agg221
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Posts posted by agg221
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1 minute ago, dmr said:
Anybody can push along a lawnmower, using one of those effectively takes a fair bit of skill and practice.
It is a lawn mower because its exactly what you would use to mow a meadow 😀
I am getting better.
I started with the really rough bits where 'shorter' was an improvement and on 2' nettles that doesn't take much!
I have now got the hang of sharpening sufficiently well to cut the orchard. If you stuck a ride-on over it, it would be shorter but it isn't bad.
I have done the lawn, but that still gets mowed with the petrol mower more often than not.
The scythe in the picture is the type I have, from the company I bought it from, but it isn't actually my one as I wasn't going out to the shed in the dark to photograph it, and I don't tend to take selfies whilst using it as I value my toes. If I wanted the lawn to look good I would need a finer blade really, but I'm not good enough at it to take that on yet.
Alec
3 minutes ago, MtB said:A Flemish scythe I think.
I spent a hot afternoon helping mow a meadow with those a few summers ago. Lovely to use when sharp enough!! Bloody hard work tho.
I was sold it as Austrian, but they are probably the same. Hot weather does make it very hard work but because you don't have to get out the fuel and then get the blasted thing to start, I find it much easier to do 15-20mins a day, rather than blitz it like I did with the petrol powered ones.
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6 minutes ago, peterboat said:
Pink is the colour for Hydrogen produced by nuclear allegedly although other colours might be applied for different versions of nuclear.
I can't see the colours being dropped as they keep fossil fuel companies in check from lying to us
I can therefore see exactly why the government is attempting to move away from the colours...
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13 minutes ago, peterboat said:
I checked numerous sites all say the same, there are more colours like brown is for brown coal and black is for black coal, but as you say others says brown for all coal. At the moment an American company is using microwaves to extract graphene from natural gas with a bi product of hydrogen, it's so cheap they can give it away they say! In truth unless hydrogen comes from waste energy it's to energy intensive to be economically produced.
The UK is supposed to be moving away from colours anyway apparently - I suspect at least in part because nuclear fission is now classified as sustainable energy so hydrogen produced by electrolysis using electricity from fission is a bit tricky to classify as green.
The principle appears to be that because the main scalable renewable energy sources (wind and solar) do not synchronise with demand you can make use of the surplus either through battery storage (people's cars) or as hydrogen. In practice, I suspect there will be a significant mis-match between supply and demand.
Alec
18 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:I have been using a low carbon emission Lawnmower for years.I used it today, and it gives me exercise as well :-
People (especially children) regularly stop and watch my "Amazing Machine" so much that I am considering charging for people to watch me cut the lawn!!
A bit high tech for me. This year I have mostly been using:
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1 hour ago, peterboat said:
Wrong for the classification of Hydrogen blue hydrogen comes from natural gas with carbon capture, green hydrogen is made from renewable energy. Grey hydrogen is what is mostly what is produced today, its made from natural gas without carbon capture so its filthy.
Interesting - we are using a different classification.
Alec -
1 hour ago, Tracy D'arth said:
Water damage to the back 2m of the floor is almost certainly that the bilge under the cabin floor has filled with water. If this has come from a water leak on the plumbing, its a heck of a lot of water to fill the bilge. More likely its a hull leak, most Harbourer boats have a wet bilge with the front deck draining to under the floor, the bilge pump in the stern is supposed to pump it overboard.
I would be VERY suspicious that this boat has started to sink.
I wondered whether, as a wet bilge, it could be as simple as a failed bilge pump that wasn't picked up on so the bilge filled up over a period of time due to rain and got to floor level before it was noticed?
Alec
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OK, so you are buying without a survey. There is a risk with that, and you are clearly aware of this. What I would pick up on is that the last full survey was 5yrs ago. I would be wanting to see a copy of that on the basis that any problems then have probably only got worse. It is also reaching that age where some insurers will want a hull survey (for anything more than third party only, which is legal but risky).
I would want to take it out for a run, check that the engine doesn't smoke too much or get too hot and that it engages forwards and reverse properly.
I would want to know what caused the water damage.
I would be budgeting a significant contingency for repairs to the steelwork, but if there is no sign that it is leaking at the moment I wouldn't be worried in the short term, as long as the price reflected this.
They state they are open to offers - I would be very mindful of that, and that it is not a great time of year to be selling, and see what I could get it for - if they came down to £18k I would personally be very happy to take the risk.
I would be looking at booking a survey asap after purchase, using that to open up options on insurance and also to understand what actually -needs- doing, rather than just what you can see.
