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gatekrash
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Posts posted by gatekrash
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1 hour ago, Mike Hurley said:
Out here in Kosovo our power station runs on a dirty brown coal called Lignite and is the most polluting power station in Europe, most cars are diesel including one of mine.
Bizarrely you can still buy bags of lignite coal here now even though proper bituminous coal is nearly banned.
Our coal merchant sells 'union brikettes' which are brown coal. We tried them a few years back, burn nicely but clean they are definitely not.
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9 hours ago, MtB said:
Oh, might this be the equivalent of the listed building that accidentally burns down when PP is refused for development?
It's definitely 'listed' now.
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So we got back to the boat today after 2 weeks back home. We'd left one small greenhouse heater placed next to the calorifier and running on a stat set to low, one oil rad in the middle of the boat also set to low, all the pipework was run empty and then the taps blown down to get as much water out as possible and taps left open, but water tank was left about half full with the main stopcock closed.
The marina is frozen solid and the ice is about 2 inches thick. Inside the boat the temperature was sat at 1 degree C. All pipes were clear apart from the kitchen cold supply - I suspect this was the inline filter after the pump which has frozen up as it's attached at the back of a kitchen cupboard right on the waterline. The water tank was clear of ice.
Took about 2 minutes to 'recommission' in general but about 2 hours before we got water out of the kitchen tap. I was quite relieved as it's the first properly cold spell we've had since we've owned the boat and I wasn't sure whether we'd done enough.
Now all we have to do is pay the £25 electric bill the heaters have used in the last few days....
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30 minutes ago, Tacet said:
As a kid alone when the Parkray ran away, the solution was to call uncle, who crawled across the room, shielding his face, holding the air control closing tool at full arm's length. He just about reached the fire without frying himself.
When grandad had a chimney fire, he would take a bucket of water into the roofspace, open the metal door specially put in the flue, and slowly pour the water down. With care, the water turned to steam and extinguished the fire without soaking the room. You didn't want to call the fire brigade as, in order to help you remember to have the chimney swept in future, it would deliberately break roof liles and leave a hose down the chimney for an age.
And also make a point of walking sooty, muddy boots all over the carpets if I remember rightly from my mates house when he had a chimbley fire.
We had one a couple of years ago at home, even though the chimbley is regularly swept. I realised something wasn't right when the stove thermometer went off the scale and the high temp silicon at the top of the flue pipe / closure plate join started to smoke ! I just shovelled the ash from the bottom on top of the fire and closed everything down and 10 minutes later everything was cooling down. We didn't actually know it had been a fire at the top of the stack until the sweep came a couple of months later and could feel the deposits from the fire as he swept it. Although he said it wasn't a good thing to happen he did reckon that with the thickness of our 200 year old stone flue it wouldn't really have done any harm.
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Have to be honest, as a coastguard these things are the bane of our lives now, along with the latest fashion for "wild swimming" in a force 9 gale in December. Every man and his dog has gone to Lidl / Aldi / other budget supermarket and bought the latest "beaching" accessory, a SUP. We have had so many callouts to people who have gone off the beach because the weather looked nice, but with a moderate offshore wind and ended up blowing straight out or up the coast and been unable to get back to shore. Some have ended up being bashed on rocks, others a couple of miles away from where they started off. For some reason the majority of them don't appear to be wearing any form of personal buoyancy when they're on them. When we've asked why it's because they think having a big floating board means they don't need it. Except they also don't bother with any form of board tether either, and the inflatable ones don't work so well when they've been rubbing up against a sharp rock for an hour...
We've spent years pushing the old H&S adverts about not allowing children on lilos and inflatable dinghies on beaches unless they were tethered to a responsible adult because they'd end up blowing away, and now someone has actually invented something that seems to be perfectly designed to do the same thing. I hadn't been called to a blown away inflatable for years until the SUP craze started, now it's all the time.
Keep the things for calm rivers and canals (as long as theyve paid a licence
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Definitely West country. Janners use it all the time..
'Where we going to now ?'
'Any idea where I put that screwdriver to?'
'Any idea where Asders is to? Is it near the Cwop?'
And so on.
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11 hours ago, matty40s said:
This is the Black Prince sell off site, sign up and they let you know when hosts are coming to market
This is where I'd go if I was looking for an ex hire boat, Black Prince have a good reputation for altering their ex hire boats to suit buyers.
