agg221

I was sat on a wall, cleaning up the bits of a Bolinder fuel pump the first time my wife and I met. We will have been married 20yrs next month. Do not underestimate the allure of subjects such as lithium batteries to the right woman... Alec

Precisely. If you work on the basis that people need some source of heat for cooking and sometimes also space/water heating, and presume that they are not suddenly going to give up cooking and space/water heating when the cylinder that fits their boat becomes unavailable, and you also assume that they are only using the smaller cylinder which is more expensive per kg for a good reason, such as it is the only one which fits, it is logical to assume that they will need to find an alternative. A handful may be able to cut about the gas locker and get a bigger cylinder in, and that would pay back in the long term, and maybe a few can convert to other options such as diesel stoves and heaters, but the majority I would think are going to be stuck with either the phenomenally expensive campingaz option or they will end up refilling their own cylinders. Refilling is reasonably easy to do safely, but you will inevitably get situations such as someone .cc'ing who has nowhere to store a larger cylinder to decant from, so it will live on the boat somewhere else. You will end up with people trying to do the refill without taking the small cylinder out of the locker because they are lazy. Most significantly, there will no longer be a cycle of inspection which catches corroded cylinders or ones with leaking valves, which will lead to a progressive level of deterioration and increasing risk over the next decade or so. I don't understand the decision myself - there is demand so why not supply it? Alec

Oddly enough, the previous owner had done exactly this (and not with a forklift one). I wonder whether it actually worked (if it didn't, it wouldn't be the only thing...) Alec

If this goes ahead it will be very annoying. Our gas locker is only high enough for 3.9kg bottles. Beneath that is the water tank. Being a tug deck, the whole thing is solid across the top. No idea how we would alter the locker to get larger cylinders in. Technically, we can get a 6kg cylinder on its side, but that doesn't comply with the BSS so we will have to come up with something else. Alec

Just to throw another thought into this mix - you can of course get to the K&A from either end. The section of the Severn from Sharpness to Bristol is not trivial, but then neither is the Ribble Link so if you are set up for one you are probably set up for the other. It's not the ideal time of year to be catching good weather, but if you are not in a burning rush then you could potentially wait at Sharpness until the weather is right and then head down. It's not something I have done but plenty have, and with a pilot the general view appears to be that it's fine. The route down the SU and S&W is potentially less prone to stoppages (assuming you can get off the L&L) and it's then downstream on the Severn all the way, which is pretty quick. Alec

It's probably 'either or' on goat chain or nappy pins. Goat chains are the ones which can be passed behind the reinforcement on Armco piling, with one loop bigger than the other so the chain can be passed through the big loop and drawn up tight. Rope would tend to be frayed where it rubbed on the Armco. Nappy pins are slang for a type of hook which is designed to fit the piling reinforcement rail to which you attach your mooring rope. Personally, the nappy pins never feel very secure as it doesn't go right around, whereas the chains do. I also find that for some reason I forget to recover nappy pins once I have taken the rope out (I think it's because the pin is out of sight down the side of the piling) whereas the chain is more visible on the bank so I remember it. For that reason we now have chains rather than nappy pins. Alec

I agree - I would expect the old and the new lighter material to all end up very similar. It’s the new darker material which will look different. If you want to stain over the Danish oil it can be done but be aware it won’t soak in. This means it will have the visual effect but will wear or chip away - another couple of layers of Danish on top will protect against that happening. Alec

Aged and gone to a golden colour - that is most likely the finish (varnish?) which has gradually oxidised and yellowed in the process. Assuming you use a similar varnish it will all do that in time. Darker vs. lighter - ash can be quite variable and that will be permanent. Unless the varnish is so thick that it start to become the colour itself, the wood underneath will always provide a darker or lighter backing colour. It's likely that the original was more like the sample on the right. Options - you could use the darker wood in particular areas to create a feature of it, or stain everything to match the darker colour using very dilute stains. It's usually best to put a first sealing coat on the wood when trying to do this, so the stain doesn't soak in very far at all, otherwise it tends to come out too dark. Alec

