BrumBargee

There's a certain amount of irony in people complaining about the quality of a YouTube channel in a thread where the quality of discussion has reached rock bottom. Can we maybe cut out the personal insults, unfounded generalisations and false sense of superiority?

Funnily enough when we had a mooring at Yarwell, we tried to tell people we were living on the 'River Nen' and they hadn't the faintest clue where it was. As soon as we said 'River Neen' though, they said they knew it. ?

That's fine and people are free to criticise the quality of the content. What's more sinister is some of the posts I've seen in recent months targeted specifically at the individuals rather than what they produce.

This specific incident aside, I'm not sure why this forum seems to have such a broad hatred for vloggers. Is it because people are jealous of the attention they get or they view them as somehow 'skipping ahead' in the canal prestige league tables? Yes some of them are new boaters (definitely not all) but they don't claim to be oracles of the waterways, they are just making a bit of light entertainment. There's no need to demonise them. I happen to think Mrs. Brown's Boys is the worst thing to happen to comedy for a generation, but I don't have anything against Brendan O'Carroll - in fact I'm sure he's a lovely man. And there are millions of people who no doubt adore that sitcom. You can criticise the content without hounding the creator.

You don't really need to distinguish between them, if you hear a horn the safest thing to do is assume it's a boat and proceed with caution until you can see more of what's going on.

I can see why most canal boaters won't know all of these signals, but one long blast for a blind bend is almost common sense. I just find it strange - why would you risk running into another boat when a simple press of a button is all that's needed?

Back when I was little and my dad first taught me to steer a narrowboat, he always stressed the importance of using the horn at blind bends, bridges etc. for avoiding collisions. It's something I still do and I am convinced it has helped to avoid a significant number of incidents. It seems recently to me though, that many boaters don't use their horn at all (and some don't even have a working horn onboard). I recently came through a blind bridge hole on the GU just north of Gayton junction. I did my usual procedure of backing off the speed and sounding the horn. There was no reply, but as I came through there was a boat stopped on the other side. The skipper was very thankful, saying "thank you for the signal, we wouldn't have been able to stop in time otherwise". Why then, did he not sound his own horn as he approached? I can understand not memorising all the different horn signals (I struggle to remember the full list myself sometimes) but a horn is a universally recognised sound to signal "I'm here". It's why boats have them in the first place. Has anyone else found that boaters are just less horn-y than they used to be? ?

Just a thought - do you react to these boats yourself? Dogs (particularly in new environments) are very reactive to their owners' emotions. If you get stressed or angry at speeding boats, your dog might perceive this as being a sign of a threat nearby. Similarly if you over-comfort a dog in a stressful situation, they can also become unsettled as it comes across as out of the ordinary. Often the best thing to do is act as if nothing has happened. I don't think you'll ever stop people speeding on the canal, but if you can find a way to be at peace with it your dog might follow. Not meaning to sound patronising, but it I've seen it work wonders for some dogs.

In theory you could do it in a 70ft x 14ft boat but as some have already mentioned it's not always a good idea to build to the full dimensions. 14ft widebeams can get stuck in certain locks that have subsided etc. Consider a 62ft length if you can make it work, it will allow you access to a lot more of the Northern waterways. Although your plans are to stay in the marina, you might feel differently about it in the future. The beauty of living on a boat is if you get the itch to move, you can. We've lived in Liverpool Marina for the past year. We had planned to stay longer but we are going back to continuous cruising a lot sooner than expected.

It really depends on your circumstances and what you can afford to spend: Built-in generator: Really the 'gold-plated' solution. It's the quietest, saves wear and tear on your engine and is most convenient. The down side is it's probably the most expensive option and it takes up extra room in the boat. You might be able to offset some of the initial cost against that of installing and maintaining a gas system, as a generator could allow you to go gas free. EDIT: I'd definitely echo what David said above. The only generator that should be built-in to a boat is one that was made for that purpose. Don't be tempted to modify a suitcase genny for use inboard. Not only are they not gas-tight, it may well be a fire/explosion hazard. Suitcase generator: Even the quietest Honda will be too noisy for some neighbours, particularly if you're working it hard to get charge into your batteries. It might make you unpopular depending on where you moor. On the plus side it's much cheaper than a built-in generator and relatively cheap to maintain provided you buy a decent one (having owned a few, I wouldn't get anything other than a Honda now). Boat engine: You probably already have one, so it's free. It might also be quite quiet depending on your exhaust. The down side is idling to charge batteries long-term can be bad for some engines (although you can mitigate this by charging in gear, you may damage the bank if you keep doing it in the same spot). You also need to ensure your alternator to battery setup is getting you the best efficiency as ultimately it's not the primary output of the engine.

I'd imagine so. I remember owning a Jag X-Type estate. Fantastic car but mostly made of Ford Mondeo parts, in fact most of the parts had the Ford logo stamped into them. I'm sure a Jag dealer would happily have charged more than a Ford dealer for them.

