wakey_wake

What are the re-floating risks with low water? I know that the lowering of levels can bring the inconvenience of being geographically stuck, difficulty getting ashore (dry), potential CRT "non-travel" problems, and risk of ropes becoming too tight and tipping the boat until water comes in on one side. When levels go back, what are the risks of being stuck in the mud (not re-floating), or asymmetrical re-floating? ie. if there are no problems after levels drop, can one be sure that it's a simple matter of waiting?

Yes, Firefox blocks the inlined Twitter/X post. Somebody sent Elon a letter via X. Elon acknowledged receiving it; we may agree that publicity is a big driver on several fronts. If the forum just left a plain URL this wouldn't be an issue - you would click the link if sufficiently curious. Probably the forum's inlining feature was developed before Firefox's tracker block. Certainly Twitter encouraged such inlining from years ago. You can click the blue button and bring the post into the page if you like, but in general blocking social media inclusions is a sensible precaution so... I agree the blocking it is sensible, and I think the UI is pretty clear in allowing you to unblock it if you like. Edit to add: UI is also pretty neat in allowing a partial unblock, i.e. x.com is allowed but others would remain blocked. 👍

Oh they love it. 😠 Allocate an unreasonable amount of your money to some quite polite but still rather intimidating blokes. It makes sure you'll be carefully obedient next time. So the evidence is, they don't want the quickest and most effective contact route. The law provides that if you had a postal address they'll accept, and you deal with it promptly, then you escape with a light slap (£30 or whatever). Otherwise they have an excuse for a heavy slap. (For some value of "they" which is probably not be the unanimous DV[SL]A staff - it is often misleading to make statements about groups. However, I am quite certain that people like this do exist and find their way into positions of administrative power. What do you think inspired the Vogons?) Are we off-topic yet? I don't think so. You get a boat and let go of your postal address... this is the :mrhanky: you must expect and carefully avoid. It only takes one tiny driving error plus one mislaid letter, somebody letting it fall down the back of a cupboard, or it sits in a pile for two weeks, and 💥 ~~~~ unrelated messages joined? ~~~~ Oh good point, I forgot that it prints a "number of pages received" thing. I've no idea what lawyers make of that. Suppose the ink was empty and the machine didn't realise? Yes email is store-and-forward, and fundamentally too unreliable (IMHO which nobody cares about) to use for legal service. In general a message can get lost in the system. However it is also possible in many cases to deliver an email directly to the end machine and get a reply like 250 OK id=1uHlfQ-03467z-8J which is an agreement the message was received. You would need local knowledge to know where it would go next - it might have gone right into the inbox folder, or it could be held awaiting onward passage or some error condition to expire; and it might stay queued for a week before a bounce is generated; and the bounce can more easily get lost because it isn't allowed to bounce again.

The ratio may not be favourable, price-wise, like binding with candle wax? It raises the question "could you wrap the sawdust with a sheet of A4 paper, with glue or sellotape?" but then you're back to "why not just use the shovel?" Also I think the difference is significant between sawdust (finely divided, potentially explosive in certain conditions) vs chainsaw chips (hopefully slower burning) ?

Basically the same yes, except raisins don't smash up when shaken, I didn't bother with the fridge, and I probably gave them a week or more. It's unremarkable... the rum remains rummy, the raisins taste quite nice. Maybe if I'd done a big batch I would have liked it more? If I were a partridge it could go badly for me? I suppose part of the charm is the drinking spirits from a jamjar, but I do also have some nice glassware.

My (limited) understanding is that in many cases they technically could because they have an email address, and in some of those the motorist might actually prefer that because of assorted postal problems discussed on this thread, but doing so would make another weakness in the possible legal case ahead. There are enough loopholes allowing the probably-guilty to escape punishment that no part of the current system wants to risk making more? Compare though, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." which seems to predate the modern "the process is the punishment" idea. I expect that acknowledging the message, whether by fax or otherwise, would be significant? If he rolled up to work the next day oblivious of the fax then it might, long afterwards, be found to not be service? If he responded with "your sacking is illegal and I'll take you to court" then the service has been made? One recent and famous example at not sure if it's comparable / I don't understand the background of the letter. Maybe it's more publicity / advertising than legal service?