Personally, I would degrease first using something as basic as soapy water, wipe the surface as dry as possible and then apply a rust converter, following the instructions which usually require leaving for a period of time and then wiping off the excess. Immediately before painting I would then run the wire brush in the drill over it to remove as much of the converted coating as possible. The reasons for this are that in the meantime it will seal up the surface if any water splashes in whilst moving, making it easier to get it dry again, and it will give a better surface than any residual loose rust down the pits where your cleaning can't remove it. SA2-2.5 cannot realistically be achieved on steel with reasonably deep pits without either grinding back, needle gunning or media blasting, none of which would be practical in this case. Most of the surface is clean, which is good enough, but pragmatically I would rather have the small areas which are not (where rust is still there in the bottom of the pits, and in your photograph the bottom right hand side) converted to a sealed phosphate than left loose as if you get any break-through it will start from those areas, particularly if they have been wet. Rust converters come in two basic types. One is simply an acid solution which forms an insoluble salt on the surface (usually orthophosphoric forming a phosphate); the other is an acid solution which also contains a dissolved film-forming polymer, usually latex (Vactan) or PVA. This type often uses tannic acid to form a tannate as it does not degrade the organic material which forms the film. If you do apply a rust converter, go for the type which does not form a film. Jenolite Rust Remover is a good bet. Avoid Hammerite Kurust. Where are you currently and what towns are you passing through that may be able to sell you something? Once you are ready to paint, you run the power wire brush over the surface which takes off most of the phosphate, wipe out the dust with a bit of solvent on a clean rag or paper (white spirit, meths, isopropyl alcohol hand sanitiser, all are good). Then allow the surface trace solvent to rapidly evaporate off and get the paint on. Others will take a different approach but this is how I would do it, and is in fact pretty much what I am doing inside my counter as it gets wet in there every time I open the weed hatch. Alec

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I think you at least need to get the paint off in the bottom right hand corner. I know how tedious this is - if it isn't shifting with a brush of any sort then sharpening up the end of something to use as a sharp chisel/scraper may make life easier. It could be anything - old hacksaw blade with tape wrapped round the handle, sacrificial wood chisel that gets sharpened up again afterwards, even grind the end of a piece of bar or an old bolt down to a sharp edge. If you don't, it will still last a decent amount of time but that's the area where it will eventually fail earlier than if it's clean. Sorry. Alec

Most of the year I would agree with you, but under the very specific weather conditions which the OP is working (high air temperature and low humidity) it will be possible to clean and degrease the surface and wipe it dry again with the residual surface water film being evaporated off before gingering occurs. If I was working in a similarly confined space I would do that in preference to being exposed to high concentrations of solvent vapour which would be increased due to the current weather conditions (rate of evaporation will be high). Phosphoric acid as a rust converter, as per my original comment, is fine under epoxy, since you are simply bonding epoxide groups to phosphate, rather than to oxide (even bright clean steel has an oxide layer at the surface since it forms within seconds). The type -not- to try and coat over with epoxy as a general rule is a rust converter which forms a film, usually the chemical reaction being formation of a tannate. The film is often latex (Vactan) but sometimes PVA. This is a less effective combination as the epoxy is then not in direct content with the inorganic surface but is separated by a more weakly bonded polymer layer. That said, if I had nothing else to hand I would still use Vactan or similar as an intermediate step, then wire brush it back off before painting, on the grounds that the areas where it was not removed (down deep pits) would still be better as converted, coated phosphate or tannate than as loose rust. Alec

I know people tend to end up sounding like a walking advert for it, but I don't have any affiliations. There are several advantages, the first being that it is sold directly so is cheaper, the second that it is solvent free (100% solids) which makes it nicer to handle and coincidentally it also means it works on a wet surface which can be handy, although I try to dry the surface anyway. The main reason it is not more widely known is because of familiarity I suspect. International and Jotun are well known brand names in the marine world and they have a deservedly good reputation, however if you transfer to a different sector with similar needs (offshore oil and gas in this case) you find there are different brands used. Most people tend to stay within a sector so there can be little crossover in terms of awareness with consequent lack of technology translation. Coincidentally, I have made a living out of this fact for the last 20yrs so I am well aware of it! The website points you at a coatings advisor and I have found their technical advice to be excellent. I suspect they do this because they want to check they are providing a solution which will work rather than damage their reputation when someone inadvertently buys the wrong product having mis-read some guidance online. Coincidentally I buy other paints from HMG Coatings South (Andover) for the same reason, and not from HMG in the NW which is headquarters, as I don't find their technical advice to be as good. No, I am not a paint snob, but I don't really enjoy painting so I like to buy paints which will do the job for as long as possible before I have to do it again. Alec

