PeterF

In the Boxing Day 2015 floods there was damage to the bank between the river and the pound between the two Figure of Three locks with debris swept into the canal, but as far as I recall, no damage to the locks. There have been a number of other times that the river has overtopped the bank washing gravel etc. into the canal.

Perhaps people buying hybrid boats, or gas free boats with 48V battery banks should watch this video.

Aqua Furnishings https://www.aquafurnishings.co.uk/product-category/blinds/venetian-metal-blinds/

Saw Aqua Furnishings at a boat show in the summer, quality seemed good although I was only browsing not buying. https://www.aquafurnishings.co.uk

^^^^^ This. I used them because the corners of the panels can not trap ropes with the radiused corners like some of the metal Z shaped brackets. I used Sikaflex to glue them down.

Glad to help out. I put neoprene seals on my deck boards after my damp problems and I get much less rain inside now.

Couple of years ago with damp in the cruiser stern, the auto fuses got some surface corrosion on and the unit stopped the start up sequence once it got to glow plug time, the higher current and contact resistance dropped the voltage at the control unit. New fuses and cleaned contacts with wet and dry sorted it. In June we saw a hire boat with erby problems, the call out engineer even put a whole new spare unit in to no avail. Finally found the problem, the turn around staff had not refilled the diesel tank and the level was below the erby offtake.

We also had a bottle with a leaking valve last year, as above it only leaked when turned on.

Years ago on the river in Leeds I was passing a bankside building site when I noticed we were slowing down. I looked behind and saw a large traffic cone about 100ft behind us skipping along on the surface or just below it. What was odd was that it was catching us up, a bit like the scene from Jaws. Eventually, our progress slowed right down and I had to stop mid stream. The cone had fallen in from the building site and had about 50 yards of 6mm blue polypropylene rope tied into it, the polypropylene merrily wrapping itself around the prop shaft into a tight ball occluding the prop as we proceeded. I cut the cone off and managed to get to the shore where we could tie up and then get the ball of rope off.

There was an article in Waterways World a month or two back on this very subject, they lived on the boats as they did them up iirc. Find a copy, you could always contact them to discuss their experience.

I had to tow a cruiser out of the shallow offside of Billinge Green Flash on the northern Trent & Mersey in October. When I pulled over to him to get the line across, he said "I saw this wide bit so I got my phone out to read an email".

Turn the lpg off at the bottles and if there is any chance of them moving and tugging on the hose tails restrain them or disconnect them.

It could also be leaking non return valve on either the pump suction or discharge if it has these fitted, they are often just rubber flap or nozzle types that can split, perish or have a bit of crud in.

No, I am afraid that the "calories" that you use for food measure are in actual fact Kilo-calories so you would have to run the thingy for an extra 30,000 minutes or 21 days. This goes to show that if you could invent the sausage roll powered narrowboat then you would be well in and Greg's share price would rocket.

Sorry no, 4.186W raises 1 cc of water through 1 degC in 1 sec. The specific heat capacity of water is 4,186 Joules per kg per degC, so 4.186 Joules per cc per degC. I believe that you are confusing it with calories, the specific heat capacity is 1 calorie per cc per degC.

I just noticed they only do P type, some external regulators can be bought in both flavours, my alternator is P type. I have the 614 regulator, faff to program but very flexible. You could argue that it may not need the BMV to dhut it down as it has a proper float setting, so use that to limit the charge and then use the BMV as overcharge protection isolating ignition to the Balmar.

I do not know the answer to that. What I do know is with Balmar regulator you could set the voltage down to 13.9V and set a float at 13.2. You would need to disable the voltage regulator in the alternator to go that low. The Balmar regulator also monitors the alternator temperature and reduces field (and hence charge) current if it gets too hot. You can also limit the maximum field current to effectively derate the alternator output. You can install a relay on the ignition line to the Balmar regulator driven by the BMV to turn the alternator field current off when the BMV requests rather than needing a dump battery. However, this is getting well away from the cheap BMS idea, but if I was specifying a full Victron type system, this is how I would handle the alternator, rather than using an LA dump battery.

See on line press report. Link. Does not look completed in this photo.

I spoke to a narrowboater who had just had a new boat built and he had bought a set of magnetic navigation lights to save a bit of money. No idea of the details, just a nugget of info I stored away.

Weighed 4 x 110Ah leisure and 1 x starter battery in earlier in the year, about 135kg, got 50p/kg = £67.50

You will need many more charging points than water points, we can go up to 10 days between water, but normally do 7, and I expect that daily water refills of half an hour are not common.

I checked mine by removing it from the pipework (I have a valve to isolate the sensor) and then connected some clear plastic hose I had lying around to the sensor, then I could add water with a kitchen jug and test it and recalibrate it by filling the hose to the same height as the water tank. I had to wind some insulating tape around the hose to get the outside diameter to match the pipe. Washed it out with clean water afterwards and refitted.

Lead carbon batteries that we are talking about are AGM batteries with the negative plates tweaked by using a lead carbon "alloy". These are the Leoch, Northstar and Victron types. Trojan are now marketing a lead carbon flooded deep cycle battery for solar and off grid for PSOC applications. Therefore, in my view, these are not new chemistries, or all new types, but just incremental changes to normal batteries. One thing that is perhaps making people cautious is the history of the Elecsol carbon batteries which failed to meet their promises. These had something to do with carbon fibre, I can not recall their details, but I believe the lead carbon is totally different.

The scientific papers that I have briefly looked at state that the addition of carbon affects the surface of the negative electrode at the microscopic level which promotes the formation of smaller lead sulphate crystals during discharge and the smaller the crystals, the easier they are to convert back to lead during charging. By reducing the build up of large lead sulphate crystals, which are the ones which are harder to reconvert to lead, irreversible sulphation is reduced. The reaction remains the same, the carbon appears to create a physical disruption to the surface which affects the crystal nucleation and growth which shows it is not all about the reaction only.

Or for an end of jetty mooring so you have an open view on one side of the boat.