Bargebuilder

Are you too saying that apart from a small minority of people who are sensitive to environmental matters, the ban is unlikely to be effective or enforceable?

Are you saying that apart from a small minority of people who are sensitive to environmental matters, the ban is unlikely to be effective or enforceable?

It was a few years ago now, but I spoke to a chap called Manny if I remember correctly and he said they were delighted to sell just one tin if asked and they had no issue at all with satisfying my order. They do epoxy coatings that are for potable water and suitable for coating the inside of steel water tanks. They also do ones suitable for the inside of diesel tanks. The outside of our hull was blasted, but I had to prepare by hand with wire brush and cup brush the inside of our tanks, but the surface tolerant primer supplied worked well even on surfaces with relatively poor preparation. My advice is to be guided by their technical chap and you won't go far wrong. My barge was actually more saleable having been glass flaked, as the buyer recognised that the coating would save him money compared to the other barges that he'd viewed that would need blacking every three years. When eventually the time comes for you to sell, do as I did and include in the description the benefits of the coatings you have used. I hope the job goes well. The stock colour is grey, although they can provide any colour if the order is large enough. If your order is too small, simply protect the steel with the glass flake coating and paint over it with any cosmetic colour you like.

What you say is correct, but more so for some epoxy coatings than for others. Most certainly, a rough, clean steel surface is necessary to get the best out of these coatings, but Chemco will be able to advise and recommend surface tolerant primers under some circumstances. The one I used came as a big tin and a small tin and all I did was to tip into another container half of each tin and mix the two with a electric drill driven paint mixer for half a minute. I got through 16x 5kg tins and had no problems with mixing. Other makes of paint may be more difficult to mix possibly. There is no maximum overcoating time for Chemco glassflake as you can overcoat it 10 years later without further preparation or abrasion and doing one coat each day worked very well for me. Other epoxies can have minimum/maximum overcoating times: I understand that epoxy tar does, so best to check before application. Airless spray application is easiest, but not many DIYers will have such equipment. I used a bog standard paint roller and roller tray which worked brilliantly.

What a lot of effort you've put into trying to prove that what worked for my wife and I isn't possible. My barge is visible on Google earth, complete with its 4 solar panels at the end of a long path in the middle of a salt marsh, a long way from the nearest mains electricity and if you've got time on your hands, and that appears to be the case, you could visit it and ask my many friends on the marsh how long we lived aboard. I'm sorry that solar hasn't worked out for you, but I haven't the energy to keep replying to these pointless posts.

Our rather large TV was on pretty much all day and up until midnight during the dark winter months, so I see no reason why you should have to make such a choice. In addition, my wife's laptop was being used all the time, so spent a lot of time on charge. We had to be beyond desperate to fire up our incredibly noisy diesel generator, in fact on the few occasions we did use it, we would set it going and go out for a walk! I can assure you we hardly ever used it. If lack of power had been a real concern, we would have bought a little almost silent Honda petrol generator for emergencies, but in the event, we didn't need to.

I agree with almost everything you say, in fact they are mostly points I've already made. For a true off gridder as we were, of course every watt of output was important. We became very aware of the weather and I can tell you that crisp sunny days are surprisingly common in December, and tilting ones panels makes the most of the solar energy on those days. Since we coped (just) with the output of 4x 235w tilted panels in an open spot, there can be no doubt that with 4x 330w panels and a similar setup to ours other people could to. That certainly doesn't mean I wouldn't have a nice little Honda generator secreted in a locker somewhere for emergencies.

There is, or certainly was, a panel on the market that's surface was 'pimply', it being claimed that the tiny pimples grabbed light from shallow angles that might otherwise have bounced off of the surface of a smooth flat sheet. I suppose it might have helped a bit, but nothing like as well as lifting the panel so the sun's rays are perpendicular to the surface. When you live, as my wife and I did, off grid, you soon learn that electrical power is far easier to save than to generate, particularly in the winter.

This summer we've cruised the Shroppie, the Trent and Mersey, a week on the Weaver, the Soar and the Leicester section of the Grand Union. We do between 10 and 20 miles a day and usually have no problem finding a nice open spot to moor; not always of course.