I too use Chemco products and am very happy with the combination of performance and price. Where I feel it's pushing them beyond the limits is when the rust has formed sheets. The structure of this particular type of rust is laminations, alternating between a thick layer of material which can look almost like metal and a thin layer of conventional looking red/brown rust. The problem is that, with time, oxygen and water they all convert to the crumbly type of rust. To give long-term protection you have to be confident that the paint either forms a perfect seal, or that the bond between the paint and the surface does not allow undercutting. The Chemco surface tolerant primer does give excellent bonding to a rusty surface and stops undercutting between the paint and the surface but if the rust layer is thick enough to allow delamination within the rust itself, the whole lot will eventually come off in sheets if the paint is breached, so you are relying on perfect encapsulation. This is the way powder coating eventually fails for example. This is why I prefer to go for surface preparation which removes all sheet rust as I am not confident that my paintwork will be that perfect. Once the sheet rust is gone, some remaining well bonded thin rust will not reduce the life expectancy of the coating, hence when touching up the rubs and scuffs on the outside of the boat I just use a hand wire brush to remove anything loose and put the Epo-chem RS 500p straight on. Alec

If you are stuck using wire brushes, one observation is that drill-mounted brushes can help with scale removal, sometimes better than angle grinder mounted ones. Easily available from Screwfix or similar. The advantage is that when the wires start to get knocked one way so they are rubbing rather than cutting you can reverse the drill and they start cutting again. I find all except the stiffest twisted wire angle grinder brushes tend to start polishing the rust in time. It does help to get everything clean and degreased before painting. Given the weather forecast I would be inclined to use a good detergent in water rather than a solvent - plenty of time for it to dry before you apply the first coat. I would also consider using a phosphoric acid rust converter before painting as it will take out a lot of the rust you can't get to down the pits. Any car spares place is likely to have some off the shelf if Screwfix doesn't have anything suitable. These are a case of apply once the surface is degreased, then wipe off the excess and allow to dry. Optionally you can then go over it again wire brush off most of the converted material, leaving converted areas you can't hit and allowing you to check that no more powdery brown rust is revealed, which is a sign that you haven't yet gone deep enough, in which case repeat until no powdery brown rust is produced. Alec

I think therein lies some of the problem. -You- would not gesticulate to tell someone else what to do; -someone else- might do, so the steerer is trying to interpret whether you are helpfully telling them what you are going to do, or angrily trying to tell them what to do. On the point of steering big, heavy boats, it isn't always straightforward. When you are approaching a bridge on a sharp corner you don't have a lot of room to play with, particularly when the available channel is considerably narrower than the surface water, so sometimes you have to put on some revs to make the turn. Even if you were going pretty slowly to start with this does have the consequence of meaning you are now going faster than you might ideally like to be. If you are heavy you don't stop easily, and winding the revs back down, letting the engine settle and then going in to reverse does take time, so sometimes you cross your fingers and hope as you go for it, being ready to react if you are wrong, but it doesn't always go to plan. However, I am entirely with you that, given the above, recognising that you might sometimes unintentionally end up in the wrong and being polite and apologising afterwards when passing is the mark of someone decent and failure to do so is generally the mark of an arsehole. Alec