I did the shredded paper + water + pressure = brick method and it worked OK. The paper needed shredding anyway. (ETA: strip cut) At the time I asked myself, "What's the heaviest thing I own that I can put on this brick to squeeze the water out? The car! And it comes with a handy tool for applying the necessary force." Another possible ingredient is candle wax Not sure how much you would need to bind sawdust, but it should burn just fine. If the production scale is a year's chainsaw chippings then maybe this isn't practical, but depending on the amounts needed it could still be price-competitive with flour or wallpaper paste.

I liked that when I read it above, but @Tony1's story says that isn't the whole picture. The DV[SL]A seems to be... not unanimous on this, and the faction that disagrees with the above have found a way to cause problems for people relying on the above? Stupid comparison to try to illustrate the point I'm trying to make "CWDF told me I should get a pump-out because it's better". Turns out CWDF is not unanimous on almost anything; although at least on toilet type we mostly agree that there is no right answer. 😉 ~~~~~ posts get joined despite being unrelated ~~~~ I agree, but trying to be more specific, when it's easy, you could do it even after a few glasses of wine ("don't drink and drown" is a fair warning) when it's hard, it can require great skill to do it at all, or even be impossible without extra crew If you keep doing it then you bump into the latter eventually. @LadyG is that what you meant?

Recipe starts with a little curiosity, then proceeds to dozen raspberries in jamjar lid on, good shake = mashed generous measure of vodka = probably 2x the level of the raspberries lid on again, shake fridge next day, interesting! it has set into a jelly shake & fridge again for good measure forget about it for another couple of days, then look in the fridge to see what needs clearing out before going away drink / eat it The pips are still crunchy. Nothing to recommend the recipe there. The flavour is... the sourness of raspberries plus the sharpness of vodka. Maybe you will like it more than I did? Overall, a recipe to avoid I think. However the vodka still causes giggliness and possibly inadvisable CWDF posts. In my defence, the raisins + rum version was much better, I should do that one again.

Sorry, I overstated what I knew. "It looked significantly cheaper when a marina offered me a choice of the two systems, but I didn't follow up on it or find out why." Partly because that marina was a bit too far away, and a bit expensive for my taste even before the extra commute costs. Thank you for the details. I'm puzzled by the maths and therefore the nature of the mechanism - Education is such hard work sometimes, but it can pay off! Individual payables = £1,200 × 15 boats = £18,000 total. Composite payables = £1,500 total ÷ 15 boats = £100? +25% for some company tax, then +20% more for VAT to £150? Or a typo? So a closer landlubber comparison might be a row of little bungalows vs one large HOusing in Multiple Occupancy (HOMO) unit such as sheltered accommodation? (I don't know how sheltered accommodation is taxed either) And the apparent discount stems from the tax bands being significantly regressive in the unit of measure, house value?