As you say, tilting doesn't make much difference, but only on overcast days when the light gathered by the panel is diffused. It's also true that the tilting brackets on many narrowboats in the main don't allow a sufficient angle to help a great deal, even in direct sunshine. I would add though, that when the sun is very low in the sky, it's rays will hit a flat panel at such a slight angle that much of the potential power is lost. I used a clamp meter to watch power output and we could change the angle from horizontal for when we were cruising, right up to 23 degrees from vertical for December when we didn't cruise but needed every scrap of solar power that we could harvest. I can assure you that it did make a difference.

As you will have read, I was completely open, describing what worked for us as off-grid live-aboards. I'm sure that the poster of the question will know how much room he will have on his roof for panels, the orientation of his mooring if he has one and to what extent it's shaded from the sun. When cruising the cut, as we are doing as I write, we only stop in open spots, never under trees, apart from a couple of weeks ago when we needed some shade from the heat. In fact, during the heatwave, it was extremely difficult to find shady moorings, as the half decent ones were already occupied.

Impressive is the word. The narrowboating world is, on the whole, quite a traditional one. Boatyards like to apply what they know, and narrowboaters are largely guided by what the boatyard offers. Also, Chemco is a commercial company, mainly selling its product by the lorry load to water companies and other huge organisations, so it's web site reflects that. However, the sales team and technical advisor are great and very happy to sell in small quantities when asked. It's the fact that they are not 'yachty' paint suppliers that keeps their prices so reasonable. It wouldn't be a good business model to paint boats in a finish that could last for 20 to 30 years, so boatyards are going to be unwilling to use glass flake.

It does need to be clean of course, hence the need to pressure wash, but not abraded. When first applied, the surface is very glossy as there is a film of epoxy covering the flakes of glass, much like the pebbles in concrete being barely visible after its surface has been 'floated'. Over the years, as the surface of the epoxy is weathered, a thin layer of surface epoxy disappears and along with it the gloss, leaving the twinkling flakes of glass slightly exposed. The surface texture is a bit like very fine abrasive paper and perfect for receiving further coatings. Given correct preparation of the steel before the original primer was applied, there will be no detachment of the original paint, so overcoating can be done with complete confidence. If desired, the glass flake epoxy can do its job of protecting the steel, whilst another paint in the colour of your choice can be applied over it as a cosmetic finish. Unwisely, on my barge, not knowing how brilliant the stuff was going to be, I only painted the hull and topsides, relying on more traditional paint systems for the deck and cabin roof. After 9 years, there was no sign of rust below the (salt) water line, but patches of rust in a number of places where I hadn't epoxied.

I'm sure that Jotun is very good, the company certainly has an excellent reputation. I expect that International do one as well, but what attracted Chemco International to me was the price of its products and who it's customers are. It was a case of, if it's good enough for them, then it will do the job for me. They formulate and manufacture their own coatings and sell them for use on oil rigs and power stations etc. When I dealt with them they were about half the price of glass flake products retailed by 'hobby' marine paint suppliers. One spin off from using this coating has been that zero steel has ever been in contact with the water, so zero corrosion has occurred and apart from the stern gear, the plentiful anodes have had nothing to protect, so after 9 years there is very little wasting of the, in my case, zinc anodes. Another huge advantage of the glass flake epoxy I used is that it doesn't have to be removed or abraded, simply pressure washed clean before it can be over-coated; if that is, it ever needs doing🤞😁.

Going back to bare metal is always best if one can. Grit blasting will certainly do it, but pure water blasting will do it to, with very little mess to clear up afterwards, apart from the rubbish that's been stripped off. I watched a water blasting operative demonstrate the equipment by putting a house brick on the ground and cutting it in half; easily! There is also a hybrid between the two that I've used and works very well. It is wet media blasting, at a much lower pressure than pure water blasting, but has an abrasive grit in small quantities that is introduced into the water and does most of the work. Wet blasted steel gingers (rusts) very quickly, so a surface tolerant epoxy primer should be used that will stick to wet, 'gingered' steel. I used one recommended by Chemco as did the chap working on the boat next to mine. He was applying it by roller but half way through the job it started to rain, heavily. His roller tray part filled with rain water so he pushed the roller through this water and carried on until he had finished his hull. Three years later, he still hadn't added a top coat, but the primer showed no signs of failing and there was no rust showing where he had applied it. These modern coatings are good, very good!

