dmr
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Posts posted by dmr
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I suspect boating is changing and there are more boats not moving much and less boats moving a lot. I also suspect that hire boating has seen a sharp decline in the last couple of years, bad weather and too many "boating season" stoppages have likely put people off, plus its an expensive holiday compared with cheap overseas stuff. However I suspect that out of season hire boating has probably increased.
Except for the main runs into central Birmingham I think the BCN is not popular.
If you want busy then the North Oxford and Braunston area, plus much of the South Oxford, Trent and Mersey through Stone, Llangollen etc. will please you 😀
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Just now, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
I find the idea of cutting down rain forests to feed our machines most disturbing.
Me swopping to a biofuel will make not one jot of difference in the grand scheme of things.
But thats the problem and thats why our government is copping out on their carbon neutral plans, claiming that the UK makes only a tiny contribution to the worlds CO2 total. The world is in big boi trouble and we all need to do our bit to help. Just maybe if Europe makes a big effort then China and the USA just might feel pressured to fall in line, though China is actually doing pretty well in some ways.
Like us, you already lead a fairly low impact lifestyle, but if you make just a little improvement and tell somebody else about you might just nudge them into action.....go on, buy that extra solar panel 😀
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6 minutes ago, jupiter1124 said:
Yes, me. HVO is carbon neutral.
Anyway you can see why I avoided mentioning HVO at the start of this thread as i knew where the conversation would go 😅
I suspect that there are two main sources of opposition to HVO
1, many boaters are tight fisted and resent paying an extra 20p/litre to save the planet (though rather more if forced to use 100% white HVO), and rather than admit to this like to find some other excuse.
2 The eco warrior purists/electric advocates who will accept nothing less than 100% electrification and 100% abolition of all liquid fuels.
Its a liitle bit Like CAMRA who maintain 100% opposition to any keg/pressure dispensed beer and so have totally missed out on the revolution in excellent quality "craft" keg beers that is happening all around us.
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7 minutes ago, Momac said:
I did not say that .
I would be very much in favour of HVO if it is responsibly sourced. But I am not convinced that it is .
My objection is to the inaccurate use of the term 'carbon neutral'
HVO certainly is low emission so better than diesel . But that doesn't make it carbon neutral.
Has anybody actually said HVO is carbon neutral? Most www sites that I have looked say it reduces CO2 by up to 90% (I think).
I suspect 90% is still optimistic as I believe the production process is quite energy intensive, and I really don't know if all the transport "costs" are also factored in.
To me there seams little point in producing HVO by cutting down the rainforest as this must give an actual increase in CO2, but then everyday I watch a diesel hauled train go past full of wood pulp that I believe has come from Canada and this counts as green energy. 😀
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2 minutes ago, Momac said:
Energy is required to produce HVO and to deliver the fuel.
No fuel is carbon neutral unless it involves no fossil fuel and it is produced and delivered to its point of use by a non industrial process.
and I read somewhere that every wind turbine has a little diesel generator inside it, plus they get maintained by people driving diesel LandRovers and even Helicopters, lets get rid of them and go back to good old Britixh Coal 😀.
There appears to be an argument "HVO is not perfect so I will just stick with dinodiesel".
As a boater I am pretty much stuck with hydrocarbon fuels, but I reckon I have more than halved our boating carbon footprint over the last couple of years.
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1 hour ago, Momac said:
HVO is not carbon neutral.
HVO emissions from an engine are certainly less than Diesel.
HVO at present requires rain forest destruction to grow palm for oil.
The main/only source of HVO in the UK is Crown who state their stuff is from 100% renewable/sustainable sources.
Most of our food could be produced by slave labour in rain forest clearings but that doesn't mean that it actually is.
HVO is only ever going to be available in small quantities for Niche markets, I just hope that boating is one of those markets.
As long as it is from a good source then its much better the dinodiesel even though its still far from perfect.
Electric cars are also not carbon neutral because they run on electricty made from gas.
2 hours ago, jonathanA said:I have the option of filling my own 205l drum and do have access to loader or digger to move it about. Although my current thinking is to use 2 barrels and empty the full one into one on a stillage/bund so I don't have to move a full one around.
Last time I checked a 205l drum was still cheaper than buying full duty white or red in small quantities. But to be honest it's more about convenience for me tha out and out money-saving.
I don't have a saved link but did spend quite a bit of time googling the new red rules and I think I ended up on a gov.uk or hmrc page which gave good examples iirc.