Sorry I'm late to this thread so it's a monster reply. I started off in the same boat (!) so I have some updates: about addresses and bureaucracies. Hopefully some part of this will help someone else find a way to live for a while. Before buying a boat I was a lodger / house renter / sofa-surfer, at different times. My move onto the boat was always a gradual shifting of weight rather than a firm step, and this made it easier for me. If you're going to jump, you'll want the kind of luck Jack Sparrow has arriving in Port Royal in the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl .🤣 Back in November when @KezzerN started the thread, I was looking at fitting myself with new bricks-and-mortar handcuffs. Actually maybe more like lawn handcuffs? We'll see how that goes - I've just learned about #NoMowMay and will wait to learn about #BrokenCheapLawnmowerJune. With regards to government agencies, I think each has different levels of caring about addresses. When I sofa surfed a week with a relative on benefits, she would not allow me any post because of the trouble it could cause her if the DWP found out. Another person I know describes the trouble he has on the phone with DWP, just giving his real residential address to identify himself ("no, that's not your address" -- "yes it is" -- *click* -- wait before being allowed to dial again). I never had to deal with them directly per se but they sound like a horrible power-crazed bunch of people - they know there's a lot of cheating, they allow some of it (?) and they've vicious with other people who are not cheating. I have an ongoing inescapable relationship with other gov departments who demand my address (sorry for being vague here - IYKYK - ask in the relevant forums elsewhere?) and once I picked up the phrase "correspondence address" things got easier, so for phonecalls to them I would always volunteer that phrase during the id check phase of the call. They need to know they can post you a document and it is legally served; without hiring a private detective to track you down and serve it in person. The flip side is, if they post something you need to know promptly or the trouble snowballs on you. Here is where accepting service from them by email can make things more reliable for you, but do read the small print. It probably helped that they are used to dealing with homeless people 😞 and you can consider, each time you talk to an organisation, whether you describe yourself as "intentionally homeless". Read up about that, e.g. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/homelessness-code-of-guidance-for-local-authorities/chapter-9-intentional-homelessness because it's a significant thing and you may be jumping into that boat too. I became intentionally homeless at a point during early C*V!D19 when I was sofa surfing in one place, and stopped paying rent for the other place where I had been before. I was lucky and/or careful, and always had a roof of some sort over my head and enough places to register an address. I only just found this page on Shelter https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homeownership/living_on_a_boat . I found some of their other advice pages useful but in general I've given more to Shelter than they've given me (which is how I prefer things in this case). On postal forwarding - if you're leaving an address, consider getting forwarding. The rule is that you will need a credit card registered there to start the forwarding service. I think you can get up to 12 months - read the rules if you need them, and know that Royal Mail forwarding doesn't cover all postal services. Better to be very organised about knowing which addresses you gave to what organisations, but who manages that 100%?! To be clear, I'm not recommending lying to anyone. Be honest, but also know when you are not obliged to be completely transparent about things you don't want to tell. I would suggest being clear with yourself at least, about exactly what you're doing with which organisation and how they relate to each other. e.g. If my car is insured where I rent a room, why would the insurance company need to know I have a second credit card at the address of my parents? Answer: they don't, until I'm stuck there in a COVID lockdown and it becomes "where the car is kept overnight". e.g. Maybe you can't give the DVLA your office (work) address, but maybe a boat insurance company would accept it if you told the insurance company? Maybe the employer won't notice, maybe you ask and they don't mind, maybe they'll fire you if they find out? I didn't try this, but I did have other stuff at a work address. If they're big enough to have a reception desk, they're big enough to not care; and also big enough to have an HR team that will find a reason why you aren't allowed to. (I realise that having a choice of several addresses for different purposes isn't @KezzerN's question. I'm just offering what I've got for any value that can be extracted.) I'm not advocating bending the rules. I'm suggesting taking care to understand the set of rules for each of the games that needs to be played, and then following the specific rules for the game at hand. I believe that's honest, but if you can show me where it's not then I guess I'll have some fixing up to do? The games are a huge mess of course, and they interact with each other in perverse ways. I understand that fighting the DWP for benefits is a nightmare in some contexts; and then after succeeding with that it may be harder to rent a room, but in other contexts one may find they're helpful in opening doors to other services? Long ago I formed the life rule "never lie to the tax man" and concluded that the same applies to insurance companies if you might ever want them to pay out. Their reputation is that investigations will happen when you claim, not when you pay the premium, so make sure there's nothing for them to "find out" later. Again, use the phrase "correspondence address". I was up front that I have a correspondence address, and that's where the credit card paying the bill lives, but where the car is kept overnight is a different place. For me for a while, that was in a marina car park and actually turned out cheaper, either by postcode lottery or because it was locked overnight? This is a good reason to talk to them on the phone rather than (or after) using an online quote system. I've used several insurance comparison sites and car insurance companies, and have nothing good to say about any specific ones... but there was always car insurance available at a price. I didn't record phone conversations with them while doing this... maybe it would have been wiser if I did? No claim yet = unknown. One marina owner I spoke to described what happened when he allowed residential-like post to be accepted: one boater set up a company, it went bust, and the bailiffs came round after the boater had gone. Fortunately they realised his marina stuff was not for their taking. Another boater claimed the winter fuel allowance and caused his (marina) family to not be able to get it. After that he had a crackdown on use of the address - I don't know how that worked because I didn't get a space there in the end. Another thing you have to beware of with marina post is that it may be unreliable. I've seen other people's being obviously lost (in the wrong place, but unclear where the right place is), neglected (they've gone away and nobody returns the post), fallen down the back of the cupboard (are other people so unobservant?) and most especially inconvenient, parcel companies delivering to the wrong place and you have you guess where from the tracking info. The reliability may or may not correspond to how much you're paying that marina. Another place I moored was great, as long as post was collected promptly from their office. They knew me, they gave me my post, they just didn't want it hanging around for days. Postal unreliability will not combine well with DVLA or other legally significant organisations! You get a speeding ticket, use a bus lane or miss paying a road toll? They send you mail and deem you to have received it pretty much immediately after. Maybe if you can show you were on holiday for a couple of weeks you get some slack? I never had to try that. Otherwise if you don't get the letter, it's your problem and can rapidly spiral out of control. Like this horror story - It sounds like a nasty shock to find that DVLA