PeterF

Base plate has never been coated, and the 4 anodes are equally consumed, typical locations 2 at bow, 2 on rear swim.

17 year old narrowboat, 2 pack coated when new, been blacked with bitumen over that regularly to cover scratches, spent most of its life in a basin without shore power for any of the boats, original 4 anodes still have perhaps one third remaining, hardly any hull corrosion. The basin also has a good through flow of water rather than being a stagnant side basin.

The lead carbon batteries are interesting vs gel and I believe better for canal based use. I have installed a set of Leoch PLH+C100, got them for about £225 each off ebay, the seller was having a sale plus I bought them when ebay had one of their 20% off weekends. The technology is an enhanced AGM, absorption voltage is around 14.2 to 14.4V so not higher than the norm and they claim that they are good for duties called partial state of charge, I.e. not always going back to 100% charge. They also have a good charge acceptance up to 90% charged. However, as mine are now coming up to 1 year old it is too early to tell if they are meeting their claims and if I have made the right decision or not. I am very aware that if I mess things up I will loose an expensive bank, but if I get it right and they perform then I will have no battery topping up or changes for 7+ years.

That 30 Amp charger is only active when you are plugged into the shoreline and it charges from mains electricity or a generator if that is plugged into your shorepower socket. It is completely independent of the alternator and solar charging.

We have been through Tuel Lane numerous times as we have been on the Calder & Hebble / Rochdale for 13 years. We have never had an issue with BWB / CRT lock keepers and got to know a few who were the more regular ones. A couple of years ago vollies started appearing alongside the employed lock keeper and I had the experience of one getting very angry shouting at my wife at the bow. The norm is to pass the working end of the bow rope from right to left around the strop. To save passing lots of rope around the strop we pass the bitter end from left to right, same result the rope is not cross and saves faffing on. Much shouting from the volly "right to left", it was apparent he had learnt the phrase from rote but did not actually understand what was being done and why. I had to shout at him very loudly to desist and that she was doing it right at which point he cottoned on, but when we got to the top he had made himself scarce in the hut. I always dreaded finding them "helping out" after that and worry that they are now running the show. I have now relocated so will never know.

I came down Bosely a few weeks ago and encountered a volly who sounds like this, he would not maintain eye contact, did not speak and when he did speak he put his hand in front of his mouth. He clearly had issues with interacting with people and that is not ideal in a situation where clear and unambiguous communication is required. We came down without incident but there was miscommunication coming out of the next to last lock where you can not see the last lock round the corner, He had looked round the corner, muttered something to my wife from behind his hand which she thought was "wait there there is another boat coming up", so we waited and waited and when nothing came she went to check and there was no boat there just him sat with a full lock. Not critical but an indication of how problems could arise through not being clear.

I moored for may years in the basin at Brighouse ans saw many of the elegant widebeams that Sagar Marine built. Lovely boats, lots of curves, internal space not maximised due to proper bow and stern, wide gunwhales, chined hull (if I have the right descriptor). Expensive compared to the cuboid vessels under discussion here and obviously more attractive to boaters.

With butter, bacon dropped on still sizing hot and sandwich closed so it melts into the bread. Although going back to my youth, fried in the lard until crisp on the one side. As a teenager I had a pocket money job as a petrol pump attendant, the garages mechanic had a forced combustion paraffin heater to warm the workshop up and he used to cook the most amazing bacon on fried bread butties on this heater, I am sure the frying pan never saw a sink in the two years I worked there.

My shower pump is of the diaphragm type, which is a positive displacement pump which has to pump liquid forward and will creste a high pressure if restricted. Therefore, if the NRV does gum up, the pressure increases until it blows open and flow starts. On my bilge pump I have a centrifugal type (spinning disc with vanes) and these have a maximum pressure that they can develop. I had an NRV of the duck bill type in it and it gummed closed and the pump could not develop enough pressure to force it open. The same is true for a waste pipe on a sink, there is not enough pressure to force a gummed up valve to open.

On an all singing and dancing properly integrated system, when the lithiums are full, the battery management system shuts down the alternator by switching off the field current, thus safely turning the alternator off and there is no need for an LA dump battery, but for this you need an alternator with external field control and wiring. Most pragmatic lithium installs just isolate the lithium batteries from the alternator instantaneously risking a voltage spike, the LA dump battery avoids this.

We were moored up for the afternoon a few days ago with the weather alternating between bright sunshine and cool showers, the wood lining was creaking all afternoon at the joints as the steelwork of the cabin continually expanded and contracted. It was the best indication yet that there was such thermal movement.

