Ray

Mike Thanks for the ideas/suggestions. The fold in the metalwork at the bottom of the door looks almost at 90º, unlike the top where it seems nearer to 45º. The doors generally sit snug against the metal frame of the hatch opening in the side of the boat so there's no realistic option for leaving a gap between door and frame - there's enough draft coming in from the gap between the two doors as it is. I think my only soultion is to do as you say and drill a small hole in the bottom fold of the door and hope this allows any water to drain out. T'is strange though that the damage is only on the front face of the wooden liner which suggests that the water somehow managed to run down the inside face of the door and congregate in such a way that it seems to have eventually managed to break the varnish down and soak into the veneer.

I'm not sure how the damage arose and can but assume that it was driven snow. The metal door shows some sign of light rusting over the metal primer behind the liner but that may have been there when I fitted the liner a few years ago. The liner had several coats of varnish all over (including edges) prior to fitment. The adjacent door liner has not been affected. Somehow the varnish on the liner has managed to go all flaky - I'm sure it wasn't like that at the end of last year. Whether this let the snow in and stain the wood or not I don't know. The weather (and our limited cruising) over the last eighteen or so months hasn't been conducive to having the side doors open for more than a few minutes if I needed to talk to someone outside the boat so I can't think of how the damage has arisen - the hatch is covered on the inside of the boat so I don't think it is condensation from inside either.

John The the original blockboard liner was veneered on both sides and the discolouration has affected one side worse than the other but both are affected. The liner canot be reversed because there are recessed holes in the back face to accommodate the nuts that hold the door bolts in place. My quandry is that the piece of blockboard that I originally used - bought in good faith as (the metric equivalent of) ¾ inch thick blockboard - fitted the door perfectly. However, other pieces of blockboard also bought in good faith a little later as once again (the metric equivalent of) ¾ inch thick blockboard were not necessarily the same thickness and there is no guarantee that buying a further sheet now (even if I were to consider doing that) would be the same thickness as the original. I can thickness the thicker piece of blockboard - that I would like to use to patch the liner - to the same thickness as the original but that will remove the veneer on the back. My question is "Will removal of the veneer on the rear face of a small part of the liner materially affect the liner given that it will have several coats of varnish applied to seal it and will also be screwd into the door "frame" so, theoretically at least it can't distort too much?"

We passed through Foxton Locks a year or so ago. There were two lock keepers on duty, one paid the other a volunteer. The paid lockie highlighted to us the fact that the volunteer was able to and did disappear (i.e. go home) when he decided he'd had enough for the day. How do you maintain lock opening hours where volunteers are replacing paid lock keepers and the volunteers would seem to effectively be free to come and go as they please? This is a question and not meant to start a debate about the replacement of paid staff by volunteers. On the subject of reducing staff numbers one has to consider what is loosely termed natural wastage. There may be fewer staff than there were X number of years ago. However, that reduction could simply have been achieved by not replacing staff when they leave. There's no need to make anyone redundant if there is no rush to reduce employee numbers.

John, do you mean the front face or the rear?

Phil The exisitng liner and the matching one are both veneered blockboard as are all the bulkheads and other door liners. None have given any trouble before and it is not the blockboard itself that has failed, the water has got between the varnish and the under side of the veneer. I would have to replace both liners (and buy at least a full sheet to do so and I was unable to obtain 18mm thick veneered plywood when I last enquired. Edited to correct spelling

For an unexplained reason a combination of the easterly wind and the snow seems to have caused some damage to the bottom of wooden liner of one of the side hatch doors of our (self fitout) Reeves narrowboat. The liner is 18mm thick Ash veneered blockboard and the damage means that the bottom 120mm of the liner needs to be replaced. I still have a few pieces of blockboard left from the fit-out but the only suitable piece that I can realistically use appears to be about 1mm thicker than that used for the liner originally. I believe that the recess in the hatch door into which the liner fits such that the front face of the liner is flush with the rounder edge of the door, is only 18mm deep (I'm not near the boat for another week or so to check) which will force the lower part of the liner to protrude. I can't plane the front face of the liner or the veneer will disappear. However doing so on the back side of the liner is an option save that I've heard it said that if one side of a piece of wood is veneered the other side should also be veneered. Taking about 1mm off the back would remove the veneer from that side. The piece of blockboard being added to the liner has been in my garage for about 3 years. The liner is held in place by screws through the edges of the door. It will have several coats of varnish all over before it is refitted. What are the risks of removing the (veneer and) extra 1mm off of the repaired part of the liner, an area of about 120mm deep by 400mm wide?

