plato

Are interested in buying it? would a massive project

I believe it is now in the ownership of Phil Trotter at R W Davis Saul Junction. They salvaged it and have cleaned out all rubbish left in the hull and done some repairs and blacked it. It’s up for sale as a project, if anyone is interested

If you go for Kingspan or similar foil backed board, try your local builder’s merchant. A sheet of 25mm was £35 in wickes. I paid £18 including vat at my builders merchants.

Ok, thanks for your swift replies. I’ll go for the deeper option. knew in my head it probably wasn’t the best but good to have it confirmed

Planning my new fit out and I have been looking at low profile shower trays. (30mm deep) I’ll be fitting a whale water pump which delivers 11litres per minute and a whale gulper waste pump which can extract 14 litres per minute. So on paper no problem. my question is has any body got a low profile shower tray on their boat ? And does it work satisfactorily? only thinking of it on aesthetic grounds. once it’s fitted it would be a nightmare if it didn’t work. any real world experiences please ?

I can’t remember the dosage rate at the moment but I’m sure Google will know.

That’s good to hear. I’m taking delivery of my new sailaway boat next week and will definitely be getting all the right compliance in place.

It’s a minefield for sure. I recently sold my boat and although the broker asked for RCD paperwork, I didn’t have any . To give this some context I was the third owner of the boat but the fit out had never been completed and what was there was like an unfinished shed. I completely gutted it re- fitted it and owned it for 10 years before I sold it. when I spoke to the original boat builder about RCD compliance he said as I was the last person to put a screw in it I was responsible. But there is no trail of proof the 1st owner now lives in Ecuador. If challenged about it I could just say the first guy fitted it out and there’s very little they could do to prove otherwise. my comment about the RCD scheme being toothless relates to a couple who had paid 80k for a widebeam ( this was a while ago) it was fitted out by a chancer who wasn’t qualified in any way to fit out a boat. He sold the boat to them with no RCD telling them it needed a couple of grand spent on it to finish it off. When they took it to the boatyard to get it “completed” the extremely shoddy fit out came to light….. 50k later they had the boat they thought they’d paid for. The boatyard advised them to report the person they’d bought the boat from to the RCD people ,they made a note of it and didn’t take any further action ! Hence my toothless comment.

Apparently not , I was recently chatting to Jonathan Leask who is a knowledgeable and well regarded surveyor, regarding RCD compliance for a new build and he said the 5 year rule has been scrapped there is now no exemption however long you keep the boat it must be RCD compliant. However the whole scheme is pretty toothless from what I’ve seen

Good tip , I might try that. I think you’ll have a Stirling burner in there , very common and no problem for an engineer to service. If you’re of a practical bent it’s fairly easy to to change the nozzle. That will help but when my engineer does mine he analyses the exhaust gases and makes adjustments to get it burning efficiently. Which you wouldn’t be able to do. He charges £80 which is a lot less than heritage do. my stove had been sat unused for 2 years in a boat that had been partly flooded. So it wasn’t running at all well when I first used it. Heritage did send an engineer up to Gloucester from Cornwall but it wasn’t cheap. He did strip it down and did a very thorough job on it. if you phone them them I’ve always found them to be helpful. I put redex in my diesel and it definitely helps. My engineer commented how clean the nozzle was when he serviced it. Generally they’re very sooted up. Redex is often on offer in Tesco or Lidl so not costly for the benefits you get. good luck with it and let us know how you get it sorted

Ok, my first thought is do you need a whole kettle of water? Try putting in only the amount of water you actually need. Also what type of kettle do you have? I use a le crueset, found that pretty good. you could also turn the temperature up a bit and see how that goes. If it makes no difference you may have a problem with the thermostat Mine was a cook plus model , which did cooking, heating and hot water so by the time I’d boiled the kettle and made some toast it had made enough hot water for the day and warmed the bathroom.

If it takes over an hour to boil a kettle from cold there’s something drastically wrong with it. I’ve used one for 10 years on my previous boat. And yes there is a knack to using them but once you’ve got it they’re great. In fact I liked it so much I’ve just had a new one dropped onto the base plate of my new shell. They’ve built the boat round it. Much easier and cheaper than having it stripped down and rebuilt inside the boat.

Hi Gavlar youve absolutely nothing to worry about. It’s just the weed breaking down and releasing methane as it rots . It’ll be particularly prevalent in the hot weather we’re having at the moment.

If you’ve already got bitumen in your tank use it again. I think Rylards still do tank bitumen. If you want a top notch job , strip it back to bare metal and use Acothane DW two pack epoxy.

I to came up the South Stratford a few days ago and noticed the lack of mowing. But then they’ve dredged the Wilmcote flight and the all the bridge holes over the winter, it was the first time in a decade I didn’t get stuck anywhere. So I suppose you can’t have everything. A Crt chap said they’d spent a million on it.

Further to my above post. I had two 2 litre pots of paint, rather than one 4 litre. I used one 2 litre pot at a time. if you mixed a whole 4 litre pot you would never have enough time to use it in a water tank before it cured to much. Just a little tip if anyone is thinking of using it.

Another thumbs for acothane DW. Not cheap but did an excellent job. Took nearly 4 litres to do a 1350 litre bow tank. I added the activator to the pot, mixed it thoroughly then decanted it into a fresh paint kettle and mixed it again. No problem with unmixed paint. BUT you can’t hang around as the mixed product cures pretty fast.

Has anyone any hands on experience of Sandyford ranges ? I have a Heritage UNO range on my current boat which has proved excellent. So I’m looking to fit another range on my new build boat and Sandyford ranges have come up as an option and at much less cost than a Heritage. Any practical info would be very helpfull thanks

Thanks for the reply. Once I got to the Thrupp pound, levels were pretty normal. I suspect there may be a leak somewhere on the Kidlington green pound?

Thanks for the grammar correction. A schoolboy error. And English was my best subject. my draught is 2’8” when levels are more normal I bottom out in various places. So if the levels are down by a good few inches I may well find my route impassible. Not a great problem in itself but I wouldn’t want to inconvenience others by blocking the channel.

Hi Phlea yes you could that , but it would only fill the wolvercote pound and not the pound above leading to Kidlington Green lock which at 10” lower than normal.

Thanks for the reply . Being a super pedant I said I thought about reversing back down Dukes lock which is higher than Dukes cut lock. So definitely going down to the Thames even tho as you say you go up from the Wolvercote pound on to the Thames.

Left the Thames this morning via Dukes cut in a relatively deep draughted boat. Heading for Thrupp. On leaving Dukes lock it was apparent that levels were very low. I almost reversed back down the lock to go back on the Thames. Being of a positive mind I pressed on thinking it won’t be so bad. But it was a struggle and slow going to get to Kidlington Green Lock. So my thoughts are if it’s like this down here what’s it going to be like farther up? Thinking now of winding at Thrupp and having another month on the Thames and see if we get a meaningful amount of rain in the mean time. Anyone farther up at the moment that can give an indication of water levels where you are? Thank you