PeterF

Kegworth deep lock was moved but not far when works were done on the River Soar, I am not sure if any others were moved or just rebuilt.

As noted above, Vactan is based on tannic acid and the reaction with rust forms ferric tannate (iron tannate) which is a dark blue colour. Sometimes if you work oak with steel or wire wool the tannins in the oak react to form ferric tannate which discolours the oak or if you get rusty water on your oak. The remedy for this is the application of oxalic acid as this 'bleaches' the ferric tannate. I have used oxalic acid on my hatch liners when rust water got on them with some success. I have no idea if oxalic acid would work for you given that the colour is bound up in a polymer film. I also have no idea what oxalic acid would do to the paint.

Based on my recent new build, the suppliers fall into 2 groups, some build the shell and fit out (boat builder), others are just fitters and they source the shell for you and fit this out. I have not come across any that fit out a shell that you have sourced, I am not saying that they do not exist, I just did not look for this supply arrangement. In terms of payments, the boat fitter I dealt with took a nominal £1,500 deposit when we signed the contract then stage payments in arrears. The first after the shell was delivered. The second when after spray foam insulation, first fix electrics and plumbing installed and lining out where complete. The third when the engine and galley were installed. The fourth after the boat was completed and lifted into the water. The final one was post snagging. The contract also stated that once paid, I owned the boat to that stage. Financially, I had no issues apart from COVID lockdowns extending the build time and delaying the time between boat completion and launch because we were in lockdown during that time, but it did add an extra amount of concern at the time. Beware builders who ask for large up front payments, there are many horror stories of builders in financial straits using up front payments on one boat to pay for their purchases on the previous boat, not as they should. When these go bankrupt you have nothing and have lost your money. It is often said that if you are having a new build and can not afford to loose the money then it could be very risky. Choose your builder well and do as much due diligence as you can. ps. We had boated for ~40 years before the new build on parents boats, hire boats and our own so we knew exactly what we liked based on experience.

A boat just passed me with the licence number 70***.

Checked with my tablet and phone and got 2.5Mbs which is lower than I recall last year.

I get moderate / reasonable signal with Smarty (uses Three network) at Aqueduct, Teltonika RUTX11 with an EAD LMO7270 – 4G LTE antenna. I will see if I can remember to check the download speed tomorrow.

A picture claimed to be from 14 years ago (23 Feb 2008) can be found here https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/701351, not copying and pasting as copyrighted. Perhaps the walkway has been made wider.

The walkway on the inside of the lower gates at Elland lock has been there as long as I have moored on the C&H which was 2006 as far as I can recall. However, I left the C&H a couple of years a go so not sure if there has been any mods since then. The locals cross that lock frequently and just having the upper one as a walkway left them without a crossing for a few minutes occasionally. The walkway would make it more difficult for a long wide beam or pair of narrowboats. It should be less of an issue for a single long narrowboat. As far as I recall on the C&H locks going up, you could usually move the boat forward as the level cleared the cill so that the stern then came out from under the walkway and vice versa for going down. After mooring on the C&H for close to 15 years, the boat we had built last year was 58ft in case we ventured back again.

Notice Alert Middlewich Branch (Shrop Union) Location: Navigation Closure - Lock 4, Cholmondeston Lock Starts At: Lock 4, Cholmondeston Lock Ends At: Lock 4, Cholmondeston Lock Monday 18 April 2022 19:00 until further notice Type: Navigation Closure Reason: Structure failure Original message: Please be advised navigation is currently closed at Lock 4, Cholmondeston Lock on the Shropshire Union, Middlewich Branch due to paddles failing. Our local team have been informed and will be back on-site tomorrow. To ensure the safety of our customers, padlocks have been placed on the Lock to prevent it from being used. An update will be provided tomorrow morning 19 April 2022. You can view this notice and its map online here: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/notice/21977/navigation-closure-lock-4-cholmondeston-lock- You can find all notices at the url below: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/notices

Read the battery charging primer for key information on charging batteries. Battery charging primer

Last year moored up at Hassal Green overnight, next morning my wife was prepping the lock to go down as I was pulling out, historic boat comes along, blowing hooter and takes the lock. We followed them all the way to Middlewich. They finally apologised to us, said they thought I was pulling out to take their lock but had not realised the lady working the lock was with me. A pity that they did not take the time to find out.