just don't post to Expost, and then hand out consequences for not replying. @Tony1 have you any more details please? I would wonder whether Expost had just lost the letter demanding road tax renewal, and wouldn't admit it? I never used a mailbox company, but I know somebody who does. He has a low opinion of them. He expects to need to check up on any important mail, and have wasted trips to collect parcels when he has seen the delivery company's tracking to say it was delivered. He expects them to lie about when items were received, especially near the end of a shift or... I forget the details and I'm not giving names, sorry. You may wonder why he still uses a bad company and I don't know, but before I met him he was vanlifing (before that was the name for it). Apart from that, I would think that DVLA for your licence and DVLA for the car could be at different addresses if you had a good reason? I didn't do that. What you need to be able to do is promptly receive your speeding tickets etc. because each organisation has obligations attached to the address for the purposes they use it. They may also use it for marketing, risk calculation etc. but that could also be them bending the rules on you. Also consider that for £15 you can get a proof of age id card like myidcard. One of the benefits they claim is that it's accepted in some places you might otherwise use a driving licence, but does not show your address. I don't have one yet. IANAL but I do wonder how this could work if the driver didn't get (and could reasonably show they would not have had within a certain period of time) the letter that the policy was cancelled? Maybe they also sent email and would claim that was enough. You might be uninsured, but if you legally show you thought you were and had not been told otherwise... then what? Big mess, best avoided, read the fine print (RTFP?). In my experience, and honestly according to how I read the docs, this does not seem to be a problem. The council tax payer lives there alone? Then claim the 25%. Receiving your post, maybe opening it (or "please open the brown ones" as I said, because those were the scary ones), and phoning you from time to time - this is not incompatible with the single person discount. My postmistress 😉 also had lodgers at times, so her 25% discount would come and go - again honestly. If I was there for more than a week, and there was no lodger, then she told the council and I paid her some more domestic allowance. (DWP not relevant - no benefits there) This is what I mean by giving an address for a purpose. For the purpose of Council Tax, it's actually where a person is living. When you're not living there, you're not liable to pay. (Beware the converse - in some counties now, owning a vacant property can get expensive, as in 300% Council Tax liability.) 😞 I was lucky to find a postmistress, and that she was trustworthy. Not always perfect, and there have been mistakes that cost me money because I didn't get a letter until after the "reply within 14 days else we will assume..." deadline, but overall really helpful. It is part of life's give and take, so I'm still giving on that one and that's also fine. I have no experience of identity theft but I know a good chap it sent into the gutter (literally) - from working hard and having employees, to bankrupt and homeless. Don't know how that happened. If you have your post delivered somewhere and another person picks it up... it may be illegal for them to open it without your permission but that might not be enough protection for you. The trust of using a postal address goes both ways and I don't really know where one can get full advice about the risks. That one is easier to deal with https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/who-can-vote/other-registration-options , essentially you can vote in one area you "have ties to". The updating is helpful for all of us, so thank you @missingtheboat in advance for that. I agree, but here a significant thing to remember is, A broker wants to sell you something and (in UK at least) is under legal constraints to do that with a sufficient degree of honesty. That means you can talk to them and they'll help you answer the questions sufficiently truthfully to not make a problem for anyone; and if they can't help, you are probably no worse off when you try the next broker, except that some of your data is quietly stashed in the credit reference agencies' database. You may pay £15 extra on your premium for the old fashioned privilege of speaking to a person on the phone, but in my experience it is worth it for the peace of mind. The marina mostly needs to know the is your car, not some freeloader stealing their parking space; that it's not an obstruction; and it won't be abandoned on their land and cost them money to remove. Ask nicely before leaving it there for long periods. One marina had loads of space and was happy for me to leave the car there the months the boat was out. I probably gave them the reg and paid something, but it was no big deal. I agree with Bod - it's a separate need from whatever goes on with the DVLA and insurance, but paperless doesn't cover all aspects (as below). Consider leaving a prominent note in the windscreen with your mobile number. If the car causes a physical problem, you will then be the first to know and have a chance to help deal with it nicely. As someone who has had documents delivered in person - My impression is that this is significant. Addresses are a statutory tool which can be used when taking a person to court. They're used for other things too, but in certain contexts the place just needs to know they can take you to court - and you need to know that they might, and deal with the problem before it gets that far. When documents are delivered in person a pair of large chaps will show up on the doorstep and demand to know where you are. The person who answers the door may be forbidden to mislead them or notify you about the purpose - I don't know the details of this. When it happened to me I was away for legitimate reasons, but I already got the email copy so I didn't succumb to the urge to be... mysteriously unavailable for weeks while the bailiffs get paid to chase me. Nasty business that. Now ask me why my profile is a bit vacant?! While thinking about boat length, also consider that a shorter boat will have different mooring options; although I think most marinas keep their space list organised by size in some way, so you may not be allowed to put a 40ft in a 70ft space, unless they expect to get a 28ft boat soon? It's called the knapsack problem but also the marina doesn't want to shuffle boats too often. Some marinas have a semi-residential option, possibly called "non-exclusive residential moorings" or "composite council tax" (example). You are not allowed a "permanent" berth,so you agree to move your boat to a different place in the same marina once or twice a year. In return the council allows a discount on the council tax. Also while looking at buying a boat in one place and intending to moor in another - consider the time it will take to do that move. If you're new to boats you may find the journey is many more weeks than you imagined, even full-time cruising with everything in good working order. If you've only done holiday hire in the past, you may also need to learn about stoppage schedules. 👆exactly this. But have a backup plan, because you are essentially a guest and if the marina does say "we notice you're around too much, you have to go" then you and/or your boat will have to go elsewhere. It may be your home, but it isn't your castle. One marina made it clear I couldn't be allowed a residential mooring. I gave them a postal address elsewhere, I let them know I was going to be away at certain times, and I didn't have post arriving and loitering in their office while I was away. (Lovely place that... I would happily retire there if I could, but by the time that comes round it probably will have been sold and very different.) There were minor problems, e.g. they changed the security number on the gate and didn't tell me, because I wasn't on the list of residential moorers. Another marina was like a little sanctuary in the middle of a grotty city. Again I could have happily stayed there, but the reason they had space for me was it's summer and other folks have taken their boats out - I had temporary moorings for the week I needed.

