PeterF

It was mostly in response to the suggestions to check the cooker or parts of it.

A major clue is in here, the test point read 37 with the cooker off, but 4 with the cooker on, therefore the blockage is not in the cooker valves or jets, the blockage is between the T piece on the main feed pipe and the test point. If it was a blockage on the cooker, the cooker would not have let gas out and the pressure would have stayed at 37.

Well, when I had to jump onto a single handers boat to take the engine out of gear because he had got off to moor up with the middle rope while it was still in gear. If he had tried getting on he would have relaxed the rope and it would have moved further from the bank. Explains the need for a big reg light with the words, "do not disembark until neutral is selected" on it.

Going back into my memory from working in the 1980s, we could buy steel reactors that had been spray coated with PTFE, the steel surface was very rough and the PTFE was heat treated afterwards to ensure a good bond. I recall the salesman had samples of the coated steel about 2" x 6" that had been the coating mechanically separated from half of the plate to let you see if you could peel off the remaining half. Never could. PTFE lining would be very immune to canal water (we carried out reactions with boiling concentrated hydrochloric acid in it) and when entering a tight lock, you would just glide in.

Welding heavy weight stainless can leave a lot of residual stress in the weld / heat affected zone and some stainless steels are prone to stress corrosion cracking. Not sure if this could be the issue. Re the brittleness point above, that applies to the ferritic stainless steels, the 400 series, the 300 series austenitic alloys are not prone to brittleness.

I worked in the chemical industry and this reminded me of explosively bonded plate where we would have high strength carbon steel plate, maybe 30mm or more thick to provide the strength to resist the high pressure inside the equipment and have it clad with perhaps 3mm of stainless steel for corrosion protection. The 2 layers of steel were clean and flat and the StSt sheet placed on top with a layer of controlled burn explosive, which when set off bonded the 2 sheets together. For thick walled equipment it could be cheaper than building it from solid StSt. Welding was an issue to avoid cross contamination either way and exposed edges would need the carbon steel buttering with StSt weld overlay. It would probably be more expensive for boat thickness plates than using stainless for the hull.

Photos here to help the OP out as their link did not appear properly. Corrected link

The Thetford web page for the 565 says they do not sell the holding tank separately. Thetford 565. Where can I buy a spare holding tank for my Porta Potti? Sorry, the tank is not available separately. So you can't buy a spare holding tank for your Porta Potti.

I think that we are talking grit blasting, my boat builder talks about needing to clean out a residue of garnet after the boat has been blasted. To the layman it is all shot blasting even if it is grit blasting.

I have heard second hand that Colecraft may now have shot blasting facilities, they were apparently testing equipment 18 months ago. You may like to confirm this though rather than relying on what is now third hand information.

Only way over the Pennines would be the Leeds and Liverpool when it opens in July with Calder and Hebble shut all year. Very long way around.

Mine are very close to 90cm as standard kitchen units with 3cm worktop fit flush under the gunwhale.

Two Hoots, last year's winner was on a Colecraft shell.

I have also worked on ammonia production plants, emergency evacuation respirators were located in strategic positions around the plants in case of leaks from the process. Nobody on the plant was allowed to wear a beard in case you needed to use an emergency evacuation mask, contact lenses were similarly proscribed as any ammonia in the air could dissolve into the moisture on your eyeballs and with contacts emergency eye baths would not flush it out. Every so often we would go for respirator training and we would be put into a wooden shed after putting our masks on and then someone would inject a bit of ammonia into the shed, you soon knew if you had not got your mask on.

I used to work for the company that made the stenching agent for natural gas, which contained hydrogen sulphide, and if you breathe in higher concentrations such as can form in a closed environment, then the hydrogen sulphide desensitises your olfactory nerves and at high concentration the deadening of the sense of smell is instantaneous so you do not smell it. For that reason personal gas detectors were worn as we could not rely on smelling a leak.

The galley photo appears to show a lift up flap, there is a vertical section of worktop with aluminium edging under the gunnel, it appears to be hinged to the main worktop by the end of the sink / fridge.

As I said on another thread, my boat went on brokerage just before lockdown, it sold earlier this week on the first day the brokerage opened for viewings and no silly under priced offer either. There is pen up demand for boats, people appear to have identified what they want to look at during lock down.

As an example, when cables 1 and 2 are disconnected there is no current flow, assume the fuse has a high resistance for some reason, as there is no current flowing through it it has no voltage drop, so you read approximately 13V at point A. Now you connect up something with a current draw, the solar controllers, a lamp for example, now there is some current flow through the fuse, therefore, the fuse will have a voltage drop due to the high resistance and you will only read 3V say at point A, B or C because 10V is being lost over the fuse. With your readings, with everything connected, you are measuring 3V on the busbars, therefore your high resistance is somewhere between the batteries and the busbars. You add a load and start with the multimeter on the batteries, then move one step at a time from battery terminal -ve to the +ve crimp, then fuse input, then fuse output, then crimp at the +ve busbar. If at some point the voltage drops then you have found the length with the high resistance in. If you do not find it then put the +ve multimeter back to the battery +ve terminal and work along the negative route.

Our boat went on brokerage the day before lockdown, today was the first day the Marina was open for viewings and the boat has sold, there seems to be pent up demand waiting to be unleashed. We were worried that there would be a very slow restart to sales or chancers making ridiculously low offers.

A theoretical question, if there was a sudden rupture of a hose or ejection of a core plug creating a cloud of steam in the engine bay, could the steam then displace enough air that the combustion of the diesel in the engine was prevented, thus the engine stopped, which in such a case may occur before any overheating damage occurs. It would then be able to be restarted easily, although running like this will end in tears.

I have the water and the fuel gauges fitted, both work very well and have done for over 13 years.

If your water outlet is at the bottom then you can still fit a pressure sensor type of level gauge such as this one, there are other suppliers. You need to add a T piece into the section between the tank and the pump, unless you have a second unused connection. This will read an increasing depth of water as the tank fills, the only thing is that the volume of water will not be linear with depth as the shape of the tank changes, however that is probably not too much of an issue.

Latest boaters new just out states that licences are going to be extended by 1 month due to inability to use boats. Quoting from the update Boaters update ....So today as an interim measure we are extending all licences that are due to expire at the end of April by one month to run until the end of May. All other current boat licences will be similarly extended by a month from their current expiry date. I urge you to continue to renew licences – we will look at the situation again in a month’s time when we hope that the full extent of the disruption will be much clearer.

You can get specific double pole solar isolators for high DC voltages such as https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/32A-2-POLE-4-POLE-1000VDC-TRUE-DC-ENCLOSED-ROTARY-ISOLATOR-IP66-SOLAR-PV/172752383221 or https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Solar-Panel-Isolator-SALZER-D221-83200-700N1-32A-450V-to-20A-650V/121912721002 However, they are quite large..

Or the Victron Colour Control GX or Victron Venus GX for those of us who have never home baked a raspberry PI.