Where I think I have noticed a change is in the way people want to use boats/canals. When I started boating around 35yrs ago the main purpose appeared to be to go boating. People were generally either fixing their boat so that they could go boating, or going boating. There also appeared to be a lot of general interest in the history of the canals, so that meant the boats, the people, the culture and the infrastructure. Historic boats and surviving boat people from the age of trade had a sort of minor celebrity status at gatherings. There seems to have been a shift away from this. I'm not sure it is that fewer people are interested but perhaps more that the reasons the additional people are attracted to the waterways are different, so there is a dilution. There seem to be more boats which never move and where the owner has no intention of moving, treating it like a static caravan. There are far more boats which move much shorter hours and shorter distances. Hire boating in the 1980s you would get the Four Counties Ring guide or the Cheshire Ring guide and both of these would be recommended as a week's cruising (for a fortnight you might combine the two). Now, if you look at hire companies' recommendations these are seen as a fortnight trip each. There are more people talking about slowing down - very short hours, very slow speeds when actually moving. Last August we took Phoenix out from Norbury for a week. There was another boat went out for the same week which got back at the same time as us and was filled back up with diesel - we had used 95litres, they had used 15. We did the Four Counties plus the Caldon, they went to the bottom of the Shropshire Union and back. There also seems to be less interest in the history. Maybe that's because the boat people are now mostly gone so the oral tradition went with them, but you see far more boats with no signwriting at all, even a transfer, and with that indifference comes an inherent lack of knowledge. The interest seems now to be more in passing through the scenic countryside and enjoying the ecology and the view and places to stop along the way, rather than the experience of travelling the canal itself. The owner of a historic boat can easily be an 'entitled' arsehole, but equally the owner of a modern, shallow-drafted boat who wants to do 2mph may not have taken the trouble to understand that whilst they can easily vary speed with their high-revving modern engine and Morse controller the ancient, scruffy lump behind them is winding around in the channel due to draft and because it has a slow revving, high torque engine and rod and wheel control it is actually very difficult for them to slow down any more, so they are not being pushy, they are actually struggling to not hit the very slow boat ahead (Nick, that is not what I am suggesting was your experience this morning). From my own experience, because we are a short, low boat people have no idea that we draw over 3' and my engine won't just rev up and down instantly, and engaging reverse too quickly will probably damage something so I am planning ahead. It's like driving a vintage car without servo brakes - you can plan ahead but you need other people to understand that you can't react like they can. It would sometimes help if people engaged brain and took the trouble to understand a situation before they got worked up about it. On the other hand, the overwhelming number of comments we get are cheerful and friendly, even when we have slightly inconvenienced someone because we can't stop or manoeuvre as fast as they can. Alec

That was pretty much my thought, yes. I wasn't thinking so much of the penalties for a non-permit holder mooring on the permit area, since that would then be up to the lease holder (Local Authority) to manage, although if the moorings became permanent and were fully occupied the problem would not arise as there would be no spaces to moor on. I was thinking that rather than leasing out the continuous length of towpath, CRT could lease it in blocks, retaining short lengths in between. These short lengths could be allocated as short term visitor moorings (24 or 48hrs) with fixed penalty notices for overstaying which would need to be enforced. My provisional thought on how was based on installing fixed remote operating cameras to cover the relatively small areas of visitor mooring, taking a snapshot every 24hrs and sending out the picture. Such systems are available for home security use and run for a very long time on a charge since they are not continuously monitoring, so you would only need a physical visit once a month or so to change batteries, or when you could see by consecutive images that a boat had overstayed. My thought was that this would deter additional continuous moorers from attempting to use the visitor moorings as it would be too much hassle to move that frequently and would therefore leave them available for visitors. If this didn't quite work then those moorings could be brought into the bookable mooring system. We're getting somewhat into the detail here. What I find interesting is that there have been no objections raised to the principle? Alec

This reminds me of a trip on a hire boat in 1993. We picked up from Anglo Welsh at Wootton Wawen and headed for Stratford to moor for the night. when we came out of the lock at the bottom of the Stratford canal, on to the Avon, there was one space available on the opposite bank by the park. It was diagonally downstream, not very long and immediately downstream of it was a small GRP cruiser. I had no idea as to the effect the current was going to have, how well the boat would pivot or how effective reverse was but I couldn't just go gently as I knew I had to counter the current, so I had to commit to this manoeuvre one way or another. I had visions of misjudging it and going bow-first into the cruiser, crushing it against the bank! Fortunately we went neatly across and perfectly into the space which must have looked like we knew exactly what we were doing, but that was definitely not the case! Alec

The original one is surprisingly stable. We took it from somewhere around Beeston down to Venetian Marina to get it craned out and it didn't move around much, although we did accidentally spin it at a lock due to the bywash! It didn't roll noticeably at all. The only problem we had was a bit of a leak in the counter so it took on water whilst underway, and the bilge pump packed up so a lot of time was spent baling with a small saucepan, hence I can't comment much on the bit down the Middlewich branch as I was otherwise occupied! Oates rolls a whole lot more. Alec