Yes my wife is just about to get her NHS pension based on 1/80ths and has to take the lump sum which is in addition, when I started my company pension based on 1/60ths I was offered lump sum, but took it all as income as we did not want a reduction.

Aluminium venetian blind, our has one above / behind the cooker and passed BSS.

The trouble with the inverter low voltage shutdown as you have found out is that a single value is not very good. It needs to allow for voltage drop in the batteries and voltage losses in the battery to inverter cables when under a heavy load, but this means that if the units is only supplying a small load, or self consumption then it can take the batteries down to a very low level. I have left my inverter (same model as yours) at the default settings. You could increase the low voltage cut off, but that may cause a premature shutdown when the inverter is supplying large loads. In terms of the number of batteries, 3 is the minimum I would have for a 3000VA inverter and preferably 4. The power audit is a calculation of what power you take from the batteries during a typical day on the boat so you can assess what capacity of battery bank you need. You might like to do a summer / winter / best case / worst case to look at the range.

Its an inverter/ charger Multiplus type device, so it would have been running as a charger until shore failed when it became an inverter depleting the batteries, even the standby current could deplete the batteries over weeks. As Tony says, when you leave the boat, set the inverter to charge only.

If by Eurocruiser the OP means one of the designs with the square stern then that will have an impact on the maximum length on the shorter northern locks as they are based on curved sterns, the cills on the Calder & Hebble are curved so going down forwards the boat will not be able to use the full length and going up forwards the gates might not be able to close due to the corners not being rounded off.

You can only combine panels in series if they have the same or close Imp (max power current) or in parallel if they have the same or close Vmp (max power voltage). If they do not match then the combined set up will not harvest both panels and you could end up worse off as the lowest rated panel could pull the max power down to match it.

Think you are getting your pounds and pence mixed up. If an ad view is 0.18 pence with 3 ads in the video, then that is 0.54 pence, first sentence correct. If there are 100,000 views of a vid then that is 54,000 pence which is £540 if they have 3 ads per video. Not all of them insert mid video adverts and only have the ones at the start, so income is £180 for a 100,000 view video.

For our first boat we knew we were going to be based on Calder & Hebble, we were looking at a 55ft and a 57ft. The owner of the mooring said to go with the 55ft and I am glad because that 2ft difference made life much less fraught on that canal and much drier feet in Salterhebble locks. Just better to have a bit of room to spare.

We stopped there in September last year, no troubles at all, quite a few boats moored on the offside on permanent moorings at what I believe used to be a hire base.

We had a hire boat go passed us on the L&L at 2000rpm but moving slower than tickover with hardly any water movement around the stern of the boat. Shouted at them to pull in as they had something on the prop. When i helped get them.in and started they had a whole 10m of rope in a ball around the prop. The boat had bow and stern lines but no middle line. I asked them about this and they said they had lost their stern rope and moved the middle one to the stern. Never linked the higher revs and slow progress to the loss of the rope. To quote one of the crew "so that is where it went".

I got my new build in the water April 2021, lockdowns meant it was 7-8 months late the majority of the purchasing was completed before end 2020. During the final few visits the builder said he was having to start ramping up costs significantly for those in build during 2021 and those on the books but unstarted. My son runs a business using MDF as the main raw material, this has rocketed in price and sourcing it has become a nightmare.

Did whoever serviced the engine turn off the diesel isolation valve while they changed the fuel filter and then did not turn it back on again. I know this is odd because the filter would not have been bled in that case and most people servicing know to bleed the system afterwards.

Should have said sold it in 2020 (18 years old).

We had a 40hp engine in a 2002 boat, Yanmar based, sold it in 2000 running well. Only issue we had was that it ate fan belts because it had a single belt for both alternators and water pump but they stopped building them like that years ago.