Mike the Boilerman

£80m a year in lost taxes?!!!! 1/3rd in NI and 2/3 on the mainland, it says. To shift that sort of volume it must be getting sold retail I reckon. I wonder if I've ever bought any inadvertantly and if so, what defence could be put up given the fuel will be white in colour. I also wonder if the previous owner of my van ever used it, and if that is no defence this seems a good reason never to buy a second hand diesel vehicle.

I am equally confident it won't because LPG is a fossil fuel adding to exactly the same problem as diesel. CO2. Yes it has lower Nox etc but that does not mean it bungs out any less CO2, and CO2 is the biggie that needs fixing. All the rest is fiddling around the edges of the elephant in the room. They are already planning to ban gas appliances in houses so why should boats be exempt?

Already explained in Post No 2, but I don't think it went in!

Yes the Wharf. Try turning up there at 8.30 tonight and see what happens!

Yes there could actually. Good idea! Some vessels have a welded waistband, others the centreline joint is crimped. The crimped type might be gripping a flat diaphragm. I've never chopped a dead one open to find out. Its on my (long) list if things to do in my spare time!

Oh and another thing I had there a few weeks ago. Boating late on a Sunday and hungry we checked their website and it said restaurant food available until 9pm. So we briskly walked the half a mile or so from were we moored and got there about 8.30pm. Staff bod said (unapologetically) restaurant's closed. We pointed out the website said open until 9pm and he its still closed, totally DILLIGAF, will get the website changed. I haven't looked since to see if it had changed but my bet is the website stills says food until 9pm.

Well there are to ways of making one aren't there? The diaphragm is no such thing really, it is a bag like a football bladder. So you can arrange the bladder inside the metal chamber to be filled with air and the chamber fill with water around it, or you can connect the bladder to the water and pump air into the outer chamber. One type I believe, needs to be fitted vertically and the other works in any attitude. Typing this though I can't for the life of me figure out which would be which!

And while I'm moaning about them, the boater shop in the pub is less than useless. No perishable foods, nothing chilled. That means they don't sell bread, bacon, butter or milk. The four things I went in there to buy the other day. No word of apology from staff, just a dismissive "no we don't sell any of those" and walked off. And while I'm moaning about them, the boater shop in the pub is less than useless. No perishable foods, nothing chilled. That means they don't sell bread, bacon, butter or milk. The four things I went in there to buy the other day. No word of apology from staff, just a dismissive "no we don't sell any of those" and walked off.

That accumulator is 8 litres. It will work fine but is far bigger than you need. 3 or 4 litres will be fine, and cheaper. Some need to be mounted vertically, others don't. I've never figured out why or which I'm afraid. Best to mount vertically with the Schrader valve at the top for easy access. It will need recharging periodically. My expansion vessels are screwed into fittings like this, which are in turn, screwed to a horizontal plywood base. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/15mm-Compression-x-1-2-BSP-Brass-Outside-Tap-Wall-Plate-Tee/122981629279?hash=item1ca246bd5f:g:CkoAAOSwwgtajvJl

Ouch!! And on a similar note, I once saw a large group of lads on the beautifully manicured bowling green in my local park practicing their football tackling skills on each other, as I cycled past....

Mole grips make a much better clamp, don't they!

I think that 'someone' needs to be a crew member not some random perhaps from another boat. As solo boater it is not that rare to get just such a random whack the paddles wide open and then walk away after ten or fifteen seconds. Then what do I do if the bow fender gets jammed in the gate and I'm standing on the counter? Somewhat understandable behaviour as is it not their boat in the lock and they have another boat to look after.

Ah but that's the point. You had to use a calculator to translate it to anything meaningful. This crops up a lot using metric units to measure stuff. The millimetre is very poorly suited. When specifying engineering tolerances "+/- two thou" would be a common requirement and makes perfect sense to a toolmaker. Now convert that to millimetres..... horrible!

Nowadays we have to measure our air vents in square millimetres. Can anyone here easily envisage how big the hole in the wall will be to give an open cross sectional area of say, 25,300 square millimetres? It would make no less sense to specify in hectares!!!!

No that was sloppy use of language back in the day. When I was in manufacturing around the time of metrication 'mil' was used to mean a millimetre and 'thou' meant 1/000 of an inch.

You is a JEANIOUS marketing man. My pet dragonfly says so.....

In my world all the same confusion persists in relation to cross sectional areas of air vents. You wouldn't believe how feek 'gas engineers' can be in the training room, struggling to grasp the difference between an air vent of say 12 square inches cross sectional area and an air vent 12 inches square.

But the CRT advert isn't about fundraising a few pennies from loads of people. It is about boosting visitor numbers to the towpaths to protect the government grant, surely? And that grant depends on massive visitor number stats illustrating how much the public value the waterways. So its goal must be raising public awareness of the waterways as a destination to 'relax', and I suspect it might work moderately well.

I think you misunderstand. The boat was built out of focus, which is why they thought it would fit under Blue Lias.... 😅 Edit to add: Curious name. Seems to be a tense of the Latin verb "absum" meaning to absent - to withhold from being present.

Firstly this pump cycling needs to be fixed. Fitting a correctly pressured accumulator on the pump outlet will stop the pump cycling. I'd suggest an accumulator of about four or five litres in capacity, and make sure it is for potable water not for central heating. There is a loose colour coding convention that white or blue = potable water and red = central heating but manus don't all conform to this. I've seen silver/grey accumulators recently that can be either and white that are CH. Secondly I'm not convinced the burners dropping in and out is a direct result of the cycling. All three of mine do this too if the flow rate through them is too low and the tank water slightly warm (e.g. in summer heatwave) and the flame size control knob is set to "High", and I have accumulators! I think there is some sort of mechanical overheat protection built into the Morcos coming into operation. Try running yours on "low flame" instead of "high flame". Try all this with the Morco temp control set to Max. Turning the temp control down misleads the user as it appears to simply bleed some cold water into the already possibly overheated heated output from the Morco.

I seem to remember getting a good close look at the Jethro Tull a couple of decades ago, and deciding the stern wheel was a dummy, just dipping in the water and turning as a result of forward motion provided by other means. Not connected to an engine at all as far as I could see. Is my memory playing tricks?

A bit like now, you mean? In my 30" draft boat I have to take a run at the bridge 'oles and shut off the power just as I get there so my stern wave lifts me through. I cannot just cruise through many of them, or even haul the boat through using a line, the bridge holes are just too shallow.

Has anybody observed it passing through a lock yet? This would help resolve the debate about its beam... It certainly doesnt look wider above the waterline than below in this photo, as asserted earlier in the thread.

Oh i see. Apolgies!

Really? When i did the Wey down to Godalming the deal was alway open both gates, and leave them open on exit.