Yes, the .gov site does say that private electricity generation can use red diesel, its a bit confused/ambiguous about boating but essentially says its ok for boats as long as we don't go to Northern Ireland.
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44 minutes ago, jonathanA said:
I have the option of filling my own 205l drum and do have access to loader or digger to move it about. Although my current thinking is to use 2 barrels and empty the full one into one on a stillage/bund so I don't have to move a full one around.
Last time I checked a 205l drum was still cheaper than buying full duty white or red in small quantities. But to be honest it's more about convenience for me tha out and out money-saving.
I don't have a saved link but did spend quite a bit of time googling the new red rules and I think I ended up on a gov.uk or hmrc page which gave good examples iirc.
I will do a bit more Googling.
I was trying to get HVO and at the time red HVO in drums was more than white at the petrol station, but I suspect the cost differential between HVO and diesel does vary a bit.
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13 minutes ago, jonathanA said:
I wonder whether having a 225l barrel delivered maybe a better option ? Plastic bunds to stand a barrel on are readily available.
My understanding is non commercial electricity generation is still allowed with Red.
I thought this was the case too, but I spent a quick few mins on the www and could find no mention of it. Do you have a link?
A 1000litre IBC is an alternative to 205l drums but both work out MUCH more expensive than bulk delivery, and unless you have a forklift on site there are significant unloading and handling challenges, though you can maybe invent a way to handle the drums. Some companies might be able to deliver with a tail lift truck....but might charge extra for this.
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12 minutes ago, jupiter1124 said:
VERY interesting, does this imply that boat electrical generation by diesel should be done with "propulsion duty paid" red?
Since I only have the one engine and it serves triple duty (heating / electricity generation / propulsion) it's not that easy to tease apart which is what. The compromise I have come to is to just treat hours cruising as "propulsion" and hours running stationary as "domestic". This in itself is erring on the side of the tax man since I'll cruise to charge my batteries as well as to move.
Its all interesting, in a frustrating sort of way.
If I am correct that red can't be used for generation then boats must be an exception because we can use red for everything as long as we pay the extra duty for propulsion. I wonder what the situation would be if we put red in a separate generator out on the towpath rather than using the main engine?
It is because we often only have one tank that this whoe 60:40 propulsion thing was invented.
The ideal outcome would be to let boats use red HVO for everything, including propulsion, without any extra duty. I will keep my fingers crossed.
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3 minutes ago, jupiter1124 said:
Yeah white diesel is generally cheaper at the pump, but was just curious if it's the same in terms of tax. As in, if I was to fill a diesel car with red diesel from a marina 100% propulsion split, would it theoretically be properly taxed (i know his majesty's customs officers would just see the red dye and lock me up and throw away the key in practice)
That would be a very interesting court case, but as you say, I think you would loose.
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I think I was wrong, www says red can no longer be used in a generator, I had got confused between generation and non commercial heating.
I think that currently HVO can not be used for heating so this pretty much prevents using any red HVO in a boat. This all relates to various subsidies on HVO which were devised without any consideratiion to boating. There are people working hard to get this changed as HVO makes a lot of sense on the Inland waterways, but paying full duty for propulsion, battery charging and heating is not attractive even if it was legal.
Red diesel is currently pretty much limited to farming, forestry and boat heating. (and I think domestic heating though this is normally done with kerosine/ heating oil). A possible loophole is to get a trading licence so that your boat becomes a commercial boat......but this has more costs 😀
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If you want to go to HVO then this project maybe makes a little bit more sense, but you still have the diffcultities are delivering to a boat. There are currently technical/legal issues with boats and HVO but some of us hope these will be resolved soon.
Red HVO will cost significantly more than red diesel but still less than DERV. An advantage of a tank is that you can fill it up when the fuel price is good.
Lots of second hand heating oil tanks on eBay for a good price but usually collection only and usually not bunded. A new installation must be bunded, and will also need an approved concrete base. Plastic is probably better than steel. I suspect the EA thing is more a formality rather than big issue.
I think a new diesel tank installation needs to suck the fuel from the top of the tank with a pump rather than having a tap at the bootom like a heating oil tank, you need to find out how strict this is.
You could maybe get a standby generator to justify buying in the red but this might be on the edge of legality. A nice old Lister might look good in the garden 😀.
I do not know if an oil company will deliver to a bowser, and taking the bowser to a boatyard might or might not work, and as I said will negate the cost saving. Also you can't get red HVO this way.
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Bowsers are expensive, that one is well over £1000 second hand, so not just a £few hundred.