I have aluminium chequer plate on mine, 2 sections, large section over the engine, hinged at front with gas struts, small section over the weed hatch, stern gear etc, hinged at the back. Boat came like that when I bought it 13 years ago and it has been fine. The only thing I did was to add some 6mm x 25mm neoprene sponge rubber strips on the underside where it sits on the channels so I never get any issue with rattling. And when I had the boat painted, I believe a special primer was needed on the aluminium but I have no specific details.

Plenty of Youtube videos plus How to use a clamp meter

Well the meter says it will do 400A so it is the right range, however, if you have only one battery, then that might not accept the full output of the alternator so you might not be able to determine exactly what unit you have. When taking the measurement you would need to turn all your power demands on and have the engine at more than tickover.

Fixed, A wheely bin and bread basket have been removed from the bottom of the lock. We can continue our efforts to escape Yorkshire.

Huddersfield lock 5E paddle failure The offside head paddle of Lock 5 has failed, therefore the lock cannot be emptied and passage is not possible. The local team is currently assessing the issue and we will update this notice when we have further information. Aaaaaaaagh. I was just about to start a trip from the Calder & Hebble through to the Shropshire Union. With lock 49 on the Rochdale out of action due to a blown cill (see here) and the repairs at Burnley going into mid June we currently have no open cross Pennine routes. My wife will not countenance the Tidal Trent, so I hope it is sorted soon, I will just have to start out and hope it is sorted quickly.

Yes, but in France, Germany, Spain etc. let alone USA there are millions of caravans and motor homes but no more narrowboats which skews the development costs even more.

Going back to the early 90s we got held up on the Trent & Mersey between Burton and Shardlow where a pair of narrowboats got stuck in the bridge below one of the broad locks trying to exit the empty lock together, can not remember which one. Stuck for many hours. After seeing that I never leave a broad lock at the same time as another boat.

Some marinas had terms placed on them in their planning consent limiting the number of nights stay on boats per year and have these in the T&Cs. Hire boats are different as the hirers do not stay in the marina. I recall a number of years ago someone hiring out their boat, I am sure it was not an official hire arrangement and the hirers stole it.

Looks like a float for level measurement, I have seen one lock with bottom guillotine gates that has a float in to make sure the water level is low before raising the gate at Todmorden.

Yes the baffles help as Boater Sam says to avoid a direct bypass route, but they also increase the velocity by making the flow path of lower cross sectional area, industrial heat exchangers use them extensively. Therefore, you could make your tank 4 times wider and put lots of baffles in to compensate and have a large coolant volume for no reason and a more expensive tank to boot. Keep it narrow with few baffles.

Heat transfer between a liquid and a metal surface occurs due to turbulence in the fluid continuously moving small volumes of hot fluid to the cooler steel and turbulence is generated by moving the fluid at high velocity. The best tank is one that is very thin with high velocity, but this would have a high pressure drop, so you come to a compromise, wide enough to pump fluid around but not too wide. With a very wide tank and slow flow without turbulence, the flow is laminar and only the thin layer of liquid next to the surface gets cooled down, the bulk of the fluid does not touch the surface and exits the unit uncooled. Before retirement I designed industrial heat transfer equipment.

Some quick observations. The BSS inspection is only carried out once every 4 years not annually, so unless you are including cost for remedial work you can reduce that a lot. You do not normally pay for water to fill your water tank, this is free, unless you are budgeting for some bottled water. What sort of toilet, cassette is cheap, usually free to empty, if it is pump out that is perhaps £15 to empty and if you have a smallish tank that can be every second week, so 26 times a year or with frugality and a larger tank once a month. That is boat specific. You will not get solar during the 3 winter months, so will need to pay for electric from shoreline or burn fuel in a generator or your boat engine, not sure how much to allow. If you are running your engine frequently then it will need at least an annual service, perhaps more frequently based on manufacturers recommended intervals. You could learn to do it yourself to save costs.

Are the engine and eber on separate fuel take offs from the diesel tank or do they share a common offtake. If the offtake is common and there is a partial blockage in the fuel line could the fuel suction from the engine limit diesel flow to the eber. I might be talking nonsense, but I would expect the engine fuel pump to be more effective than the one in the eber.

There was a thread a couple of months ago where someone's solar charger and alternator settings meant that when close to fully charged, the warning beep just started to sound quietly. You mentioned solar on your boat, just a thought.