phantom_iv

Makes sense. I'm not convinced Hydrogen has a future in boats though. Fit a 100kw battery pack and you've pretty much got a week's cruising before needing a refill. If you can recharge that in 20 mins while filling up with water then it doesn't seem so unrealistic - and without all the faff of storage and distribution of compressed hydrogen, and can you imagine the BSS inspection for your hydrogen install? I'd feel much safer with a stack of batteries in a cupboard.

I can’t help but think if petrol cars were introduced today everyone would think the idea was a non-starter because of all the refineries, filling stations, pipelines, tankers etc you’d have to build and run.

I was comparing the base spec - there was a bigger battery pack in 2012 too ? Regarding battery longevity, I was talking to a guy at my local tip last week (that's as close to socialising as we're allowed right now!) who had a Prius from about 2005-ish, he said the battery was in remarkably good shape considering how everyone said they'd last 5 years max back then. He'd had to replace a cell on it recently which cost a couple of hundred £ but apart from that was working really well.

The 2012 Leaf only had a range of about 70 miles fresh out the factory. 2018 Leaf is more like 150-odd. Still way too low, but that's still a more than 100% improvement in 6 years in a market without a huge amount of competition. At that rate of progress there's time for two more doublings by 2030 ?

The major manufacturers haven't really been trying until the past couple of years until they started to take note of how many cars Tesla was selling. Now countries are starting to phase out combustion engines (Norway bans them in five years!) they need to get their act together or go out of business. Competition among the big boys will rapidly force the pace of development - VW for example is throwing countless billions at EV development, Daimler (I think) said they're abandoning all further combustion engine development from now on... Assuming mr Musk is right with his forthcoming batteries that'll be 50% better and 50% cheaper then we'll have 500-mile plus EVs by 2022-ish at a lower price point than today. Seems inconceivable that it won't get significantly better in the next 8 years. The idea that we're all going to start using public transport is laughable and should be abandoned now. Yes, let's make it better but be realistic. Yes, we're going to need a hell of a lot of leccy points. But installing them in lamp posts for example can be done - perhaps some pop-up ones in the pavement? If people are leaving home fully charged in a 500 mile EV then they probably won't need that many fuel stops, but for most people if their car has 500 mile range then charging once per week at a public charger shouldn't be the end of the world, assuming it only takes 10 mins or so - do it while in the supermarket! Yes, there's work to do, but necessity is the mother of invention after all, I'm not worried about where we'll be in 10 years time. A lot of the objections/outcries we're hearing from people seem to date from 15 years ago, not sure a lot of people appreciate how technology has moved on.

Realistically I suspect by 2030 electric vehicles will be so good (and cheap!) that very few people would want the extra cost and maintenance burden of a plug-in hybrid. It may not even be economically viable for some manufacturers to bother making them. Also, buying petrol is a massive faff. Like you've got to go to a garage and everything. I bought an electric vehicle last year primarily because I'm too lazy to go and buy fuel.

So at £1.50 a mile it'd cost me £30 to go to the supermarket in road taxes before I'd even paid for electricity to propel me there or for any shopping. Not sure this is going to work for poor people in rural communities where there is no public transport...

I was thinking more of bulldozing it as much as possible to make room for a canal. However if someone wanted to flood the whole place to make it a giant marina I certainly wouldn't object.

I don't think you're a million miles off there, but I'd continue down through Chalvey (straight on at the point your route takes a 90 degree westwards), through the edge of the SEC's carpark (and the wide footpath/cycle path running next to it), down the back of the council recycling centre and share the existing railway underpass of the M4 - there's tons of space there to put a canal in without digging up the road even if they did decide to re-double the railway in future. Alternatively I wonder wether a route further to the east (by the Chestnuts PH Langley to just east of Datchet) may be more viable - although this does cut out Slough and the new basin.

I wasn't charged last time I was there (I think 2018?) - I don't recall if there were any signs saying it was chargeable but certainly no-one turned up to collect a fee.

Mooring at the bounty can be pretty hard to come by. However there are some nice moorings a little further upstream at the end of the houses on the opposite bank, about 5 min walk to a pub called the spade oak which is quite decent (and more 'conventional' than the bounty).

