Neil2
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Posts posted by Neil2
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4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
(From memory there are far more options for imposing 'conditions' in the 1983 Act".
But, the above quoted sections / subsections do not specifically relate to the hours allowed for engine operation
Part II
Section 1 does however, specifically mention "...and the prevention of pollution, noise and interference with the operation of radio or television equipment".
Section 2, 3 & 4. No relevance
Section 5(a) makes mention that proviosn may be made re conditions for engines - but for propulsion ONLY. "....with regard to the construction, maintenance and operation of engines used for the propulsion of powered boats and to the storage and supply of fuel for such engines"
I'd be very grateful to "Waterworks" for his guidance as to which part of the Act specifically relates to running engines between 8pm and 8am.
I wonder if this 'fact' is another that has emanated from someone on the internet writing what they would like things to be, rather than what they actually are.
Alan - unless I have read it wrong I think that is his argument - ie that the licence condition is unenforceable because it isn't covered by the Act.
I may be wrong, perhaps @waterworks could clarify?
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2 hours ago, MtB said:
I too think it is worth investigating the fault. As Tracy says, it is a racing certainty the heater element has failed, causing the tripping, and heater elements are reasonably easy to replace. The hard part is getting the machine out of its hole for access, but you'll have to do this anyway if you buy a new machine.
The main reason for fixing the old one though, is new machines are mostly controlled by a PCB instead of an electromechanical sequencer. PCBs fail for fun and washing machine PCBs tend to cost much the same as a whole new machine.
I remember my wife was round at a friends house once and a guy turned up to fix the washer. It turned out to be the PCB which didn't take long to replace, then the guy calmly hands over a bill for just shy of £200 which at the time would have bought a brand new replacement.
Unfortunately the government's plan to make household appliances repairable is the product of muddy thinking. Just forcing manufacturers to make spare parts available isn't going to end planned obsolescence if the cost of repairs is still ridiculous.
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3 hours ago, Bee said:
Perhaps i have just woken up particularly grumpy this morning but its a real shame that the British canal system became largely standardised at 7` x 72 or therabouts and has now become 6`10" x something or other. I can identify the products of a fair few builders but there are an awful lot of boats that are as near as dammit identical. There have been a few brave efforts at novel ideas, some sort of work but the designers of some of them need taking aside and given a stern talking to. As others have said its all about the interior nowadays and the tech that can be crammed in to it. Seems that the 'boat' bit has become secondary to the 'luxury' bit and that has become the bit where the price and profit is made. Think I will get a fag packet and design a proper boat on the back of it. Might have to be the back of an envelope as fag packets are hard to find these days.
I suppose "we" get what we deserve. The culture of the canals has changed a lot since I started boating, I think the rise of marina culture is largely responsible, providing a safe, secure, environment with mains electric and water - it's hardly surprising that the emphasis has shifted to cabin space and the fitout when so many boats are never going anywhere.
There are a few builders around who are still producing distinctive boats with style but the sad reality is that unlike say the 1970's and 80's there are no budget, or even middle market builders doing it. There isn't a modern equivalent of the Springer, Harborough, Barney Boat or Hancock & Lane's Norseman, for example.
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59 minutes ago, waterworks said:
Running engines has nothing to do with licence conditions, they are statutory and all contained in the 1995 BW act .
CRT is referring to a voluntary code of conduct that used to be called " The Boaters Handbook" which they now falsely claim is a licence contract that can be cancelled and with it the licence, however no contract can override the issue of a statutory licence and any contract that claims to is invalid even if you agreed to it or signed it or thought it was real.
In the past any one who challenged such threats of licence revocation or fines the case was quietly dropped by CRT who do not want this matter exposed in court.
Part II of schedule 2 of the Act (paras 1&5) does give CRT a fair amount of leeway when it comes to imposing licence conditions.
The issue is then whether CRT imposing an 8pm curfew on engine running is a reasonable "standard" within the Act.
I see the point you are making, it's a little like property landlords imposing unreasonable tenancy conditions - even if the tenant signs an agreement - eg not to keep a pet - it doesn't make the conditions enforceable.
But it's not an argument for saying there should not be any measurable standards in the licence conditions. The law says it's ok for CRT to set standards for the operation of boat equipment and engines, so you have to start somewhere. You might argue about whether 8pm to 8am is reasonable, but I doubt you could argue about the principle of having stated restricted hours.
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11 hours ago, northern said:
No doubt it's a lot of money but then again, what isn't at the moment? I've seen a few 1 year old boats come to market which are 15%+ more than new.