You could do that, but I wasn't thinking quite so radically. I was thinking of CRT granting a lease of the towpath and mooring rights to an agreed width to the Local Authorities. I envisaged a public right of access to the towpath being part of the terms. My thought was that CRT would then continue to be the navigation authority so travelling boaters would continue to have use of the canal as they currently do (in theory) but since the LAs would hold a lease on the moorings then CCing would no longer apply. I would imagine that having a valid licence, BSS and insurance would still remain conditions. In that respect, it would be no different to any other fixed mooring operated on privately held land/CRT waters (I can't rock up to a marina and refuse to pay for a berth because I am CCing). How the boaters, NBTA and the LAs interacted would be a different question - I imagine it would not be universally popular, since it would move from 'free' to 'not free' but how much protest and how legitimate it was would depend on the attitude the LAs took. If they were paying CRT for the lease and incurring costs from management then I would anticipate they would want to charge, however it would not be in their interests to make the charge punitive since they would benefit most from keeping the moorings full, and would not benefit from over-charging to the point where they had to take with one hand and give back with the other in the form of housing benefit. This is where my thought above around defining the area for dedicated social housing came from, with a pricing structure to reflect this. The point of fine vs. fixed penalty notices is well made. The latter would be more beneficial to CRT and, since it already has a mechanism to collect money through the annual licence, this led to my thought of simply adding fixed penalty notice charges to the next licence fee. Failure to pay in full would result in no licence being issued and there is already a mechanism for dealing with unlicensed boats. @magnetman I take your point that most people in this position are not choosing to live on a boat but are making a compromise. I don't have figures to back this, but my anticipation is that this leads to a somewhat transient population as people decide they have had enough of the compromise. This is not necessarily a bad thing - it creates a degree of churn, which is the point I was making to @Alan de Enfield as a major difference from the situation on the Cam which has very limited churn due to other options being available, so those who have chosen to live there stay for very long periods with a consequent extended waiting list. I don't think the fact that it is a compromise necessarily has much impact on alternative management strategies though, so long as people continue to want to try that compromise in the current numbers. Alec

OK, a few points to start from. 1. I think this is an interesting debate so am carrying on for a bit. I promise I will stop when Ockam's razor applies! 2. London boaters are not well represented on here, so you are the closest we've got to have spoken up, hence thoughts being addressed in your direction 🙂 3. I think the current situation is unsustainable and change is needed. Unless that change is constructive and local to the problem, it may be detrimental to a lot of other people in an effort to control a minority whilst avoiding outcry of discriminatory behaviour. An easy (lazy?) solution for example would be to change the rules to stop the current interpretation of continuous cruising. How about if you had to prove that you have moved between local authority boundaries, and that you do not return to the same one within a six week period except in transit for 24hr stops max. if it is a dead-end district (up the Llangollen for example), or imposing reduced mooring time restrictions across a lot of the system and making all dedicated visitor moorings chargeable with the use of surveillance to enforce it? Radical, unpopular and unnecessary but simple and unequivocal. I am therefore exploring alternatives with no real expectation of finding any, absolutely no expectation that anyone would notice or implement them but because they might be better options and some times a constructive alternative is a good thing to offer. With that in mind, for now I will develop my theme in response to your comments. So there appear to be two competing factors here, the viability of affording a mooring in a location vs. CRT's obligation to achieve market rate. How about then if CRT did not create moorings, instead it rented stretches of the towpath to the local council for the purpose of creating affordable housing, whilst retaining a right of access for towpath users (public right of way) much as it is now? The council could then set the rent, could means-test it for both overall eligibility and any rebates due on the headline rate. Say CRT rented it to the council at the equivalent of £2k per boat, the council then determined a baseline rate of £5k per boat but opened eligibility to anyone earning under £35k (that would include most teachers, nurses etc) and ran some form of sliding scale from full rate down to £2k at earnings of under £15k p.a. The council would then also handle council tax requirements and housing benefit, as it currently does. CRT would not be renting moorings so would not be undercutting market rate. With reference to location, how far out from 'London' is reasonable to call 'London'? For me, everything inside the M25 is labelled 'Here be Dragons' and by the time I hit the North/South Circular I am at risk of evaporating in a puff of smoke if I accidentally enter the ULEZ, but hypothetically what would be reasonable? I have generally taken the view that whilst everyone might have a preference to live exactly where they want, actually there is a level of market forces that says you may not be able to afford that, but it is reasonable to expect to be able to afford to live somewhere within a sensible travelling distance of where you work, such that both the time and cost do not make that prohibitive. For example, a cleaner at the Natural History Museum may not be able to afford to live in South Kensington or Knightsbridge, but they should be able to afford somewhere within say half an hour's tube ride and their salary should be sufficient to allow for the necessary travel on top of the basic cost of living, otherwise you simply don't have any employee choices except the homeless. I have generally taken it that 'living in London' as a need rather than a preference means some level of need to do so for work/family reasons in a location which can be accessed by public transport within the above criteria. I recognise that is a very loose definition but I am trying to come up with what would constitute reasonable expectations and I don't think that simple preferences can reasonably be accommodated if the area is defined as only a few miles of canal in the very centre. Thoughts? Alec