Beyond that, as a project boat and accepting it for what it is, I wouldn't be unhappy with it if I otherwise liked it.
(personal opinions of someone with limited knowledge)
Alec
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The electric JCB is quite a good story. It was originally only built as a concept demonstrator but proved so popular that it went into production. It wins for reducing noise in residential areas which reduces complaints and allows earlier/later working, and also because you can run it indoors. One of the big markets initially was the excavation of basement extensions in London, often down several floors, as there are no fumes to deal with. We had one of the early demonstrators on site when we ran an electrification demonstration even a few years ago. It tracked down our main corridor over the tiles with no issues.
Fork-lifts are one of the very longstanding electric vehicles - a large factory in Peterborough which has been going for decades. Milk floats used to be the same.
Battery vehicles work very well when there is a relatively low range and duty cycle requirement which is predictable. They are much less effective when you want to travel unpredictable distances and run for extended periods. Tractors would be an issue, as will larger construction plant.
Alec
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Having completed our first purchase of a boat a month ago (the previous two having been a nominal pound which doesn't really count), and done so as a private purchase, the following observations might help:
The absence of paperwork seems to be normal. As has been stated above, Something from CRT addressed to the same name as the owner gives is a reasonable indication. Other indications are whether they have had work done on it, in which case there may be invoices in their name. Ours wasn't a liveaboard so we had a name and physical address for the paperwork, which we independently verified (it is quite easy to find things out about people these days via the internet). The photo-ID matching the name would be a good alternative. Timelines are also a help - if they have paperwork going back a few years then the odds are that it would have been identified as stolen by then - most people will miss a boat in a matter of days or weeks, not years.
A Bill of Sale is uncommon for privately sold canal boats, but really easy to create from the RYA template. What it essentially declares is that any issues pre-dating your purchase are the previous owner's problem and anything after your purchase date is your problem. It therefore protects both parties. Specific statements in the declaration are around any finance owing, so like a HPI check on a car. Although the debt would still transfer to you, their declaration that there isn't one would hold good in court if you sued them for the money back - messy I know but the sums involved would probably justify it.
Something which is easy with a broker but harder with a private sale is to avoid a point in time where one party (buyer or seller) holds all the cards. If you turn up with a bag of cash, the seller counts it in front of you, signs a receipt and hands you the keys then the problem does not arise. One equivalent option we came up with was both sitting at a table and making a bank transfer online so when the seller saw it in their account they handed over the receipt. The problem is whether your bank's security system flags it as a high value transfer and blocks it, in which case it can take a while to sort out. What I did was identify the threshold which triggered this (by ringing my bank and asking them) and breaking it down into a series of payments that fell below the total. I also transferred a nominal pound first, which the seller verified had arrived, just in case of any data errors. In practice, the seller completed the bill of sale and posted it back to us before I transferred any money, so technically he took the risk - I'm not sure he realised he was doing so, even when we explained what it was.
Something we didn't pick up on, and wish we had. When a boat transfers to a broker's, generally it is then being sold 'as viewed'. That means there is very little doubt as to what is/is not part of the sale. When a boat remains in private hands, you can't assume that everything will be staying on it. This can (from personal experience) get annoying. We noticed between a first and second viewing that some things had been removed. I explicitly asked (by email so a written record) for a list of what else was to be removed and got the reply of a kettle and other personal effects but when we turned up to take it away, various other items which I would regard as part of the boat (chimney, tiller bar and pin, fiddle-rail from the Epping stove, a couple of engine-related items etc) had gone. On querying this, we were told that they did not belong to the seller so he had given them back to their owners. This was at the very least misleading - not hugely valuable but probably £200-£300 of things to replace and some of them were very irritating as they reduced the functionality of the boat until we sorted them out. An inventory is a way around this and for a mostly empty boat would work fine, but for a liveaboard which is still being lived in that could get tricky to itemise everything.
It would certainly be easier if I do this again to complete the sale standing by the boat and immediately get the receipt and keys in my hand. All parties would then be clear.
Alec-
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Just now, David Mack said:
But the corresponding figures for the liquid hydrocarbon fuels we currently use are in the range 12,000-13,000 Wh/kg i.e. 10-40 times higher. So battery technology has a loooong way to go to be viable for long distance transport applications like intercontinental flight.
It never will be.
Battery technology will never hit the figures of liquid hydrocarbon fuels, but it may become adequate to not be annoying for personal cars and small vans, and probably low power demand boats too, possibly up to and including canal boats. It may be adequate for short haul powered flight.