I'm even considering viewing this tomorrow:
https://www.aqueductmarina.co.uk/second-hand-boats/lodestone/
Probably £10K more than it would've been than not too long ago. And at that price/age, is Silver Fox actually good value?
I really want a trad or semi-trad but after 18 months and no success, beggars can't be choosers.
I guess I'm telling you what you already know, but...
If you really want a trad or semi why pay over the odds for a cruiser? I reckon the sort of new buyers who are flocking to the canals at the moment prefer cruisers. so Aqueduct (pah!) are probably going to get something close to the asking price, maybe even more.
In the end narrowboats are still boats, and the boat market is highly seasonal, so once we get into the colder darker months some sort of normality will return. Looking at boats on a cold windswept day in November is worlds away from these balmy summer days.
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Squall blue can't be far off. From what I can remember Nauticus boats were not painted, the original light blue colour is simply the colour of the original gel coat so if you repaint it all you can do is try and get the closest match, which I guess is what a previous owner has done.
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3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
It makes you wonder about the logic of telling the electricty companies to tun off their 'windy-mills' and paying them the 'estimated output they 'would have generated'if they hadn't turned them off.
Why are we paying them not to produce 'leccy ?
Wind farms across England and Scotland were handed £9.3 million to switch off their turbines on Friday, to balance supply and demand and stabilise the grid.
National Grid made constraint payments to more than 80 wind farms, compelling them to switch off so supply didn’t outpace demand on the windy, sunny weekend. That includes £6.9 million handed to 66 Scottish wind projects and £1.9 million paid to 14 offshore wind plants in England.
The total constraint payments for the day was more than double the previous record—£4.8 million paid to windfarm operators on 8 October 2018, when it was too windy. Last year, 86 windfarms were paid £136 million in constraint payments.
Wind Farms Paid £9.3 Million to Disconnect from Grid - Simply Switch
Yes how ridiculous that's like paying people to not go to work.
Oh, hang on....
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It looks as though that part of the bilge is sealed all the way round..? That would make life a bit easier. From the pictures it doesn't look too bad ie no obvious danger of the baseplate being perforated.
Don't know what others think but if it is sealed, I'd get it dry first off then remove all the loose rust and treat it Vactan say, or Owatrol, you could then treat it like an integral water tank actually it's easier as you don't have to worry about the coating being toxic, just standard blacking would do.
Better still IIRC Jotun do a range of epoxy based products for treating old integral water tanks but I don't think you can buy them in small quantities so it could be an expensive exercise, though you could use the rest for the outside of the boat I suppose...
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The people who believe that this country is on track towards an electric future, with electric cars, boats, even planes, and heat pumps instead of boilers - just observe the hand wringing that's going on since we lost that subsea cable connecting us to France. We're already having to fire up fossil fuelled power stations to make up the shortfall.
The fact is, in terms of electricity generation and consumption the UK is right on the edge most of the time. What wonderful thing is going to happen in the next 30 years to provide all the extra power needed for this emission free world?
Politicians and governments can spout on all they like about aspirations for the future, but on the strength of what's happened so far this century who would place any faith in that?
13 minutes ago, Mad Harold said:Petrol engines can be converted to run on Propane.More expensive,but available on the canals.
And much less efficient..?
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Running with a petrol o/b isn't nearly as problematic as it used to be now we have the internet but still involves a bit of forward planning. Rather than look at engine alternatives I would just buy an electric folding bike for trips to the filling station.
But you think it's an issue on the inland waterways, I remember reading an account of a couple who circumnavigated the UK in a petrol outboard powered cruiser, and it was all about the adventures they had finding fuel. When they got to the North West of Scotland I seem to remember on one occasion they had something like a 20 mile hike and a couple of taxi journeys.
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39 minutes ago, blackrose said:
I wouldn't be happy with that arrangement. Waste grey water needs to be contained and pumped overboard, not allowed to slosh around on the baseplate. Ideally shower drains should run directly to a diaphram pump (whale gulper) so no water is collected anywhere but I don't know how that could be done in a wetroom unless the drain ran from a sealed floor to the pump? But a load bearing floor that won't flex and leak seems full of potential problems. Which is why I don't like wetrooms on boats.
It's not too difficult with todays technology. In another life I commissioned a lot of level entry showers/wetrooms which invariably were fitted to suspended floors, the issue in a boat - a narrowboat especially - is that the wet room is a lot smaller than it would be in a house so the sealing has to extend up the walls a fair bit. On the boat I had it meant there was about a 6" "lip" at the entrance to stop the water escaping. The bilge pump sat in a little "sump" in the corner and the floor was laid in such a way that the grey water drained into it to be pumped overboard. The advantage of course is that you can use pretty much all the available space in the room.