If you search for 'floydtilla' on the forum, @David Floyd did a blog on his build of an ex black prince boat, it may help you out
I think they have a waiting list though...
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38 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
Is it going in the Ballast Pond ? (it looks a bit long to me). or around the corner to Carbeile Wharf.
(We had a couple of years on the swinging moorings at Torpoint,as we we couldn't fit in the Ballast Pond as we were too wide but we are now 'around the corner' at Millbrook - the Multi Hull centre a bit further up the estuary past Southdown Marina)
Going round to Carbeile I believe, so guessing it's a drop straight in at QAB and then being pulled straight back out again over there.
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This turned up at our lumpy water marina in Plymouth today. It's due to be towed across the bay to a local yard at Torpoint for refurbishment. Hopefully not today as there's a full gale blowing.
I do love the tin shed roof over the front, along with the matching shed door half way along !
Anyone got any idea what it is ?
I'm guessing given where it's going and that someone has paid for haulage and hoisting (and the yard that's dropping it in isn't cheap compared to canal hoisting rates) that they're intending to live on it.
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Just now, mrsmelly said:
If you think surveys are worth the paper they are written on, then phone or email Tom Keeling 07976631920. Top bloke.
Another vote here for Tom, if he's got availability. Did ours a few years ago and he was great, very easy to talk to and happy to spend the time discussing what he'd found.
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10 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:
They seem to be presented in random order. I got a different photo every time I enterered the site, without having voted previously.
It says at the top blurb that there are over 30,000 photos and it seems they come out in a random order.
I managed 3 before I gave up !
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I'm using up a crate of ex MoD hexamine fuel as firelighters. it's the stuff they used to issue to cook on out in the field, but they have changed over to an alcohol fuel and I've got tons of it left. Same stuff as they sell in go outdoors as 'festival cookers'. Goes up a treat, holds a flame for about 5 minutes so things really get going.
We also occasionally do a top down light. Put the solid fuel on the bottom of the grate, then the kindling on top. I didn't believe it would work, but it really does as it warms the chimney up fast to get a really good draw then as the burning kindling drops down it ignites the solid. As taught in the book 'Norwegian wood' which is a must for anyone with a proper fire!
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There was a lot of weed cutting going on on the W&B a few weeks ago (it desperately needed it).
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3 hours ago, Jerra said:
I suspect if you only buy uncooked sausages you will probably be OK or buy from a butcher you know who makes their own.
The government say:
Types of meat you can’t sell
You can’t sell products that contain certain ingredients if the product is ‘uncooked’, meaning it’s sold on the basis that it needs further cooking before consumption.
You must not use any of these ingredients in uncooked products made and sold in England:
- feet
- intestine (except as sausage skin)
- lungs
- oesophagus
- rectum
- spinal cord
- spleen
- stomach
- udder
I'm guessing this is specific to use of these items as 'ingredients' rather than as a separate item. As I can buy pigs trotters from my local butcher which are definitely feet!
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Stop just before the Curdworth tunnel (there is good piling there) and walk up to Curdworth village. 2 good pubs, we ate in the Beehive last time which is down in the village. Family run, was a bit chaotic with service, cheap but very friendly and seemed to be where the villagers were going, and the beer was Enville and very good. The other pub is the white horse on the main road. Chain pub and I think would be a bit more up market, but we didn't eat there this time. Did look nice though.
Have also stopped at the Cuttle Bridge, which looks like a motel. The problem with that one (or at least it was last year when we went there) is that it's where some of the HS2 workers go, so it was really busy. And the moorings outside are right by the main road so were a bit noisy, further down near the tunnel was much quieter.
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It had definitely moved from centenary square when we were there last week. We wondered where they'd put it.
As far as I know after all the public support for keeping it they were going to take it away for a period to prepare it for permanent display, as it wasn't designed to be kept. Presumably they need to do something to remove the JCB from under it.
There is talk of it being permanently displayed in New Street station.
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11 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:
My understanding is that that legal percentage of meat only applies to uncooked sausages for retail sale to the public.
Reminds me of the sausage rolls the MoD used to buy to put in their brown paper 'horror bags' (packed lunches). I made the mistake of reading the contents one day. 'Minimum 8% meat content'. And they definitely didn't taste good.