Everything else (rail, international shipping, intercontinental flight etc) is going to need something far more energy rich due to the range. Hydrogen and liquid ammonia seem to currently be the favourites as they do not create carbon emissions. Hydrocarbon fuels are still possible if they are bio-derived but as MtB has pointed out, they are substitutional on land-use. This is probably not a wholesale issue - I live in an arable area and it is notable that quite a few fields have lain fallow for the past few years as the cost of production outweighs the return, particularly when you remove subsidies from the total. We have 4.25 acres of arable (tiny I know) which means we are below the threshold area for subsidies. We used to have it contract farmed but have made a loss every year so for the past couple of years we have left it unused. For context, fully processed out to oil, it would in theory produce about 2000l per year.
Alec
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19 minutes ago, MtB said:
Regarding hydrogen replacing methane in the gas network, no-one ever in the media addresses the concern mentioned by chemists, the ability of hydrogen molecules to migrate straight through some of the materials our network pipes are made from. Is this something you know about too perhaps?
Yes, as it happens I do, both on the strategic and technical levels as a lot of our work is for the oil and gas extraction sector and the issue of permeability is heavily tested there, as are the effects of hydrogen due to the problems of hydrogen embrittlement within welds. The government has identified the issue (note, by government I mean the ministries rather than the politicians) and is explicitly assessing the issue. The link below is a very dry document but if you scan the subject areas it shows the initial investigative work is about to be undertaken to assess which materials present a problem and how to manage that:
https://www.delta-esourcing.com/delta/respondToList.html?accessCode=9W8Z2VUX4N
The reason I know about this is that I wrote a tender response, so if we are selected it could even be me doing some of the work!
The comments that this will go through building regs and therefore not specifically apply to boats are correct. The issue will be one of supply I suspect - this is what the historic steam users (railways, boats, pumping engines etc) are beginning to experience with the closure of the last steam coal pit in Wales and the challenges of importing.
Alec
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9 minutes ago, MtB said:
Such touching faith.
There is nothing much on the horizon AFAIK in terms of new battery technologies. All we are doing currently is making incremental improvements at the margins. We need batteries with energy densities several orders of magnitude higher than we have now for long haul aviation, and there is no sign of those that I can see.
There are some fairly radical battery technology changes under development. Whether they succeed commercially is more debatable.
If you look at battery chemistry as Wh/kg which is the usual comparative measure, and particularly important for transport where the lighter the better as it corrresponds to range or payload, current generation Tesla batteries which are about the state of the art are around 280Wh/kg. Experimental versions of Li-based batteries have got up to around 350Wh/kg and 400Wh/kg is feasible. This is the incremental change which would help but would not result in a paradigm shift.
In parallel, there are other battery chemistries which are known that can achieve 1500Wh/kg. Conveniently they are also based on sodium which is a whole lot more common than lithium and globally available so long as you have access to the sea. The challenge isn't making the battery, it's making it last and operate safely. The more energy you store, the more of a problem you have if it is released in an uncontrolled manner. Lead acid batteries are pretty low energy density and are internally pretty safe - they do not combust, so do not need a management system. A lithium based battery is much less inherently stable and without a battery management system it is quite capable of spontaneous ignition. A sodium air battery is extremely challenging to manage as if it does ignite there is no stopping it. This is where a lot of the focus currently lies. I could bore you endlessly with the technicalities of cell plate design, but I won't!
Alec -
1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:
It was muted in 2019 In the Maritime Zero-Emmission plan with Liverpool / Manchester being the feed in point - has that changed ?
I would say evolved rather than fundamentally changed.
The swing to the Conservatives in North East since then has seen a shift in emphasis from Liverpool and Manchester towards Teesside which is now both a Freeport and a Hydrogen Hub. A new site has also been added in South Wales.
There are several different aspects to hydrogen. Hydrogen goes by various colour names depending on source. Brown hydrogen is made by heating water and coke together, forming a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (the old towns gas) and is still industrially significant, particularly on Teesside. Green hydrogen is made by electrolysis of water and is seen as clean and sustainable, so long as you are using surplus renewable electricity to make it. Blue hydrogen is the same but specifically made using offshore wind turbines.