I've never owned any significant pieces of Vetus kit (mainly just small items like strainers etc.) but the running joke is that their business model is to paint existing kit yellow, slap on some Vetus stickers and quadruple the price. I think it gives the end user the illusion of using OEM parts because they're all branded the same, even though it's often not the case.

I would suggest going a bit bigger. Even a smallish solid fuel stove is around 3-4kW. if your boat is quite modern with spray foam insulation you can get away with a bit less output but if you have an older boat that's quite draughty and has less insulation it's worth giving a bit extra. Most narrowboats go for the 2000 series from Refleks and they seem to be nicely matched for 57ft-72ft.

My boat has a RN DM2 which is skin-tank cooled. For the most part this is fine but following significant overplating of the hull sides and years of blacking, it's no longer enough to cut it on the more extended river cruises such as the Thames (our last river trip resulted in draining several calorifiers of water over the side just to keep the temperature down). In order to assist with the cooling, I'm fitting a heat exchanger setup to use water drawn from the river. I can install all parts of the system myself except for the raw water inlet seacock which will need professional installation whilst the boat is out of the water. Can anyone recommend any boatyards in the North West that would do this kind of work? I'm currently based in Liverpool Marina until the Summer. The boatyard here are great but the price to use their lift is eye-watering compared to some of the slipways/dry docks at your average narrowboat marina. Many thanks in advance.

I've had a few outdoor generators for my boat over the last few years, from a big remote-start diesel down to the small suitcase petrols. The only one that hasn't had to go back to the workshop has been the Honda. I nearly sold it on at one point but I'm so glad I kept it, it has been flawless (and definitely the quietest I've experienced). My worst experience was with the Hyundai diesels (which I think are actually made by a 3rd party with Hyundai stickers on). It had so many problems and they weaseled out of the warranty by claiming I hadn't loaded the generator enough. Appreciate this is all anecdotal but happy to expand on any of the points. If I was buying again today I wouldn't consider anything other than Honda.

It does seem that's a risk. I don't think Biffa would point blank refuse to collect the waste (they can provide services that collect much more dangerous waste than just poo), but the cost to CRT will inevitably go up if they want to depart from their current waste arrangements. CRT's current stance seems to be one of 'managing defiance'. They've taken the very minor step of saying it's something you "shouldn't" do in the hope that it will discourage further adoption, but they know they can't stop the existing practice for the time being.

I must say I'm jealous!

It doesn't, but it goes some way to understanding the reasoning behind why people have installed them in the first place. It also feeds in to root cause analysis of the problem which CRT et al. Should be conducting. If you want people to stick to Elsan & Pump-Out, then remove the barriers to them doing so (e.g. serviceability, availability, frequency etc.) To be honest I doubt they are that concerned at this stage, the numbers of people doing it are so small (low 100s) that it can't exactly be topping their list of priorities right now.

There's a lot of assumption made on here that people are just installing dry toilets to somehow 'get out of paying' for disposing of their waste. That may be true in some cases but a lot of boaters are utterly sick of the state of toilet disposal on many parts of the network. My last trip pre-lockdown was from Peterborough to Tring to Liverpool over 4-5 weeks, covering several hundred miles. Our boat has a small Pump-Out tank which lasts 2 weeks at best (often less) with 2 people living aboard. I could count on one hand the number of CRT Pump-Out stations we passed, and even fewer were serviceable. The marinas seem more and more hostile to Pump-Out users nowadays. I must have asked at around 6/7 marinas (many of which actively advertised the service) yet only 1 would actually pump my boat out. Excuses included pump not working, too busy, can't do it in the rain, can't be arsed, not worth my time etc. I know Elsans are more plentiful and simpler to maintain, (in fact we have a chemical porta potti as a backup) but these seem to be in a worsening state of disrepair nowadays as well. I know many boaters who have similar (or worse) experiences on a regular basis, and it's not just down to lack of planning on their part. Dry toilets have been sold (rightly or wrongly) as a way of having greater control over when and where you can empty your toilet. We can talk til the cows come home about the moral and legal implications of how people are doing it, but painting the bag & binners as "those dirty nasty people over there" is just childish and won't help solve the underlying problem.

Only at weekends ?

I think this discussion has become circular now. Nearly 30 pages! Turns out there are 3 certainties in life: death, taxes and the narrowboat toilet debate ?

If you mean did it reduce the amount of smokers? Absolutely, particularly the more casual smokers. But has it eradicated smoking? No, not at all. If anything that was a good example of where a nudge was better than a big stick. Smoking wasn't banned, it was just restricted to designated areas.

Regardless of the intricacies of the solution, behavioural science tells us it's usually more effective to support and guide people towards change than it is to beat them over the head with the big stick of legislation, even if they're doing something wrong in the first place. If the outcome you're after is the cessation of black bags of poo in the general waste, the process to actually make that happen is not going to happen overnight, regardless of what rules you put in place. Just making something illegal doesn't mean you've solved the problem, in many cases it just drives it underground where it becomes even harder to monitor.