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17 hours ago, Naughty Cal said:
Today 2022
Mutton Cove, Plymouth
I hope you visited Bogey Knights emporium of unbelievable tat whilst there ? The only place you can buy anything from a shackle to a dummy warhead...
17 hours ago, Naughty Cal said:-
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On 28/09/2022 at 10:39, bizzard said:
Black and Decker angle grinders were the only ones that stood up to intensive MOT welding for a decent length of time in my garage, I've had most other top makes, Bosch, Makita and cheap ones ect ect, non of those lasted very long. I'm still using my old B&D grinder still going strong. I also have the original B&D Workmate, proper solid job. What B&D'S quality is like currently I'm not sure.
It's not what it was.
Black and Decker is now owned by Stanley tools, the same company
also owns DeWalt.
They aim their tools at different markets. B&D are their budget end aimed at the DIY market, then Stanley are mid range and DeWalt is aimed more at their pro market (hence why DeWalt stuff is the stuff you always see builders using, with the odd bit of Stanley stuff here and there).
My B&D stuff all burned out very quickly when I was rebuilding my Landy. Replaced it all with a mix of Makita and DeWalt and never had a problem since.
Although I've also got Lidl and Aldi stuff for less intensive jobs and they've also been fine. The Aldi multi tool has been great and did a really good job of scraping the loose blacking inside the water tank last year.
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Tonight, 2022
Broad Street bridge towards Arena Birmingham.
And preparing for a party conference. (no politics on this thread though please 😁 ). Loads of police about hereabouts and apparently we'll possibly be having the boat searched by police dog as we go back through Broad Street on Saturday.
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The Rochdale must be open again without anyone being told. It's listed as one of the 6 'Best places to boat this autumn' on the CaRT homepage...
From Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire, canal boat holiday-makers can travel along the Rochdale Canal through the Calder Valley to the old mill town of Hebden Bridge, nestled in a fork in the hills. Climbing through woods, fields and small stone towns, the journey there and back covers 14 miles, 20 locks and takes around 11 hours.
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27 minutes ago, Loddon said:
Hinckley point nuclear power station closed last month. SW now gets 80% of its electric from gas.
Standing charge for me in Nth Devon for electric is 21p and for gas 27.2p both fixed in May so £99 a year.
Yes, I forgot. Worked for the IT department of EDF Energy and its predecessor, SWEB for 31 years until I retired a few years ago and went to Hinkley B a few times, including being stood on top of the reactor (total anti-climax). Our chief exec back in the mid 2000s used to be found of telling us about how cheap electricity would be once Hinkley C was online and according to him 'customers will be cooking their Christmas turkeys using energy from new nuclear by 2015' ! He left shortly after!
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On 22/09/2022 at 10:00, IanD said:
Removing the standing charge and raising the unit price (keeping the average overall cost of £2500 the same) would have a similar effect of benefiting poorer/smaller households more than bigger/richer ones, and would be trivial to do...
Everyone always forgets about the standing charge, and most people don't realise that it's variable depending on where in the country you live.
Down here in Devon, the standing charge is the highest in the entire country despite having Hinkley nuclear power station on our doorstep. Compared to London, we pay nearly £67 a year more in SC before we even turn a light on. Yet wages in Devon and Cornwall are amongst the lowest in the country.
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13 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:
I had two young ladies say to me in Birmingham on the Perry Barr flight, what are they? referring to the lock the boat was in. Loads of people in Birmingham no nothing of canals and locks, even more don't think they are used any more. we went 2 days without seeing a boat.
Indeed. Someone asked us at Farmer's Bridge a couple of weeks ago 'Is that a boat ?' and when answered followed it up with 'is this like some sort of public transport system?' 🙄
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Webasto diesel consumption question
in Boat Equipment
Posted
About the same as ours. 50ft boat, 5 rads, although on 1 the TRV is set to low as we like a colder bedroom and the rad shuts off fairly quickly.
We've used about 15 litres in the last week, normally it's on for a couple of hours in the morning, and then about 5 or 6 hours in the evening, so I reckon 50 hours for 15 litres - but it often turns itself off in the evening completely once the room thermostat gets to about 22 degrees and doesn't kick in again until it's dropped back to 18ish, so not all of that 50 hours was actually 'burning' time.