Ex- Member

Ours is a Beko WM 5102w It accepts hot water prior to starting the wash cycle. No engine running required on a hot day batteries fully or well charged.

I'm quite sure C&RT know what boats are unlicensed, wardens are patrolling the canals, it's difficult to hide a boat, I'm sure they check all boat reg No.'s and don't require busy bodies to report said boats. If they do then clearly there aren't enough wardens. I've only ever looked up one boats reg No. as we believed it was either abandoned or stolen or both. I really couldn't be arsed to go around or even when passing a boat to be jotting down reg No.s and reporting to C&RT

Hi Brian I've yet to see a boat done properly and Iv'e been around plenty of boats and boat yards in the past 10 years. Well done for calling them back, it's really outrageous what some of these companies are getting away with, and yes I've come across foam thickness well below 10mm too. What's also concerning is I've noticed this on many new boats under construction, It's worrying that many boat builders will happily panel over inappropriately applied spray foam, there again if they're getting boats foamed on the cheap it's a big money saver. If anyone is going for spray foam get it in writing the minimum depth and don't let the sprayer go until it's right. Trimming of is an awkward job but no excuse for applying foam so thin. Any insulation is only as good as it's weakest/thinnest point.

We've now sussed that if we pour in 4 litres of warm water at around 40c + just before the beginning of the cycle. Doing this means the machines element doesn't come on at all to heat water. We pour the water in through the soap tray. We've run the machine from the inverter on a couple of occasions now on a hot day and the power usage was hardly noticeable, even on full speed spin it only drew 7/8 amps, and general periodic tumbling around 3 to 4 amps. It seems the machine only heats the water at start up, once heated it doesn't seem to reheat the water at any other stage through the cycle that we could notice, this was done on a full load cycle too. So it's great now that we don't need to run the engine for washing, although probably will in the winter months when cruising.

Also more information here. http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-curmudgeon/spray-foam-insulation-not-magic-bullet http://sprayfoamdangers.com/tag/spray-foam-degrades/ Since reading these articles and others and bearing in mind that the vast percentage of inappropriately applied spray foam with regard to both thickness and quality of mix that my once opinion that it was a top method of insulation for boats has now changed to spray foam being a product I wouldn't advise anyone to use on a boat without exacting requirements with preparation of substrate, quality of mix and consistent thickness throughout. I haven't read too much with regard to the sheet/slab foam products like Cellotex & Kingspan, but I would trust these products far more than spray foam as the mix and densities would likely be accurate and being coated in foils might give further life expectancy, and of course consistency of thickness is an important element in good insulation.

That might explain why Lin spotted a boat licence dated 03/16 recently. I'm just thinking that if choosing to pay a year + in advance weather you avoid any future licence price increases?

Check Oil level in gear box.

50mm insulation all round above floor level. We didn't insulate the floor but with hindsight maybe we should have as the floor can be quite cold in the winter. I would have only done the floor with 1" thick as you're unlikely to lose heat but it will put a barrier against the cold. Use concrete slabs NOT bricks/blocks. We laid our slabs on plastic strip so not to trap water if any leaks should occur and it will keep the bilges nicely aired. However spray foam deteriorates over time, I've also yet to see a boat with a consistant coverage at any decent thickness. I'm not sure if the kingspan type stuff suffers the same degredation but at least it can be applied evenly, and if all the gaps and cracks are properly filled it will well out perform spray foam.

Hi wanted Our 2 cats both have this problem and are on a special diet which we buy in dry food form. This problem was diagnosed several years ago and the vets recommended a special diet in the form of a dried food. However what they recommend is really expensive stuff from Royal Canin around £5.00 a kilo. After some research we found some at a reasonable cost, It's called Sanabelle urinary economy pack 10kilo bags. We buy 2 X 10 kilo bags a time for £56 inc delivery. We've just noticed though that now, the Pets at home brand the Vetenary Advanced Nutrition fresh chicken 4 kilo is 2 X 4 kilo bags for £20.00 making it just £2.50 per kilo, so now cheaper than our bulk buy supplier. We always make sure we never run out. We did about 6 months ago, the cats missed about a month worth of special diet biscuits and one got ill (urinary tract problems) we fortunately spotted this quickly knowing the symptoms and got him to the vet immediately, even so the cat still required emergency care and had to be kept in for 2 nights the result being the vets bill was well over £500 I do hope the OP took the cat to the vet! As if a cat has this problem it's extremely painful for them and they can die if the urinary tract is completely blocked.