The two questions of planning permission and assessment for council tax appear to be separate. I don't really see a problem with either, in as much as for both of them there is an established process that is there to be followed, Alec

The process of applying for planning permission is very easy. I have done it successfully and I am sure CRT has plenty of experience of doing so. The question is whether it would be granted, which I suspect would come down to the pros and cons for the relevant council and the quality of the preparatory work before applying. If I was tasked with this on behalf of CRT I would take the line that the people are there anyway, drawing on council services but not making a contribution to costs. Where they are complying with CC rules, at least to the point where they cannot be removed, there is no option to address this. However, if the same people who are already there and already not moving are now made residential then they will be liable for council tax. That will increase council revenue and cover the costs of providing the services. The council tax cost would then need to be assessed for viability, but it would be minimum band, in my worked example would include single occupancy rebate and my figures suggested there would then be enough budget to cover it in circumstances where it was due. If the only options are residential at a viable, non-inflated tariff or 48hr (or no mooring) and either all available mooring sites are occupied or the demand drops away once the policy is introduced then either outcome solves the current issue. Of course, it doesn't solve the issue of where the other boats then go if boaters moved on because they didn't want to pay for a mooring and council tax, but if that results in them being more dispersed then probably the problem is resolved rather than relocated since it appears to ultimately be a problem of density? Of course I am under no illusion that this will actually happen... Alec

In my hypothetical construct, I was envisaging that pretty much the entire area which is currently very heavily occupied would be divided up into blocks of permanently assigned moorings separated by short lengths of short-term visitor moorings (48hrs?) It would be necessary to police those 48hr moorings with the approach of a traffic warden issuing on the spot fines for overstaying. My proposal would be to add this fine to the next licence fee so there is effectively no way to obtain a licence without paying it, and the admin burden is minimised. Outside of those areas if you want to stop them growing you would create an adjacent extended length of 24hr moorings, using the K&A model. Beyond that, if the area is not under excessive pressure you would simply allow the current free-for-all to continue, just as it does around the rest of the country, relying on the fact that the area is less desirable to keep the pressure down. I lived in Cambridge for a while and still live fairly nearby, regularly visiting friends there. I think the main difference is scale. Cambridge has a very short length of river available for moorings in proportion to its size, further restricted by the need to keep a channel wide enough for two rowing eights to pass. That means some lengths are unavailable and breasting up is essentially impossible. I wouldn't care to make a definitive statement on this but my impression of the London situation is that a fair proportion of the boat dwelling population is younger and more transient, heading back on land once it can afford to do so or has had enough of boat life. The sheer scale will also inherently create some turnover too. It is possible that a very long waiting list would develop - that could be used as an indicator for demand, forming the basis for a business plan. Not sure if anyone has the vision to do that yet though. Alec

That was my inference too. For reference, I have a paper copy of the licence on board but not on display. This is because (as per further up the thread) with only 7off 7" portholes to provide light in the boat I am not inclined to obscure two of them with a licence unless I have to. When we first looked at this we found CRT guidance that stated they did not require us to display the licence and for the above reason we chose not to. If at some point we get informed that we need to (by CRT) then I will fit a couple of exterior display mounts. This will be a pain as it means drilling more holes in the boat and creating a water trap. I couldn't seal them down properly as it will have to be opened each year to change the licence over. It would also mean getting the licence printed and laminated each year, which whilst not a major hassle is equally not something I would choose to do for fun. There is also the practical point that our licence falls due in November and, not living aboard and keeping the boat about 3hrs drive from our house, a 6hr round trip just to change the licence over is not sensible and we don't tend to use it so often over winter so it might end up waiting a couple of months if we don't happen to go out on it over the autumn half-term. Alec