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14 hours ago, John Brightley said:
Here's a photo of her, taken at Hawkesbury in 1981 when she was nearly new. There will be more information in the Waterways World article - I'll have a look for it when I get the chance.
But the most obvious person to ask about it would be Pete Gilbert !
How interesting - but a bit frustrating as I can't quite make out the legend on the cabin side though it looks like "A R" something and "Bulwell Nottingham".
I see it did have a stove in the back cabin which has since been removed, and I can't see a chimney where the stove is now, up front.
I'd ask Pete Gilbert but I can't find any contact details and I'm a long way from Bedworth!
I think @Laurence Hogg might have more information.?
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15 hours ago, The Happy Nomad said:
He may have personally signed it but I doubt he personally composed it or even read it or the original.
Thats what a corporate communication manager is for.
Cynical! Moi?
14 hours ago, Ianws said:Happens all the time.
I have spent enough years working in large organisations to know when a reply has come from the person signing it.
I have no doubt that Mr Parry dealt with this personally.
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10 minutes ago, EnglishRose said:
Our bow has a drainage hole which goes right through to the canal so nothing drains from there to the back bilge pump.
Hmm we probably need to look into that.
I wonder if other Midway/Simon Piper boats have similar set ups.
You have "self draining" decks then.
I suspected that was the case, so if your boat was not designed with a wet bilge you really do need to sort this out. That is a truly dreadful way of designing a shower/drain, certainly no professional fitter would do it that way.
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17 hours ago, Jim Batty said:
Having not eaten in a restaurant in 18 months, I find myself with some pennies saved and a notion to get a decent bicycle that can handle all manner of towpaths (gravel, earth, grass, roots, ...) and wayward day trips up backroads and wooded pathways. Plus getting in groceries. I reckon I need some kind of hybrid bike that would be fun to ride with the following:
- Hardtail with good front suspension with modest travel
- Medium width tyres with a bit of grip (wider than road tyres, but not as wide as full mountain bike ones)
- A 1x11 or 1x12 set of gears (to keep things simple)
- Mudguards
- Rear pannier fixing points (so I can hang my old Ortliebs on a rack)
Any thoughts? Bonus points for any bike that is actually in stock and available to buy somewhere!
With respect, your list of requirements is not compatible with your spec. For a bike that will handle "all manner" of towpaths you'll need tyres wider than the typical hybrid.
I was only half joking about the fat bike, one of these with electric assistance would handle any towpath you are likely to come across and a lot more besides. But it would be a dead weight. I'd still go with a straight fat bike though. They are not as slow as you might think. I friend of mine was doing a cross country tour with a group and they were all on full sus MTB's. He somehow broke an axle though and the only thing he could hire at the time was a fat bike, unsuspended but 4" tyres. He said he was leaving his mates for dead from that point on and he ended up buying one. Plus where I live we get proper snow in winter and these bikes are about the only thing you can safely ride in snow.
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45 minutes ago, MtB said:
I'm scared of e-bikes. Once I get one, I fear my ordinary bikes will just rot away unused.
That is genuinely the only reason I haven't got one - yet.
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13 hours ago, EnglishRose said:
Is that something we should be a bit concerned about or should we just get into the habit of standing on the side periodically and turning the pump on to make sure as much water as possible is pumped out?
It's not a good way of operating a shower/drain. Think about it, your steel baseplate is being exposed to water constantly. Just like it is on the outside except the outside is protected by blacking. That pump is a bilge pump but it won't drain all the water so that part of you bilge is going to be constantly wet. As you can see, it's already rusty, eventually the rust will perforate the baseplate - it might take a long time but it's inevitable.
Many years ago narrowboats were built on the "wet bilge" principle. Rainwater etc could enter the bow section and the idea was it would drain all the way to the back of the boat where a bilge pump in the engine compartment would pump it out. At the same time water from the shower would be allowed to drain into the bilge as well. Some of these boats are still around but not surprisingly most of them will have been overplated by now... But in the days of air cooled engines the engine would create an airflow through the bilge which would help keep it dry. It could be that your boat is a wet bilge boat, and at some point because the water from the shower is not draining to the stern, a pump has been installed under the shower room. Or it could just be bad design. Either way you need to find a way to stop the water entering the bilge.
There's nothing wrong with using a simple bilge pump in a waterproof tray for a shower tray, it just means that the tray will be permanently wet. So if you could find a way of turning that part of the bilge into a sort of tray, or even seal the platform that you stand on at the moment and have the bilge pump in that. I had a boat with that sort of arrangement, the floor of the shower room had been made completely waterproof up to about 6" from the floor so it held the waste water while a bilge pump pumped it overboard. The pump was actually in a little recess in the floor so almost all the water got pumped out.