About time too, it's a total dump at the moment. What they really need is a nice pub, perhaps along the lines of the new canalside one in Swindon, which might actually make the Slough arm worth visiting.

The King's Arms in Cookham is excellent. Don't bother going to the Ferry, which despite the nice waterfront location is overpriced, terrible service, food so-so and overrun with wasps. I think on balance I'd go downstream from Benson. I can't get too excited about the Benson-Oxford stretch, although Abingdon is nice enough. Wallingford, Henley, Cookham, Windsor/Eton worth visiting (make sure to go to the brewery even if you don't fancy the castle), and the Cliveden reach is as nice as any on the Thames. With a week to play with I'd go downstream, turn at Windsor (not worth going beyond there IMO with the time available), then head back and if you have time go up to Abingdon. Oh, and don't expect anything from Maidenhead and Reading. Marlow on the other hand is nice enough.

My mistake, should have looked it up. New models brought out since July 2019 have to have a noise maker, but existing models only need to be updated to be compliant by July '21. No requirement to retrofit to existing vehicles.

Ground source heat pumps are just water-water heat pumps where the "source" water has been piped though some pipes in the ground. Can't why the same heat pump technology couldn't be used via a skin tank of some sort... albeit you might want a smaller heat pump with lower power requirements than a typical domestic installation.

Yes, I think only those made from 2020 onwards. In my experience, both as a driver and a pedestrian, at speeds of >20mph (approx), tyre/road noise becomes dominant over engine noise in most cases, and electric cars are quite easy to hear coming. The only time I've nearly been caught out is at low speeds in e.g. car parks, where hopefully consequences of being hit by one aren't so great.

It occurs to me that why not standardise one existing vehicle charging technology, and install a 100kw charger at every water point. Assume power will run out at the same rate as water for the average boat, then you can do both 'charging' operations at once. That would be a good start without inconveniencing boaters too much. You'd need a pretty massive battery to operate a fuel boat, however!

well that'll teach me to read the whole article before commenting! (Not really, I generally stop as soon as adverts start getting in the way of text)

I was just thinking about that... sounds great but how are they going to pay for food/fuel/fixing their boat - I was surprised they hadn't started a YouTube channel yet and tried to become professional youtubers. But then it's a crowded space, there's seemingly way more sailing vloggers than narrowboaters, and many of them are rather good at it, so might find it hard to attract enough viewers to make it financially worthwhile.

I thought that. But from footage earlier they seemed to have a decent enough rope on the bow of the boat. Wonder if they'd have had more success with this?

At the end of the first video where it's largely wedged across the stream against the bow of another widebeam the video ends with people trying to push the bow upstream along the bank to turn the boat round. I can only assume they succeeded, because there's another video if it drifting downstream through the next bridge facing upstream.

I think the sequence goes hit by tree with engine running - tries to move boat with engine - gets mooring line round the prop - drifts downstream - tries to moor to CRT workboat - swept down towards weir stream - hits bank at branch for weir, secures boat - gets mooring line off prop - motors off back upstream against current. So the video of him going against the current is actually after all the drama happened.

No, looks like they started just under the A4 bridge on the River Brent. Looking at the map, I think what happened is the mooring ping went ping there, then they tried (And failed) to attach to the CRT workboat south of the Brentford railway bridge, then got swept into the non-non-navigable backwater where they managed to stop the boat, get the engine running and head back upstream again. Fair bet it's the mooring line they originally had round the pin... scary situation but a good reminder to keep your lines out of the water even when everything's going a bit pear shaped!

I’m sure I’ve seen the original boat in the flesh... I seem to recall it was made to transport a mobility scooter. Not a fan myself but if it allows the owner to carry on boating and still get to the shops then hopefully it works for him!

I swapped an old Honeywell for a Drayton head just last night.... seems to work. I'm a little suspicious of the electronic ones as I had one that worked way too fast - the air around the radiator warmed up, electronic thermostat shut it down, leaving the rest of the room cold. I guess you could make it better with software, but not sure you achieve a huge amount over a mechanical one if you do. I solved the problem by linking the electronic one to an (expensive!) wall thermostat at the other side of the room, that controls the electronic one based on the temperature in the rest of the room. On the other hand, they might work quite well in a smaller space such as a boat!