I wouldn't be complaining about that price of real wood liners. We had ours made in Oak and they cost £1200 for 13 Oak liners and that was a trade price at that time, so they've come down in price considerably since we purchased them about 6/7 years ago. I know a boat owner who had all his porthole liners made from MDF board, they actually looked stunning when finished, and were simply rubbed down with fine sand paper and finished in varnished, they were all made on site by a carpenter with a standard hand held router and I recall a couple 8x4 sheets of waterproof/resistant 25mm MDF Each liner consisted of 2 MDF rings glued together for the inner circle and an outer ring with a moulded rounded edge glued to the 2 already glued making a complete unit. I did look for other solutions, but Oak liners do look really good, all ours have lasted really well with no cracking or splitting. You can get Brass liners but they'll probably condensate or fibreglass but at £60 I personally would go for proper wood.

Ok Cheers Geoff, I didn't realise it's so complicated to find an oil filter LOL Also our engine is a 100 series, the one you state seems to be for an 800 series. Our current filter is just 76mm wide too, so i'm still confused LOL

Well I've managed to get a small mirror to the underside, there's a logo that begins with Coop, it might be coopers and there's a code Z252 Everything else looks to be in Chinese/mandarin LOL

Shot blast it!

Ahh ours is a New World. I'll try to find the manual, I'm sure it was fan assisted, could be wrong though.

They are fan assisted ovens, the fan disburses heat evenly around the oven to promote faster cooking. It's not a safety device for overheating, although by design it does regulate temperature. If the oven is switched on and sometime later the fan fails the gas supply is cut off, this is nothing to do with overheating, it's a pre emptive action to avoid overheating. The fan also runs for a couple of minutes even after switching off gas, so I'm guessing is also on a timer or temp sensor to switch off automatically.

That could be problematic as there are fail safes that cut out the flame if the fan fails or stops. The 240v fan must be interconnected somewhere for these safety features to work. Some of the censoring equipment could be 240v.

Well we have 2 separate bow tanks for heating diesel/oil And I ain't removing them LOL

I'm not quite convinced that is the filter. The one on our Perkins is a horizontal fit and the filter is quite slimmer and longer. Photos of filters with that part no. look more like the standard filter size. Thanks for the input though, much appreciated

Having problems finding out our exact oil filter size/make/model We have a Perkins 100 series with details on the engine as follows. Perkins Shibaura Engine LTD N844L HP50/2800rpm 37.3kw Engine family 3H3XL2 22N4L Serial No. HPC2811908501 Another number. 984927K There's also a I can'tread what's on the current filter, it's faded and on the blind side anyway. I've found out that a Wix 51348 is probably the correct filter. However this is an American filter. I get a massive list of equivalents on Google but looking some up they don't look the same as our current filter which is slimmer and slightly longer than the regular oil filters. Any help appreciated.

You do have a point, in reality we only run the engine for propulsion, we did run it for an hour or so per day through last winter though. However we're adding more solar for the coming winter months so again hopefully reducing engine use for generation. Basically for us the main engine is for propulsion but of course available for back up charging of batteries should there be really poor weather during any summer months. and through winter also. We generally only move every 12 to 14 days so our diesel use for propulsion is very low anyway. We're quite happy to purchase heating oil from other suppliers should services on the cut cease supplying Red diesel. I'm pretty sure though that canal side vendors that can will happily supply both White and Red or White no Red but supply heating oil separately possibly in drums. So for us the main engine is for propulsion and energy back up.

It's mostly River from Widcombe Bath to Bristol. There's a small stretch of canal about a half mile where the Dolphin pub is at Loxbrook and not very wide. From there to Bristol is all river and around 5/6 locks. I personally love it there as I spent my childhood there, we'll be going there next summer as I've talked Lynn into mooring on the river for several of summer months. We have previously cruised from Devizes as far as Keynsham in 2005 to 2007 but not all the way to Bristol docks.

What also needs to be taken in to account is that Spray Foam insulation degrades over time and becomes even less efficient. So even if by some miracle there was 50mm of evenly applied S/F when the boat was built, then it certainly wouldn't be performing as it did when it was new. If I were to add any additional lining even T&G on top of existing ply, I would just ensure I mark where the original battens are so to ensure some good regular solid fixing points. Where screwing in to any existing 9mm ply, just ensure you don't over tighten. I personally wouldn't use glue anywhere at all unless no other fixing option was available. We're just about to paint over our lower panelling having freshened up the upper panelling we painted in a Warm Yellow, as we're fed up with the now boring Oak finish Ply panelling. Painting in a lighter colour will further brighten up the boat and some more much needed colour.