Tony Brooks

In at typical narrowboat the Mikuni should be baled to do both at the same time, heat the hot water and heat the radiators. There may be valves that allow you to turn the radiators off in the summer and/ or select rads, hot water, both. If you have a shoreline to keep the batteries charged, then not running the engine would be best in most people's eyes because it reduces the wear on an expensive item. With no shoreline, we are in or approaching the time of year when solar is unlikely to provide enough charge, especially as the Mikuni uses electricity all the time it is running, so the chances are that you will have to run the engine.

So in your eyes this post, that you made, does not talk about gross personal insults. "Someone who makes that allegation is guilty of delivering a gross personal insult to Tony Brooks. " Your own published words. I will leave others to decide whether, in context with your previous post, you said what I claimed you said or not. Interpersonal spats, continually instigated by a very few members, are not or have not been an everyday accordance on his forum until fairly recently (political section excluded). In fact, two of the recent members seem to me to be hell-bent on making this forum like Thunderboat. with personal insults and lies about people being an everyday occurrence.

There you go again, tying to exaggerate and misrepresent what I said. Where is the word "gross" in my post? Once again, it was not there, so is a lie. I do not have to prove anything. You are the one making allegations, so it is up to you to prove those allegations are true, it is not for me to disprove them. That is how it would work in a court. If I were to lodge a complaint about your conduct, I would be perfectly happy to let your posts speak for themselves when the mods looked at them. Even if we took that 50% as a true proportion of posts, which I don't, if one looks at those who actually posts the proportion of active members is far, far less. His claim of 50% just looks like more trolling and in that respect, having been a member of that form almost since day 1, it is clear to me that the drop in active members has been caused by a very few who seem to delight in stirring up problems and continue to do so. Rather like two of the frequent posters on this topic, with form for similar behaviour in other topics as well.

That is where the relative prices come into the equation. It depends on upon what you define as a risk. The financial loss if the boat was stolen is likely to be greater, but the likelihood although small is not zero as the link I posted shows. The danger of mar damage or a total write-off would be greater for the van because narrowboats are very tough things, whereas a modern vehicle has been deliberately designed with crumple zones for safety and thin gauge steel & plastic for lightness and economy, so the danger of significant accidental damage must be far higher.

Simply because yet again you are making claims about other people's motives that you have no way of verifying - in other words projecting your thoughts onto others, aka lying. This is very clearly shown by your point 2. If you do not think that you are lying (and trolling) then post the actual proof to substantiate your allegations about me, because at present I would suggest that you seem to be breaking at last one forum rule. In fact, if you prove to be unable to substantiate this and your other erroneous claims about me, I will have to think about complaining to the mods.

So is that an admission that you are trolling I wonder?

Who ever has the relative cost correct, the fact remains, in my view, that once the practicalities are considered and steps are taken to mitigate possible problems/dangers this proposal may well not look as attractive as it did when the OP posted. Remember, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php%3F/topic/20757-stolen-narrowboat/page/4/&ved=2ahUKEwiTzKXCqIaJAxXGZ0EAHUn7Je4QrAIoAHoECBYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2von-RFXHcHFLXzmXJycuY if anyone is seriously considering this swap, and that is not the only one.

Now go and read my post again and perhaps apologise for lying about it. All I said was that others may find other topics more interesting. I take it you do understand "others". Others does not indicate one person, it indicates an unspecified number of people. I also mentioned, as examples, boat handling and general boating questions. Please respond to what has been written if you are able, and not to what you wish had been written.

So extremely unlikely that the chances may be considered as zero. Especially as you will, presumably, be using the fuel for heating and elect city generating once in the marina, so that could be a perfectly valid split.

Still a big difference between that and "a nice, well equipped Narrowboat in good condition" as requested by the OP. We also have no idea about its age and mileage, both of which affect the second hand price. My son recently bought a fairly new Fiat based van and paid nothing like that, and it was from a dealer. The point is that it seems a very one-sided proposal, especially as money changing hands opens up another can of worms insurance, licence and BSS wise. It seems it would cost just shy of £900 to hire such a van for a week in June 2025 while a nice narrowboat from Napton Narrowboats would cost between £1500 and well over £2000 for a similar period. It cuts the other way too, it is very unlikely that the boat would suffer serious damage, it is far more likely that the van would have an accident and get written off. However careful the driver may be there are too many prats on the road to be sure that would not happen.

So possibly a "Fred in a shed" DIY marinisation. If so, the only way we can give an opinion is if we can see a photo of the pipework on and around the engine. If we assume the installer has used the take-offs for a vehicle cab heater then plumbing things to take off from that plug is likely to delay the domestic water warm up by perhaps 10 to 15 minutes or so because the coolant in the manifold would not really start to get hot until the thermostat opened.

