Sea Dog

Bathams!

Amen to that! Sounds like you hae a pretty much ideal set up. My engine has a very nicely located drain cock, so draining everything above that point is a breeze..... but the skin tank is another matter.

Moor near a pub and in walking distance of provisions; put off mooring in the middle of nowhere until your more experienced and confident. Get to know your stove well so you can keep it in 24/7.

Pretty sure there'll be a drain cock on the OP's Beta 38 since Beta put one on the 43 - the manual will clear that up. Drain cock in the skin tank or bottom hose (more rubber joints to weep though perhaps) might be handy, but how will it get all the coolant out? The bottom of most skin tanks is probably the bottom plate of the boat, in which case a hose will need to come off to suck or free drain the last bit anyway, won't it? A wee bit more detail on that idea may be useful, Ditchy.

Just put Cauliflower - everyone here will know that you mean Calorifier! My Beta 43 has a drain cock, low down on the right hand side. If you don't have a Beta 38 manual, they are available free online via their website. Once you've drained down the engine (and thus everything higher than the drain cock), empty the skin tank using your pump via the top hose connection or drain from the bottom one. This is the cold, messy, hangy upside downy bit of an otherwise easy enough job which reminds you how nice it would be if you could remember to change your antifreeze in the summer!

Google "Silky RX". It comes on a 65g container with a big 65 on it, but the RX works best in the search engine. I got mine in Midland Chandlers, who also have an Internet shop. It was about 7 quid iirc, and it comes in a small plastic bottle, so I can't imagine the postage being outrageous if you can't find a local supplier. Dosage is 1 teaspoonful a month into the holding tank (so it lasts about a year), and they recommend a double dose to start things off. It's small dissolvable granules, so just sprinkle into the pan, erm, when there's something else in there, and they'll flush through the macerator and into the tank without problem. It claims to dissolve solid deposits and I believe that as it quickly restored my duff tank gauge sender to reliable working order. Whether that covers your requirement for a descaler, I'm not sure. Hope that helps.

Since you said your coolant had a blue tinge, if your concentration is insufficient according to your tester, add concentrated blue antifreeze. This is both antifreeze and anti corrosion. You may need to drain some existing coolant out to add it. Dispose of this old coolant as advised earlier.

The centre line is a handling line: if to use it to moor, it will cause your boat to roll each time the line comes under tension. That advice doesn't help you to get a secure mooring at your short pontoon, but it will give you a more comfortable mooring wherever else you do moor. As for your current conundrum, anything do will be sub-optimal to mooring on a pontoon long enough for your boat, so I'd be looking for a mooring better suited to your length. Ideally, your stern and bow lines would run at 45 degrees in the 'longer than the boat' direction. Now, you are where you are, and you're never going to cure the issue using the head rope alone as it's got 20' of the wrong angle and wrong direction going on! To make the best of what you have, you need somewhere else to attach a line to, which could be your fender attachment points IF they're strong enough and at gunwale height (there's little point removing one line high up only to add another). Now Google mooring 'springs' to see how these are attached and run. They're not what the name suggests, they're simply mooring ropes configured in a way to control the movement of a moored boat. It won't be wasted research - they'll be helpful in many mooring scenarios and can also be used for boat handling, such as "springing off". There's nothing like local knowledge so, as someone already suggested, have a look what others in your situation have done. Do allow that they may also not have the best solution though! Edited to add that you posted you'd fixed it whilst I was typing! Oh well, there may be something useful to someone in the above

Silky 65 enzyme treatment.

This morning I asked whether the water had risen enough (as seemed to be on the cards) for everyone to be back on their boats and thus for everyone, particularly the old boy, to be OK. Half a day and another page of posts later, we're no wiser as to whether rising water levels have eased the predicament, all we know is that the argument has deepened. Go figure, as the Americans would say.

How did it go Peterboat? Did you get sufficient water last night to get him aboard?

You also need to consider that the height you can get away with will diminish towards the sides when you're going through arches. This profile constraint is not the same for all bridges and tunnels.

Day doo doh, don't dey doh!

Fair call about the tatties, OG! There's a fine line between quick fix and a bodge though, and one just as thin between the effort required to do a job and to do a job well. The Engineer in me won't allow me to stop short of doing things right, but there's usually more than one way to skin a cat.

Oh, that's useful to know - added to my Xmas list too! Many thanks lads!

A separate skin fitting is an easy fix really. A u bend under the sink will prevent draughts and blow back, and there's no danger of mud off your potatoes (or whatever goes down your gallery plug hole) ending up in the shower pump or your shower tray because it free drains straight over the side. Leaving the sink and shower pump linked together and then messing about with loops, etc, just bodges the initial bodge in my opinion. Fix it right; fix it once.

Crikey, at 11 quid a bag, I'm not surprised!

Or you could gemmy open the coin box, and simply recycle the coins in there too, I suppose. If you don't do more damage to the machine than the melt water does and you resist the temptation to pocket the coins you don't reuse, you're probably not really being very naughty at all. Your dad taught you that? Who was he, Norman Stanley Fletcher?

What I meant was, if your genny is 1.5kW and your using 800 watts to power the 'stuff' you put the genny on for, there's only 700 watts left so you can't put your immersion on too. Since you have now told us you have a 6kva genny, it'll power your immersion too as long as you aren't running 5kw of kit. That seems unlikely, so the easy way to heat your water whilst the genny is on is to simply use its spare electrical capacity which saves a lot of faffing with new plumbing and changeover valves. However, since you've also now mentioned it's keel cooled, I can certainly see why you're asking.

Then he'll be changing it in January You're right, of course, Chewy, another couple of months will make little difference as long as the antifreeze concentration is right.

Be fair Howard, you missed the bit about also using it to check his anodes. Many's the morning when I've had to miss an anode inspection due to the lack of appropriate tools.

You haven't said what your generator output is, but your immersion element is likely to be 1kw. The obvious thing to do is to switch on the immersion element whilst the generator is running with sufficient spare capacity to run it. I guess you must have thought of that before exploring something so much more complex so, to inform the debate, what's your generator output and your power usage?

Too right it is Joe - we have a seriously wobbly table!

I had an abortive attempt earlier in the year when I couldn't change my mooring from where we'd been the year before last and even when I left the mooring as it was it still failed. Left it a month til the licence was due within a day of two and it worked seamlessly first time. Not everything goes perfectly first time but, to CRT's credit, they put it right pdq.