Leaving aside the challenges for the moment, and they are considerable, the planned applications are where you need a higher energy density than can be delivered with battery storage. Current areas of interest include rail, flight and shipping, and possibly heavy road haulage. The question is how you use it, which is in part a matter of semantics but it is actually at the heart of one of the current areas of debate. If you burn hydrogen, either for domestic heat or to run an internal combustion engine, it is very simple and cost-effective at point of use, but whilst it creates no carbon emissions it does emit nitrous oxides as the oxygen and nitrogen react at temperature. This NOx is nowhere near as significant a greenhouse gas as carbon based gases but it is still there. The alternative is to use a fuel cell for motive power and rely on electrical heating but this has major technical and commercial barriers - the fuel cell uses enough platinum for this to be infeasible to scale to the current requirements (my first job was developing fuel cell catalysts for Johnson Matthey). Therefore, what it comes down to is whether targets are defined as 'net zero carbon emissions' or 'net zero emissions' and if the latter whether offsetting the NOx emissions is deemed acceptable. It's a political debate and I personally have little interest in what the decision is, but I will probably be part of working out how to implement it so I do take a significant interest in knowing where the thinking ends up.
Alec
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4 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:
I won't be around, so that's one less thing for me to worry about.
How are folks with oil heating going to cope when there is none? Are all aircraft ( which they are still making ) going to be scrapped?
ATI was, until it ran out of money, funding the development of both electric and hydrogen-powered flight.
Electric works in principle for short haul, if you disregard current costs. Hydrogen is further out and is currently seen as the future for long haul. Whether the technology gets there on the desired timeframe is debatable. My guess is that oil-fired heating will become a major issue for the small number of people affected but they will be seen as politically disposable, much like users of coal are today.
Alec
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I think this particular announcement is premature.
There is currently a government programme to investigate the feasibility of substituting hydrogen for natural gas in the existing distribution network. The first round of tender responses for the underpinning investigation (materials suitability, logistics, safety etc) were only submitted about a month ago (I know because I wrote one).
The government will be investigating options for heating between now and 2025 when it will make the decision between hydrogen and electricity. If anyone actually wants to know more on this (I doubt it!) it can be found on the BEIS website.
Alec
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2019 we moored between Wightwick and Compton, at the top of the flight, and walked down to The Mermaid where we had a very pleasant dinner.
If you get a bit beyond Wolverley, try the Anchor Inn at Caunsall - the cobs are brilliant.
Alec
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7 minutes ago, MtB said:
Thanks for the link.
EREBUS has been discussed at length here previously. I think some doubt has been expressed about the wisdom of putting a tall steel (i.e. heavy) cabin on such a tender, round-chined and narrow hull. Is that what you meant about getting wet feet standing on the side?!
It will inevitably roll a bit, but my experience with Oates is that it is deceptive how stable they really are. There is a difference between rolling and being tender (unstable) which is technically about how quickly they re-centre after rolling. If the centre of gravity is low, they can roll a bit but re-centre pretty quickly which is what Oates does - there is a calculation that applies based on beam and time for an oscillation, which Oates passes and I would think Erebus probably does too, given the draft. It's similar to driving a 360 tracked excavator - the cab is up high but all the weight is down low so although it feels like you are moving a lot, there is no risk of tipping over.
The difference though is freeboard. Erebus looks to have less than 4" of freeboard along the centre of the gunwhale and it will definitely roll by more than that. It is likely that it would do so even if you edged your way along the gunwhale, not deliberately rocking it, hence the wet feet comment.
Erebus has been nicely re-fitted, but looking at the photos of the re-fit on the thread on here, I think the cabin height was designed for the raised floor needed due to the original shaft drive. If you were starting again (obviously prohibitively expensive) then now it has a hydraulic drive you could probably lower the floor height and the cabin height accordingly. Putting the floor lower down would reduce the roll as you move around in the boat - people moving is the main factor in change of weight distribution. Oates also has hydraulic drive and the floor is only 2" off the hull (no need for ballast) so it moves no more than if you were rolling over something in a bridge hole.
Alec -
Added to the historic boats for sale thread, but probably best placed here as well:
Alec
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An interesting little boat for sale - might get wet feet if you walk along the gunwhales though:
Alec
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1 minute ago, The Happy Nomad said:
I heard boats no longer moor there, but that might not be correct.
It was always a strange mooring spot with the A38 thundering overhead.
There were a couple of boats moored there last weekend but it was pretty quiet.
Alec
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We went through last weekend and you could definitely still wind in the entrance to Shobnall marina and at Horninglow, or if you're going a bit further on Mercia marina was useful (if you turn up into the entrance there are moorings and winding point right outside the large Midland Chandlers).