Thanks Tony, sounds like I have misunderstood the risk factors for legionella - I thought it could grow anywhere quiet. I have no idea what it considers food... it must eat something there in the dark? So yes, the accumulator does have a flow. That's its purpose and it just needs to be on a short enough leg off the cold supply to get "fresh" regularly. Mine is. I don't have a NRV on the cauliflower. At first I assumed there would be one, and was surprised to find none. Then I realised the cold accumulator serves the hot side too (saving cost and space of a second accumulator), because of the lack of NRV, so it seems like a sensible choice and it guarantees the pressures are balanced. What's the advantage of the NRV? I can't think of any process which would send a significant amount of hot water out the bottom of the tank into the cold supply. The only reason I can think of is if we expect the hot tank to be leaching lead from older plumbing, and therefore "less clean" than the cold supply. In a house system, there is often no cold accumulator. With the pressurised hot tank (more common these days than header tank in loft), an accumulator is absolutely needed. It seems to follow that an NRV is needed there because otherwise pressure fluctuations from usage in the cold supply would tend to drain heat from the bottom of the hot tank. That doesn't answer why the hot accumulator is normally put on the hot top of the tank, instead of the cold bottom feed as you described... there is a need for correct ordering of isolation taps vs accumulator but it's not hard. (I still refuse to drink from hot taps, having been taught that as a kid. Even now I realise the reason was growing up with a header tank, and yes we did have animals fall in and taint the hot supply... but I cannot bring myself to drink from a modern pressurised hot water tap! Sometimes, being rational means understanding what irrational choices I make.)