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21 minutes ago, Loddon said:
We had a new fuseboard fitted (as having retired I am no longer allowed to do without getting it certified) this involved testing every circuit as I wanted cert as well. Most of the sockets and light fittings were hanging loose as we were decorating at the time, even so it took him most of the day.
Cost was £160 which is the same as it would have cost me if I had done it to get my work verified by the council.
Ha, six and two threes. In my case two guys were in residence for two days which is a lot of money at todays rates. Doubtless you know, but they said they hate these jobs because in the end there's usually nothing to show for it, just a certificate.
Got to say it's one of the many things that is killing the small trader, fire safety is another. It's ok for the big boys that can absorb these costs but sometimes you look at the books and think we are supposed to be making a profit here...
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I'd get an electric fat bike. Go anywhere. Getting it on/off the boat might be an issue...
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Not quite sure what's going on there but that looks like your baseplate and you don't want standing water on it. As you can see it's already quite rusted.
Where/what is the "pump" that it supposed to remove the water?
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35 minutes ago, Loddon said:
There is debate on this matter, if it was the type of fitting with no lever just a hole you push the cable in then I think he is correct as they are designed for single core cable, if it has a lever that you release once the cable is in place then he is wrong.
ETA
I have had long conversations with CeeNorm technical department about whether ferrules should be used in their industrial quick fit connectors and the advice was no.
Sounds like he was right.
TBH I was mostly impressed that he had even checked, mind you for what they charge us I would expect everything to be taken apart.
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54 minutes ago, John Brightley said:
The boat I was referring to was Jenny Wren.
Sorry, I made the assumption because your comment came directly under the post about the "Joe Gilbert".
I found some more pictures of Jenny Wren on the move and she really does have lovely lines, do you have any more info or do you know anyone who might?
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1 hour ago, IanD said:
So you're going Ashton to Sowerby via the Rochdale? I was assuming you were going via the HNC...
Pay attention at the back there...
31 minutes ago, captain birdseye said:I would either do the half hour run to Droylsden Marina, you can tie up in the marina overnight and there is shopping and a nice little bar called the silly country five minutes walk away, or its a couple of hours and six locks up the Huddersfield to Stalybridge. You can wind above lock 7W either in the evening or the morning after. Lots of boats moor in the square or near Tescos, and have a wander up to the Crafty Pint and Bridge beers on Melbourne street, the pedestrianised road just below lock 6W
Yes - I hadn't really considered that but the OH does like doing locks, so killing time up and down the Peak Forest might not appeal, and it's been a while since we last went to Stalybridge, good thinking.
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- Popular Post
- Popular Post
A few weeks ago there was a lengthy thread on the issue of inconsiderate boaters running engines after 8pm.
I said I would contact CRT to seek their advice on this issue, and to suggest that as it seems to be an increasing problem they might like to put some measures in place to monitor it. I sent the letter on 1st Sept.
I received a reply this morning signed by Richard Parry, and I don't doubt that he wrote it. So, first point is, if you bother to write to the Chief Executive direct, the chances are he will read it personally. I must admit this took me by surprise as I fully expected to get a reply from some customer relations person further down the line. So credit to Mr Parry.
The relevant parts of the reply are:
As you might expect, CRT "take breaches of licence conditions seriously" and will make contact with any boaters who have been reported as being in breach of their conditions. The offender is reminded of their conditions and if the matter persists there are processes whereby CRT will ultimately terminate a licence.
Mr Parry advises "...others should not take the matter up with the offending boater themselves and potentially put themselves at risk." Instead they should report the matter via customer services either by phone or through the "contact us" part of the CRT website, giving the location and index number of the boat concerned.
Not surprisingly CRT would not want to risk any liability issues by advising boaters to tackle boat licence culprits, though Mr Parry doesn't actually say that.
Finally, on the issue of monitoring, Mr Parry states that; "We now have a new customer relationship management system in place and can track all cases to identify if there are repeat complaints. It is helpful to receive any reports of boats running their engines or generators outside permitted hours, so that we can monitor the scale of the problem and respond accordingly".
Make of that what you will, but the least we can all do is take Mr Parry at his word and assiduously report future incidents as he suggests. We might then find out what "respond accordingly" actually means.
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Washing Machine and travel power
in Boat Equipment
Posted
That's a surprise - we have a Miele washing machine, a semi commercial thing I bought secondhand ten years ago and it has cost us literally nothing, despite being in almost constant use. Mind you, that might be the reason..?