With this approach the OP will pay full marina price so looses the cost saving which was likely the driving factor.
The marina might offer a small discount, but also might likely refuse to have anything to do with this.
And he will have to park this ugly thing in his front garden.
Any fuel tank installation is going to cost £1000, and more likely well over £2000.
If this saves 20p/litre thats at least a 5000 litre payback. It takes quite serious boating to get through 1000 litres in a year so the payback time for this project is many many years.
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I assume you mean the tank is on the land under a garden deck?
The saving might not be huge, maybe 20p/litre, so it will takr a fair while to cover the cost of the tank.
The tank must meet various regulations and this includes that it must not be close to water (I assume some boatyards have got an exempion of some sort???). You need to inform the environment agency but probably won't need planning permission (but you need to confirm this).
The delivery tanker will have a long hose.
The oil company is most likelly not able to deliver to a boat but as your tank is on land its a grey area, but you will have to sign a declaration saying why you are allowed to use red.
I don't think you can pay propulsion duty directly and the oil supplier will not collect it for you so you can really only get the domestic fuel.
Storing diesel for a long time is indeed a bad idea.
and although minimum fuel order from most suppliers is 500l, if they decide to increase it to 1000 you will be stuffed 😀
All in all this is probably not a good idea.
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21 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
now I don’t mind fisherists so much on a lock landing IF they know what’s what,
the odd few I’ve encountered have accepted they’re in the wrong place and lift their rods and shuffle back,
I’d rather fisherists on a lock landing to other boats, tourists dangling their feet or the deckchair folk
…the thought of a vegan chocolate bar is quite a shocking,how’s that work?
the Flapper had a beer on the other week advertised as vegan,
no fish bladders in the making I guess, which isn’t that unusual, 🤷♀️
Vegan chocolate is really very nice. I have always liked dark chocolate and thats pretty much what the vegan stuff is.
I believe its only the finings that makes beer non vegan, there are other ways of making beer clear but the cloudy beers are getting very trendy and are rather good. Golden Lion had yet another Cloudwater beer on last light and I think that was a bit cloudy. £4.80 so not a session beer but good for the last pint.
I regard my vegetarianism a bit like the boating rules that we are talking about. It's a concept and target but Im not going to get upset if I eat (or drink) a couple of cow molecules. And we do have a dog and run the boat on HVO 😀.
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43 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
😂🤣😂 yes,
..and it can be just as intimidating as drunks on a lock landing
The really bad things are fishermen on any lock landing, and unattended boats on a lock landing on a river. Mooring on water taps is also pretty antisocial.
Actually we did this at Todmorden last week as there was no other space. Fenders down in case anybody wanted to get water, and a hire boat did turn up. We helped them get alongside, lent them our hose, had a good chat, and they gave us a bar of vegan chocolate in return 😀
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50 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:
Absolutely spot on.
My attitude to towpath moored liveaboards has changed over the decade I’ve owned a boat. People are as much a part of canals as the boats and the infrastructure.
The one thing I really don’t like though is those that colonise the towpath. You can have your space on the water for 14 days but the towpath isn’t an extension of your home anymore than the street outside my house is mine.
Colonising the pavement and sometimes blocking the road is still quite common in the backstreets of Hebden Bridge, and a couple of spots in Todmorden. 😀 and the most common colonisers of the towpath are a certain type of leisure boater who set up picnic tables and foding chairs outside their boat sometimes totally blocking the towpath.
I am not too bothered about really bad stuff like mooring on a lock landing (which I have done many times), its fine if you arrive late and leave early and its not a busy canal. I think its the attitude that matters and quite often it does feel llike some boat dwellers are just putting two fingers up to other canal users.
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Since we have relocated our "winter canal" from the K&A to the Rochdale I have very much changed my thinking about "short distance CC'ing. Canals need boats, amd especially they need good boaters. A good boater is anyone that adds a bit of life to te canals and does not antagonise the locals. The only real issue is massive overcrowding that prevent other boates from visiting the area, and even this is a relative sort of thing. Trying to encourage or even force boats to move a longer distance is not a good way to tackle congestion. CRT are a bit limited by the waterway act but with a bit of thought and luck there are probably better approaches.
Some places are popular and will always be busy even without over stayers. Stone springs to mind. I am with Goliath on this, its ok if its difficult to find a mooring, or a long walk to the pub, its only a real problem if you go somewhere and there is just nowhere to moor. Visiting places that are popular and rammed, and then moving to the lonely widerness, is all part of the fun.
