrow...

We've just started having a problem with our sink / bath not draining. When we switch on the gulper it makes its usual noise but instead of water draining out of the bath it's backing up into the sink through the overflow. It's bringing quite a lot of bits of crap with it as well. I don't know if this is relevant but my girlfriend forgot to remove the plug before turning the pump on a couple of days ago so it was sucking on nothing for a while then. I wonder if there's something stuck in the outlet pipe? We won't be able to check til tomorrow when we go for water as the outlet is on the water side of the boat. Also looking at some other threads on here the outflow from the bath or the pump itself might simply be clogged with crap? I've never done any plumbing before and am a bit clueless about what might be causing this problem so any suggestions welcome!

I was very impressed by The Old Orchard, just up the hill from Black Jacks lock on the GU between Uxbridge and Watford. Great food, good selection of local beers (plus Old Rosie cider ) and far and away the best view of any pub inside the M25 looking out west over the reservoirs and woods (with the M25 itself handily hidden from view except for a couple of short stretches).

But better than not generating when batteries are full. I've seen a widebeam in London with a ~10 tube evacuated tube collector. I think if I was going to do it I'd go for a flat plate collector because roof space isn't really at a premium in a widebeam and it would be cheaper and more robust. It's a tempting idea but I don't have it on the cards for now.

It's these little portable petrol generators that are most problematic due to their lack of silencing, especially when used in built up areas. I've been idly wondering how difficult it would be for the owners to build a cocoon to reduce the noise they make. Not sure whether it would be possible while allowing heat to dissipate. We are very fortunate to have a very quiet, keel cooled diesel generator in our engine room that can barely be heard outside the boat. We mostly keep to the 8am to 8pm guidelines but do sometimes run it out of hours (but not too late) if we've been away from the boat for a time and our batteries have dropped too low. Now that we have the solar panels up our batteries should be kept topped up better and the growth in use of solar on boats in general should hopefully go some way to mitigating generator usage.

Managed to get it all wired up and we're smoking along at 60W (it's pretty gloomy at the moment). Anyway, I've got a Mastervolt Mass Inverter Charger Control and it's showing 100% SoC. Is it just getting confused because the PV is lifting the battery voltage? Once it gets dark will it revert to a normal estimate of SoC? And the panels are now giving us 170W Not bad for a mostly overcast autumn day! Many thanks for everyone's input. One happy solar powered bunny here!

Cheers for the info. It's just over 3m from the battery to the Mikuni. I've ordered some 6mm2 cable which will make a big difference.

You need to give Mikuni a nudge to point people like me in your direction! If I hear of others needing Mikuni help I'll send them your way. Thanks for the advice and I contacted you a month or two ago for the manual which you sent me, thanks! We only got as far as the pipe assembly, glow plug boss and glow plug. Gave them a good scrub so they're looking a bit better. We also replaced the gaskets. But carbon wasn't the source of the problem. The glow plug was only getting about 10.5V! A very shonky, quite long, jerry rigged cable run from the batteries using very thin cables needs replacing. I'll hopefully get to that this week. One question though, is it just the MX40 that has swirl holes? We couldn't spot any on our MX60 glow plug boss. Oh and I think you're absolutely right about the diameter of the exhaust. we used some sort of heat setting exhaust paste as you suggested and that seems to have done the trick. Apparently they weren't jubilee clips, something better.

Oh yeah, looking at google images it could well have been. Sorry spiders!

Cheers Phil. Good to know that's how it's done. I did find a ball of fluff at the outlet so maybe there's more to be found inside. Will take a look.

So a friend who is handier with these things than I is coming down to help strip the Mikuni down this weekend. I'll post any useful information that I get out of the process for others who might want to do this. I have one question. One of the problems we have is that there is a substantial exhaust leak into the engine room. As far as I can make out it's not a hole in the exhaust as it seems to be coming out where the exhaust sleeve that takes the exhaust out of the boat meets the exhaust pipe on the Mikuni. The exhaust pipe that takes the exhaust out o fthe boat is basically a flexible metal sleeve wrapped in insulating fabric. The Mikuni exhaust is a short metal tube. Where the sleeve meets the Mikuni is a relatively snug fit and it has a jubilee clip to tighten it up, but it's metal on metal, there's no padding to give a good seal. Should there be? I've taken the sleeve off and refitted it and tightened the jubilee clip but it still leaks. Any ideas?

It sounds great and has the same fantastic build quality and battery life (it's basically the same as three minirigs stacked on top of each other). It does an excellent job of filling out those bass frequencies and I think it's likely to replace my little hifi for day to day use as it's vastly more efficient. As a side note I've started using the minirig on its own as a security measure - I leave it playing off the boat wifi phone while we're out for the night. That plus a couple of our LED dome lights on make it sound and look like someone's at home. Works well and the only drain on the battery is a few watts from the lights.

The sub is now out in (typically very) limited numbers. I have one sitting next to me and it looks great. Can't wait to get back to the boat and give it a go...... If you want to pick one up I suggest having the minirig twitter feed open in a browser and being quick!

We hadn't tried it either until I saw this post yesterday. We only had new potatoes but we wrapped them in some tinfoil with some salt and olive oil and put them in an oven proof dish in the ash tray and they cooked beautifully. Thanks for the idea Woodmanton!

I'm getting something similar to that switch for the Outback-battery connection. Fair point on unplugging the cables though! I guess it's more useful if you're in a house and you can't necessarily access the cables very easily.