Cinimod

That would make sense, but the fact that the 12v is traveling up the cable to the sat meter would suggest otherwise , which is what confuses me... Guess I need to try a new cable...

hmm - think I need some friendly help of someone passing - I managed to do it OK last week, but tried 4 times this week with no joy. The dish is pointing in the same direction as some other people nearby, and I am sure I did east, then come back to the first blip, and it looks to be pointing in the direction that dishfinder says it should be... ho hum...

It is indeed the Maplins Suitcase, and I get a loud squeel on the external meter, but nothing on the Maplins box - though that is trying the channel info, I am not sure if there is a generic sat info... I have stripped the cable back and reattached it, but still no joy... time to try again me thinks... this time I may get it lined up with the meter and then stick it on the SKY+ box...

Our dogs are too :-) We have suffered no ill effects yet - if we are not boiling the water, we do get it through a filter tap though... Anyone got one of those drain cameras that I could just poke in the hold and have a look... I am pretty sure that the breath hole is not blocked, but even leaving the filler cap off it does not come through... ta - keep the ideas coming!

I am having a bit of trouble tuning it the Sat Dish... I have used Dishfinder and got a good indication of direction, I have used an analogue meter which buzzed nicely and suggested that I am pointed at a satelitte, but the receiver still says no signal for the channel... I am confused. Any thoughts as to what this could be? Would a bigger dish than the small one in the Maplins kit be better? You can get a sky style one, with quad LNB and cable for around £25 delivered from eBay.

Deffinitely looking at the Rother in East Sussex. We are looking to get a building plot that way and would like to live on the boat near by whilst we build. I know the river does not really go anywhere, but we will not want to once we are there

You are correct in your assumption - the only way into the tank is the filler hole (or the breather hole) - so unfortunately not very easy to get in... Still trying to use up the water in the tank, so may get to look at it later in the week or next week.

The cable is spec'd as 25mm - it is welding cable - very good price from eBay. Thanks for the advice on the 'tails' - this is what I have done, though I may shorten one end a bit more. It is working though, as I am able to run both the TV screen and laptop at the same time, but the battery drain still seems rather too high. I need to do some calculations, but it seems to be draining faster than I would expect.

Well I have my new cable in - that was an all day job! Take down the entire run of the roof section, drill through the bulk heads, run the cable, wire it in, put everything back... and still not finished... Anyone care to recommend some good (not too expensive) LED lighting to put into the ceiling? the problem I had is connecting the VERY THICK cable (finally worked out 25mm is the circumference and not the diameter!) to the socket at one end and the switch panel at the other. I have done this using a short run of 6mm cable - should that be OK do you think, or does it defeat the purpose of the larger cable? This cable is thicker than the cable from the battery to the swithing panel! Ta

Just to resurect this one ... Does anyone know what the standing is nowadays with the Rother? This is from Waterscape - LINKY We would like to take our Narrowboat down there for a few months... and wonder how navigable it is - we saw lots of plastic bottles on there, but no tin cans...

That is impressive Nick - the only problem is we can be 4 or more weeks away from an easily accessible water source... so I dont think 10 l would do us... Not sure about Calgon and rust - guess if it is rust and calgon removed it, I could end up with a hole!

Speaking with a chap on the cut yesterday he came up with another idea - stop drinking the water and put a bunch of calgon tablets into the tank to defur it... Not sure how long you would have to wait before drinking the water again though - and would water from the tank be OK if you boiled it? I am not entirely sold on the idea - but it is a lot less work than emptying the tank and taking it appart!

Thanks all for coming back to me on this. Some interesting ideas, opinions and experiences. I will check out the costs and feasability - my main concern would be how to get it off the trailer onto a standing at the site, as I dont really want to have to hire the trailer for 8 months or more. I guess it would require hiring a crane, so more expense, but we shall have to see... Regards the experiences of living onboard whilst on 'dry' land - all are duly noted... maybe an investment in some hydrolics to gently rock the boat is required I have heard that if you buy a 'run down' older static van, you should be able to get most of your money back - they seem to depreciate to a certain level and then stick there, as long as they don't let the water in. It may end up being the best option, but we did think the boat would be an original idea... and maybe appeal to the councils sense of humour if we wanted to make alterations to the plans!

The database I would like to tie into is LINKY There is some good data here - which seems fairly reliable Thanks for the other link

We are currently considering buying some land, with planning permission. The only thing is - it is going to stretch us a bit, and we will have to leave building for about 12 month or so. I know people put mobile homes on their building sites, but just wondered if it was Practical Possible to stick our narrowboat on the site? Guess we should be able to get a refund from BW for the unused licence fee too There would be mains water and electric on the site, along with a septic tank for emptying the cassette into - so just like a residential mooring, without the water! Once the build is done - what is navigable in a 58ft narrowboat in Kent and East Sussex? - not a lot from the maps I have seen...

hmm - sounds like it could be a project waiting in the wings... have to learn how to use the google map API... and find out if you can access the ofcom database.

Does anyone know if there is something similar for phone transmitters? I know there is an ofcom thing, but something like Dishpointer would be great - especially if you could ask it to only show 3G antennas!

Ice scrapers are very useful... Hmm... the +£10 thing for Sky plus... they did away with that about 6 years ago... now they charge extra for the HD, but guess that will probably be dropped in about 2 years The thing I was thinking is to use the recording on the Dreambox you need two things - power, and a Satellite Signal. Power is plentiful when moving, but alas a signal is not, and when moored up (without a hookup) a signal is (usually) available, but the power is limited. Not sure what the consumption on it is... Where can you go to see the extra functionality of the dreambox over the sky+ one? Ta

I do agree with you about paying for content - the issue is if you have a sky box in one place, and then want to get it onboard, you have to keep swapping the card in the boxes... would be easier to be able to 'clone' the card into a dreambox or something, so you could leave it in the original machine, on land, plugged into the mains recording on Sky+

The Dreambox 800 HD has an external 12v supply - LINKY It also has a £200 price tag... but is HD with a HDD... I did hear of a box at one point that would decrypt any channel - but they are as rare as hen's teeth now I think.

I was indeed referring to external measurements, and based the internal size on a quick google search of tanks... Must admit - a solar BAG for doing the washing up sounds like a good idea, but think you would end up with a scalding shower... no way to feed it in to the hot water system due to pressure difference I would guess?

Blimey - that is really good, but what I would really like is a 12v mini HD receiver that will record to SD or USB... oh and be able to receive Sky too... Anyone got a magic wand?

I think our water tank is about 40L - it is about 60cm tall and roughly 40cm diameter. Using the engine, idling, when we are moored up takes around 1hr to heat up the water to a reasonable temperature... in 30 mins you can get a luke warm shower... With the TLC units (and some I have spotted on eBay for about £90 all in) you can have a 10 litre water tank, that will heat the water in about 18mins... I know the engine generates a lot of heat, but I would have thought the wear on the genny powering the electric heater is a lot less than the wear on the engine idling (and certainly a lot less cost and hassle to replace) - our genny is LPG, so it is sort of like heating the water with gas? Alternatively if there is a gas water heater solution, that can also be combined with an air heater solution (for heating the boat in winter) that would definitely be something to consider...

Can't say for sure if there is one under the foam... any idea how I would find out? I would usually expect the immersion to go in the top, but there is a pipe coming out there, which is the pressure relief...