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2 hours ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
£10 for two pints in the Crown by Limehouse Basin, eastend pub.
£13 and more in the jewellery quarter in Brum,and £7.60 in Tod, I’m led to believe.
Nah, Ive just paid £4.80 for another one of the Cloudwater beers and it was very good, but still lots of stuff at £3.80.
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11 minutes ago, nicknorman said:
The duty cycle limit (actually, a field current limit in my case) has some “ramping” (ie low pass filtering) applied on the way up, but not on the way down. So if the rpm goes up the field current limit will ramp up slowly, but if the rpm goes down it will rapidly reduce the field current limit, to avoid a transient high mechanical load. This seems to avoid any issue with noticeable “hunting”. And anyway there are still a lot of counts between idle (850 engine rpm) and 1300rpm - the latter being the point at which field current restriction is lifted - so even without the ramping I don’t think hunting would be noticeable.
I didn't mean hunting, just the speed jumping between the two adjacent "digitisation" states due to the low speed resolution and some sort of noise, not an issue but it just looks bad. Likewise Zeus only displays and logs temperature to a 1 degree resolution but it holds that temperature really well so its internal measurement must have more resolution (or averaging).
I just don't like seeing digitisation steps 😀
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55 minutes ago, nicknorman said:
On the speed resolution thing, this is just a feature of the LIN interface standard not the internal workings of the chip. The data field is 8 bits but it is somewhat logarithmic so the alternator rpm that I am operating at is way up near the top where each bit is worth a lot of rpm. It is annoying because one can burn some programmable "OTP fuses" on the chip to specify the number of poles, which would bring the reported alternator rpm down to mid-range where the resolution is much better. But unfortunately for some reason I still dont understand, NXP don't include how you do this on the data sheet (only that you can do it, and give you the bits to change) and refused to tell me when I asked nicely.
Still, it is of no real consequence as it doesn't affect the operation of the device beyond the logging data.
I really only included the graph to make you jealous of the "taking full charge whilst at 98% SoC" thing that lithium batteries do!😁
Many many years I had the use of a minicomputer that had ROM chips based on real OTP fuses, and the myth is true, over time the blown fuses really do grow back and make some horrible bugs.
The Zeus rpm does bounce between two adjacent values, just like yours, so if I have set a speed dependant duty cycle limit that bounces about too, no real problem but it looks a bit messy on the logged data.
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You will note that in my plot a few posts back I was really lucky because current, duty cycle and temperature all fit very nicely on the sames Y axis.😀
I note that your speed resolution is low, just like the Zeus. It should be possible to do much better, especially if the controller has a counter/timer, but this will depend on both hardware and software detail.
I do not yet know if Zeus is going to handle end of charge detection correctly as a low current could be due to a fully charged battery OR potentially due to the engine speed dropping and not taking account of low speed duty cycle reduction. I suspect our market is very small and most sailing boats will not see as much big speed changes as canal boats, but there is always mooring manouvers so it should be ok.
I think I read that the Wakepeed can go into a zero current mode rather than a zero charge/float mode, dunno if the Zeus can do the same.
A liitle job later this week is to get a proper ignition light working. I reckon a relay on the old ignition wire will do this. (output from diode trio activates a changeover relay and breaks the indicator light drive. Neater than a big resistor.)
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NBTA are very good at getting publicity for their (one) side of the story, and it works.
During all those little conversations that we have with the public at locks I have during previous campaigns been told "CRT are going to evict you all if you don't travel 100 miles every month" (or whatever).
And evicting attractive young professional couples with children, or disabled old men 😀, is a much better story that the 1995 waterways act and a funding gap etc.
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Its a real problem, most modern car radios are all about bluetooth sources and working hands free with the phone and streaming spotify from the phone. Actual radio reception is an afterthought.
and I share yiur frustration about finding the on-off switch.
Am currently listening to radio 4 streamed from the internet to the PC and sent via an optical cable to the bookshelf speakers, 😀 I was defeated by the radio but will try again in a couple of days.
Where are all the boaters?
in General Boating
Posted
I think this might be a good year for the Rochdale, we have been seeing a boat most days recently. The rumours that the Rochdale is about to close (from this forum?). have possibly inspired a few boats to do it while they can 😀.
We are down in Tod for a week or two (cheap beer Tuesday at the Lion) and I suspect there are a few more boat movements here than the summit suggesting that some boats turn rather than risking Manchester.
Of the boats that I have spoken to at the summit most said that the Manchester 18 was hard work and unpleasant, but few have said it was a nightmare, so maybe things are improving.