I've never serviced my accumulator and wasn't expecting to. It accumulates apparently was well as it did 30 years ago... I have no idea whether it's a diaphragm or bladder, or plain steel box / bladder with a hole. It's vertical so it presumably drains when I winterise. However the top comment on the Screwfix page T_i_m linked points out that it should be a service item because it's a dead leg, hence a place to harbour Legionella. Currently I keep my drinking water separately (the 5l "Hydr8" bottles are my current favourite, seen in larger Tescos, and with a nice stout handle) but life would be simpler if I had confidence that the plumbing is safe to drink from.

Yes. I agree that is necessary, and the "standard" way will help a lot with that. I think the "non-standard" way would help just as much because in this analysis we're ignoring the consumer arm of the circuit, and looking at the shore-GI-hull circuit. I know the first is conventional and normal, that's why I labelled that that way. I'm hoping to understand the ways the others are "not correct"... and for that reason we hope, not conventional. If a diabolical device in the boat takes 10mA of electrons from hull-Earth and deposits them in Live and/or Neutral it won't quite trip the RCD. No status lights will light to warn me. I'm pretty sure it will cause electrolytic corrosion, because those electrons will mostly come from Fe(solid) becoming Fe²⁺. This thought was prompted by - I made up a mains extension lead with the Earth interrupted by a pair of shrouded 4mm connectors and ten turns into which the current clamp can be inserted. That's three ways to see what's going on, two of which don't insert extra resistance. As an aside: I highly recommend https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00O1Q2HOQ/ which has precision to a milliamp on the current clamp. Then I surveyed a fair fraction of the stuff onboard and concluded, many devices leak enough to see, even when "off" eg. an older microwave at 0.15mA long runs of cable leak too, which surprised me until I considered there must be capacitance between the conductors... but it was more than I expected (without calculations). I forgot the details. I'm at the limit of what my equipment will show me, and at modest risk of things like meter impedance skewing the results. I don't have a convenient way to tell whether any of this is simple AC 50Hz in-phase, some other strange AC, or with DC components. So I asked a question and got more questions! Assuming the boat already has GI, circuit breakers, RCD etc. then my concern would be that you're bypassing all of that protection. For what benefit? If the boat doesn't have all that, then you're just charging a battery which happens to be connected to a boat. You might be relying on an RCD in the bollard for your personal safety. Check it's there, check its ratings, consider bringing your own (inline) on the 16A cable? You might want to check the DC current is balanced, ie. the IP22 is well behaved. You might want to check (when it is disconnected) there is an open circuit from DC negative to all charger mains pins. Being Victron I guess it would be OK? You might want to get an inline GI anyway? But it sounds like it would not be worth it in your case. Or borrow an inline GI with status lights, and see them being off for peace of mind, and then later wake up worrying that maybe they would be on now while you're not able to watch? Oh dear, time to refill my 🍺🍺🍺🍺

One problem is it can degenerate into think twice, go have a cup of tea, forget what the second thought was... try again another day. 🥴💫 sounds scary dangerous. What triggered them?