Col_T

Just for clarity, deionised water is not the same thing as distilled water.

Probably not harmful to the piling, but what about the canal bottom?

Many thanks, both.

Thanks, Tony. The battery thing - presumably the rest of the bank would keep the battery with the 12v circuit 'topped up', so would that reduce the wear on that battery?

The domestic batteries in our boat (5 off 110Ah) each have two pairs of terminals (one pair +ve, the other pair -ve), and they are interlinked (paralleled) to be a 12v, 550Ah bank. If I connected them in series I would get a 60v, 110Ah bank. However, if I connected a circuit to the unused +ve and -ve on a single battery, I think that I would get 12v from that pair of terminals. Correct? I don't understand alternators in the slightest, other than that spinning a coil of copper wire in a magnetic field will generate electricity. So, what is it in the build that determines whether the output is 12v, or 24v or something else - length of copper windings, diameter of the copper wire, strength of magnets, speed of rotation, what??

Er, freeze it?

Do you really mean "explosively"??

Not sure I really get that - the important thing is that the advice is being shared, surely?

Nah, whales - they like a community. It'd be headed for the K & A and Bath!

The UK Civil Service have a long and glorious history of overly prescriptive regulation from way, way before our joining the EU. Planning and farming / animal welfare being two obviously us examples.

Thanks folks. We're going with not sealing the top surface - for now, that is!

So, the board has arrived, and the edges have been sealed with three coats of West System epoxy which wraps around onto both the top and bottom surfaces. Lady-wife and I are now discussing whether the whole of the top of the board, with a textured surface, should also be sealed. My immediate thought was that the textured surface should be weather proof - the board will be the lid to the front locker - but I really don't know for sure. So, seal the whole of the top surface or not?

How much notice was given of this impending change?

Would this be before you did the survey, or as a result of a survey you had just completed? If before, the survey would not be of the boat in an 'as used' condition, which rather undermines the value of the survey?

Likewise with the survey he did on our purchase. Extremely helpful.

Not if it's been relegated to the back of a kitchen cupboard!! ?

It sounds like @johnmck has what might be termed a 'rolling contract'. It states an initial period, does not state a definite end date, and does include a notice period. This type of contract is often used where the service provided may well extend beyond the initial contract period, and removes any need to renew the contract at the end of the initial period. Often used by mobile phone companies.

We have solar panels on the roof at home, together with a data logger, installed in 2012. When new, I looked at the data multiple times a day, and even wrote a program that extracted the highest output and lowest output days, and went through each day of data calculating the lowest , and highest, possible outputs. The program, and associated data files, didn't survive the last computer upgrade and I look at the box maybe once a month. Probably not worth getting, and I didn't get the data logger for the MT50 on the boat!

Know, knot in the sly test.

@Tony Brooks - what is a "trot", please?

Good info.

As someone that has never used nail varnish, would you mind expanding upon this, please?

I wonder whether those are narrowboat prices, not widebeam.