Alec -
9 hours ago, Simon Pooley said:
We're back from our 10 days on the Shropshire Union. Here's us going up Tyrley in 4mins:
I wish I could get my crew to move that quickly!
Alec
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I think I might consider going in June. It's very pleasant in September but there is more risk of restrictions due to water shortages whereas in June it should still be OK.
I would look to be flexible in the route plan. That way, you can establish what is enjoyable for you. For example, we went round the Four Counties plus the Caldon in a week this August, but that would be a week of long days travelling. If you had three weeks to do that, if you just potter along, stopping at pubs and towns, it would be very relaxed. If you were enjoying travelling more, you could add more side-trips in, for example heading to the centre of Birmingham, stopping at the Black Country Museum on the way (maybe with a trip into the Dudley Tunnel), or down the southern Staffs. & Worcs. which is very scenic, or up the Llangollen which has some spectacular engineering, or up to Chester and Ellesmere Port with its Boat Museum, or go and look at the Anderton Lift. The thing about a ring with branches is that you can decide to head off down them or not.
When we plan routes of that type, we try to put the side branches we really want to do nearer the back end of the trip rather than at the beginning. That way we don't have any issues with knowing whether we can fit them in or not. This would have a bearing on where to hire from, so for example if your top choice was the Caldon you might hire from Great Haywood and go round clockwise, but if your top choice was to head into Birmingham you might hire from Autherley, Brewood or Norbury and go round clockwise, but if you wanted to go up the Llangollen or to Ellesmere Port you might hire from Norbury and go round anticlockwise etc.
As a very specific recommendation, if it fits your plans then Phoenix from Norbury Wharf was an excellent boat and might suit well for an extended cruise, although note that it has a trad stern, so you can't have two people sat out at the back. That's another consideration actually - a trad stern only really has space for the steerer whereas a semi-trad or cruiser stern has more space for other people. However, a trad stern does keep the steerer warmer and drier, and if the other person/people want to sit at the bow anyway away from the engine noise then there is no disadvantage.
Alec
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Yes, the pictures work. Far less of a mess than Hagley was - the website isn't currently working but will be again shortly - http://www.confusion.org/narrowboat/hagley/. I vaguely remember from 20+ years ago that someone found the original blueprints for Sirius and Arcturus and have made enquiries as to whether the relevant people might remember their whereabouts.
Alec
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I can't see the photos but it sounds like it's all good.
I had to retrieve the 'ellum for Hagley from the Basingstoke. It was a similar challenge to get the right one, but we got lucky as someone remembered which one was.
Alec
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Looking for holiday advice from across the pond
in Holidays Afloat
Posted
I have done both. I have also been caught once with the Severn going into flood. The time we did the Avon ring, we went from Wootton Wawen and, against the advice of the hire company, we went down the Avon first and then up the Severn. We were very glad that we did as all the boats which went the other way around got caught and did not make it back.
To be honest, I found the Avon rather dull. Limited mooring choices and although the towns would be interesting if that was what you were looking for, the actual waterway didn't have much to offer. I didn't enjoy the stretch upstream on the Severn much either, even fewer mooring options and running flat out against the current on a large river. It was a real relief to get back to canals at Worcester.
Having just done the Four Counties in late August, and added in the Caldon (which is probably my favourite canal of all) I still prefer that one.
On an earlier point, I am not trying to sell Birmingham, but it is perhaps worth mentioning why I suggested it as a side trip (which coincidentally is equally possible from the Avon ring). If you look at a canal map of Birmingham, you will see that there is a lot of it! Most of the network is now a bit of a backwater, often little used and not generally somewhere you would choose as a first place to see. This is where some of the mooring issues also arise. But, straight through the middle of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, running East to West from Birmingham to Wolverhampton, is the Main Line, which is actually two parallel main lines in parts, Old and New. A trip down this gives a real sense of the industrial purpose of the canals. I would not describe it as a tourist destination but it does give a view on the history and a fair amount of that still survives. I am not aware of anyone having any issues travelling this route, and it allows for a very nice city centre mooring in Birmingham itself, around the redeveloped heart of the network with plenty of choices for restaurants and a walk around the centre. Stopping at the Black Country Museum provides a nice mooring too, and a real insight into the area 100 years ago. Look up the museum website if you want to see more. The top of the Wolverhampton flight also provides a safe mooring if you don't want to tackle the flight until the following day, and a walk around Wolverhampton is again surprisingly enjoyable. My personal favourite is to visit the art gallery there, particularly because of their collection of works by Edwin Butler Bayliss, but others may have different preferences!
Alec