It is a bulb. There's probably a techinical name for the (clear) bulb type - it is a bulb apparently soldered to two spade connectors. The bulb appears best removed from the (green) holder with a pair of long nose pliers gripping the plastic divider between the two spade connectors and twisting gently whilst pulling the bulb from the holder. Hope that helps.

I've been to the boat today and worked on the boiler. I'd been advised by a colleague (who has exchanged many Alde burners but none recently) that all I needed to do (after isolating both gas and electric supplies to the bolier) was to remove the multitude of screws that held the burner in place and the burner would come out. He obviously forgot one or two other things in the intervening period! I deduced that the gas supply needed disconnecting and managed that but the burner still refused to budge. It appeared obvious that the shaft linking the knob on the burner and the temperature adjustment knob that the user normally uses needed to be disconnected. What I didn't deduce was that this could be done by depressing the lower knob. I tried pulling the upper knob up and managed to break the somewhat brittle plastic mount underneath the upper knob. I then remembered that I had some Alde documentation on the boat. Upon further investigation I discovered that that included the service manual (which is how I subsequently learned how to disconnect the above mentioned shaft)! I worked my way through the instructions for the burner renewal and eventually managed to extract the burner, which was half covered in debris. However, there is one part of the removal that I haven't managed to achieve and this is the removal of the ignition lead from the ignition transformer. The instructions say to pull this down. I've tried this both by hand and using pliers. I was initially extra careful after the experiences with the broken plastic mentioned above but even increasing the effort refused to shift this lead. Has anyone any experience of removing theirs? Until that's been achieved there's not a lot else that I can do. I did note from checking the flame before I attempted the removal that it was more yellow than blue and the crud on the burner probably accounted for much of this. I've managed to dislodge must of the crud but can't get to the rest of it until I can detach the ignition lead.

New meter fitted, sounder (which fell off when we were checking things out last week) re-secured, panel power (green bulb) changed, all re-connected, tested and apparently working. Many thanks for all the comments & thread contributions that enabled this to be resolved.

The postman duly attempted to deliver the gauge on Saturday (despite it being posted first class on Thursday). We were out so it was a quick trip to the sorting office this morning to collect. Replacement looks straight forward and will hopefully be undertaken later today. For those interested the gauge is a standard Murphy device - 10.70.1312-F - for which I was charged £25.50 (+VAT) by Beta. Deduct the £4.80 it cost them in postage and some pence for the padded envelope they used to send it (plus their time to process the order) and I'm not sure I could have found the gauge any cheaper anywhere else. In fact, a quick Google on the part number revealed only 5 "finds" and none were retail. Well done and many thank to Beta.

Yes, apologies, there is a digit missing. When I said smaller I should have indicated that it is a liitle less deep than the original but I can't remember by how much. I was more concerned that it wasn't too "tall" rather than worry that it might be a bit too short.

After a few attempts to contact John he was, as has been said above, very helpful. He has diagnosed a dodgy gauge and a new one should be on its way to me later today (in exchange for the relevant payment which I hasten to add I've just made!). I shall be at the boat next Monday so let's hope that the Post Office play ball and deliver the replacement gauge before then. I'll report back if there's anything other than a straight swap out. Many thanks for the comments above.

That's pretty impressive as the journey time between the two has to be around 30 minutes for a car. You have to add at least another 5-10 minutes to that because its a lorry, especially passing through Wing eastbound with the 90º turn there. Chuck in at least 5 minutes at each end to enter/leave & position the lorry and there's barely time to load or unload I wonder of CRT will take the opportunity to attend to the several other things along the arm which tend to see it closed for a couple of months each winter and will the returning boats (in August) go back where they were or to the proposed new base at Aylesbury?

I wonder how many lorries would be needed to move 12 boats from Aylesbury to (say) Willowbridge with the chance of getting more than one journey out of each lorry in a day? However, other than Cooks Wharf, I'm at a loss to suggest anywhere else where the boats could be craned back in and Cooks Wharf is far from ideal from a road access point of view I would have thought. How long does it take to load a boat onto a lorry, secure it and replace lorry one with lorry two ready for the next cycle to begin? Is an hour excessive?