Have you thought about the insurance implications for both parties? There is also a question about if the boat licence would be valid if the owner is getting the use of the vehicle, CaRT might consider that as hiring, but it is very unlikely that they would take any action. As far as the boat is concerned, the owner would have to be satisfied that you are competent to handle it at the very least and no money could be part of the arrangement. I doubt that the vehicle insurance would cover anyone not named on the policy. You also seem to be proposing swapping the use of the van that is maybe valued around £20,000 for a boat costing about ten times that much. I am sure you are absolutely genuine, but boat owners have lost their boats when doing this sort of thing in the past, so many will be very wary. Good luck and I hope you can organise it.

To you, possibly. Others may find fault-finding, boat handling or general boating question of far more interest.

Pleased it was a simple fix. As we don't know the make and model of the engine, only the manifold, and you have at least two water pumps on a boat (engine and domestic water), both of which could be said to connect to the calorifier, I have no idea about exactly what you are trying to describe. Calorifiers have two pipes connected to the engine or very close to the engine. One, the return, normally connects to a pipe running to the engine water pump inlet. The other, the hot feed, usually connects to the cylinder head area. Unless the mariniser has fitted a separate calorifier thermostat where ever that connection is, it will be into the cooling system on the engine side of the thermostat. Some come out of the base of the thermostat housing (below the thermostat valve), some from the cylinder head itself, and I think some from the engine cylinder block. You must have two pipes because if you did not the engine could not heat any water.

Do stud bulkheads ring a bell?

As far as I am concerned, no it does not, simply because I can't see where the pipes run to. In fact, it looks as if there are no low level take off pipes. It also looks as if the photo may be gunnel level upwards, with some kind of shelf hiding any pipework below. If it is not a shelf, but the "baseplate" then it looks as if there might be a horizontal skin tank sat on the baseplate, but the photo does not show enough of the pipework and where it runs to. However, the pipe running to the fitting in the "floor" near the red valve looks a bit small for a typical main cooling pipe. The only way to answer the original question is for someone to physically trace the pipes and draw a diagram

I know, but the way the OP latched onto this gizmo that may need resetting made me think my answer may set him chasing another unlikely problem. I meant to also say that if the VSR is a bidirectional one, then it would energise in your scenario, but I got distracted.

@agew this is now a general technical discussion, so don't take too much notice of it for now. Ah, on a totally BSS compliant boat or a pragmatic one. If the boat is fully BSS compliant then, no it would not, but so far the engine is starting, so even if it is wired that way it is not an immediate issue and not the problem. As the charging circuit would be open circuit (apart from any domestic loads) there will not be much or any magnetic field in the stator it can't collapse as it would if the alternator was charging and then open circuited, so it can't produce the voltage spike. This means damage to the alternator is very unlikely. If the boat is wired as many are, that is with the alternator connected to the battery side of the master switch, then the VSR would work. It is also vital that the "master" or sensing terminal on the VSR is connected to the battery the alternator is connected to. This answer is a good example of how not being in possession of the full facts makes help and diagnosis difficult and often involves much more of "if this then that, but if this then the other" text, it all takes time.

Please, please forget this magic gizmo and resetting idea. I am sure that was posted to be helpful, but the accompanying comments on battery voltage calls that advice very much into question. Don't write it off totally, but for now forget it and concentrate on the far more likely causes, which are the domestic battery isolator switch - especially if it has a plastic removable key, and then the battery terminals and interlink cables. Clean the mating surfaces of the terminal to bright metal before refitting them. If by chance the interlink cables are fixed into the battery clamps by two screws, then make sure those screws are tight and the cable strands are well clamped. Note, this is unlikely because it is a BSS fail The fact that you got the domestic system working suggests that there is at least a 50%* chance that the VSR is working perfectly, and they DO NOT need to reset. They close when they see perhaps 13.6 ish volts and open again when the voltage drops below this. *The 50% chance comes from the fact that most instructions for wiring VSRs do not say move the alternator supply to the domestic bank. This means there is a good chance the alternator charges the engine alternator and the VSR then transfers the charge to the domestic bank, hence, the domestics working when the alternator is charging suggest that the VSR was doing its job.

Perfect sense. Probably a DV36 like mine. Unfortunately, my workshop manual went with the boat, but feel free to ask about anything you may want to know. They are very smooth engines because they have a large flywheel at the front and internal balance weights. I think they were supplied with an Aquadrive shaft coupling and softer than normal engine mounts. Both of these help to minimise vibration, as well as the flywheel and balance weights.

Well done. At least you have a proper marine engine, rather than a converted van or tractor engine. It may well outlast you. I would love to know which Bukh it is (photo if you are not sure). I had a Bukh DV36 in my 54ft narrowboat and although it smokes a bit on idle and at low seed (seems a n feature of that engine) it never missed a beat in over 20 years of my ownership - and it had over 10 years in a hire fleet before that.

Especially when their posts suggest that their depth and breadth of knowledge does not fit them to pass comment on other people's posts OR their motivation for posting. In that respect, I think they are judging others by their own motivations.

At the risk of being political, this is what you get when you choose to outsource to, presumably, the cheapest provider rather than stick with one that at least used to be government owned and doing very important work for government agencies.