I should think that you're right. There are epoxy tars which are much more durable than traditional blacking, but there is nothing I know that out-performs glass flake epoxy. The principle is that the microscopic platelets of glass in the coating align themselves parallel with the surface of the steel, overlapping to make the surface extremely resistant to abrasion; as hard as glass (well much harder than other coatings anyway). The stuff is used to protect the cooling water intakes of power stations, so it is highly trusted by industry. It is a bit more expensive than blacking (but not that much) and the preparation needed is higher, but the long term cost savings of not needing to haul out or dry dock and re-black every three years could be considerable. My boat was coastal so in salt water and as I mentioned showed no sign of degradation in many years, so in fresh water, a much less aggressive environment, it should perform even better. I used 'Chemco International' if anyone wants to research the product further.

I thought that a real life experience might helpful, so I'll try to answer the points made. Firstly, we were totally off grid, there was no option of mains hook up as we were on a salt marsh nearly 1/4 of a mile from shore. When you are off grid and reliant on solar panels, it wouldn't be wise to moor where there was any shade and we didn't. We had 4 X 235w panels, wired in pairs through two mppt charge regulators. Our storage was 6x 4 volt Rolls deep cycle lead acid batteries wired to deliver 12v. As I'm sure you would expect from a couple living off grid, everything electric was low energy. Our Squirrel stove supplied most of the heat, although we had two Wallas cabin heaters as backup that hardly used any 12v. We cooked on gas and had a Morco instantaneous water heater that supplied the galley and shower. All led lighting of course plus all the other items listed in my previous post and we had a 47 inch TV that to my utter shame was on in the background all day and until late in the evening which I'm sure used more power than a laptop. We had to keep the fridge on during the winter because the Squirrel stove made the saloon very hot and we don't like liquid butter. We turned the freezer off because it was power hungry and there was nothing frozen that we couldn't do without; we prefer fresh. As we anyway had our inverter on 24hrs a day, we dumped the 12v fridge when it packed up after two years and replaced it with a high efficiency mains one. As already mentioned, tilting ones solar panels at the optimum angle for the time of year will vastly increase their output, which we did. However, there are people on the forum with 8 or more panels and there are many panels with a much higher output than ours had, so with determination and a small generator for prolonged dull periods, I can tell you from personal experience, living off grid absolutely does work. I've just looked at Bimble Solar where we got our panels from and they do panels with an output of 540w for just £161.54 plus vat. Just imagine, 8 panels at 540w compared to our 4 panels at 235w. We did have a 12v generator that I home built from a Kubota diesel engine coupled to a 200A alternator geared down so it delivered 120A at the engines most efficient speed, but the thing could wake the dead, so we hardly ever fired it up; a couple of times each winter for a few hours each time but no more. We absolutely never used the ship's engine to charge the batteries, due to the effect this practice has on the cylinder bores. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you say "all the people I know" it suggests that you have not experienced off grid living yourself and it would appear that the people you know haven't done all that's necessary to make off grid living work in the way that it can.

Blacking is traditional, but it doesn't always last, as very well illustrated in this YouTube offering where the blacking, although professionally applied, lasted for less than a year. https://youtu.be/PwnHVzmdn40

I understand too that it has been used on the Forth Bridge, so the old saying about painting the said bridge no longer applies!

That's a bit harsh. My wife and I lived on a boat for 4 years where there was no mains electricity, we were 100% off grid. We had 4 solar panels with a joint maximum output of a bit under 1Kw on a bright sunny summer's day, and on those days it powered everything, with some left over to heat the water in our calorifier. In the depths of winter, we turned off the freezer to save energy, but kept the fridge, TV, laptops, phones, heated under-blanket, lights, various pumps etc and only had to fire up a generator perhaps twice in a winter for a few hours to supplement the solar panels. I should say that we did tilt the panels to the optimum angle, and that does make a huge difference. However, a narrowboat may have room for a great deal more than 4 panels, which would make life much easier.

I haven't, but the chap with a widebeam next to my barge did and he had to re-black after two seasons. I used glass flake epoxy and 10 years on it looks just as it did the year I applied it, apart from being less shiny. It does sparkle a tiny bit now where the glass flakes catch the light.