Gareth Thanks for that. The bank of Dad's taken a bit of a hit just recently so I'm havng to budget accordingly. Any idea what he charged for travel? The boat is near Marsworth on the GU, about 40 miles from Wellingborough so I guess his travelling costs could be quite high. That said, we don't use the boat that often so maybe able to arrange a call to us around a call to someone else when he's passing the door.

Many thanks. He's not too far away either and we could get the boat a fair bit closer to him as well by bringing the boat to Milton Keynes (or even taking it to Stoke Bruerne). He's closed until next Monday but that doesn't matter as we're not in that much of a hurry to get it fixed.

I managed to light the boiler several times over the weekend - I could just about discern the clicking suggesting that the igniter was working. Perhaps my reasonably new hearing aids are working in reverse! However, occasionally the (ignite) button would not move from the ignite position. In addition, although the boiler fired up and the radiators started to get warm on several occasions, the (ignite) light started flashing within about 5 minutes. Depending on what I was doing at the time I would either attempt to re-light the boiler (with the same result) or turn it off and try again later. The boiler is at the back of the boat, the oven/hob midships and the gas bottles are in the bow. The oven & hob light and work as required. This seems to indicate a supply problem at the boiler to an untrained idiot (me!), but I suppose that something could be heating up in the boiler and then cutting off the supply. A colleague has siad that he used to remove his burner and send or take it to Alde for a service. Does anyone know if Alde still offer this facility?

We've been out for a few days over the weekend. We moored last night and all was well when I stopped the (Beta 43) engine as it was when I started the engine this morning. However, within a few minutes, as I was retrieving the mooring fenders prior to untying, I became aware of a buzzer sounding. I returned to the control panel and found the temperature warning light illuminated (and the buzzer sounding). We disconnected the sounder (to stop it sounding) but the light stayed on. We took the risk that we'd be OK - I'd checked the coolant level a few minutes earlier and knew that was OK. The temperature gauge eventually reached the normal (heated) indication and seemed to work satisfactorily for the remainder of our journey back to our mooring. There we disconnected the sensor. The temperature gauge stopped working but the light remained illuminated. We removed and then earthed the sensor wire and the temperature gauge read maximum - mega hot!, but the light stayed on. We disconnected the temperature gauge and the light went out. This seems to suggest from the mails posted above that the gauge itself is faulty. Does anyone know what a new gauge costs? Similarly, does anyone know how to remove the green light on the panel in order to replace it (or the bulb inside)?

The thermostat that I bought was purchased from my local branch of Euro Car Parts Ltd. The box, labelled Circoli, implies that it is designed for a Daewoo (car engine?). I think that the Circoli part number is 209 6 001J based on the way the label is presented. The box also has the following numbers on the label; OE No. 17670A78B01 and 808771-11.11. From memory the thermostat is a little smaller than the Beta thermostat but it has been in the boat since the middle of last year and has had the desired effect with regard to retaining the temperature of the water in the calorifier. I've just tried to research each of the numbers on the box but keep bringing up irrelevant results including mention of the thermostat opening at 71º. I can but suggest contacting Euro Car Parts or your local Motor Factor with the above information. Sorry I can't be any more helpful.

The only low level ventilation appears to be channelled under the floor, not above it. There was no access to the cabin bilge until we cut one late last year and there's no stove. The boat is not used overnight. Thanks for the responses. The base question remains, should we expect condensation on uninsulated parts of the hull steelwork if the cabin bilge is dry.

He reputedly told one boater who shared several locks with him over the weekend that he was aiming to take the canoe onto the Thames and then across the Channel.

Click on the round dot to the left of the topic title - the topic title that you click on to get to the thread. That should take you to the first unread post.

Pete There's no need to apologise. It isn't my boat, I simply get tasked with moving it around from time to time. The boat was built and fitted by the same company who are aware of the problem. I was simply enquiring to see whether the consensus was that resolution of the problem was something we could rightfully lay at the builders feet or whether it was our problem now. (That's the proverbial Royal "we") It appears that resolution will require stripping out a large part of the interior fit because the damaged panels are in cupboards and the toilet compartment. As you can imagine, on that basis we didn't want to have to have to take that on board of we didn't have to.