MtB

What's wrong with the standard method of removing the curtains, then putting them back once the bloke has gone? That way, everyone is happy!

Why wouldn't they? The sums work differently for everyone. Fox's would probably want their chargeable rate of say £70 an hour for their competent welder to do it (whilst paying him £40 an hour), so for them it made no sense. But if the welder himself fancied a bit of extra work on his own account at the weekend, he could do the whole job for no more than the cost of the steel, the welding wire and the electricity, and get himself an almost 'free' boat. But as john.k points out, the lost scrap value also needs working into the sums.

Considered. See? That is what I mean, a matter of opinion not fact. A competent welder might have considered it worth spending a weekend welding plating on all around the waterline of this scrap boat in order to acquire a boat subsquently sellable for perhaps £10k. But A N Other might not consider they have the skill or the time for it to be worth the effort. Same happens with cars. Mild accident damage is not worth the Ins Co fixing so they 'write it off'. A self-employed car fixer buys it and fixes it anyway (perhaps with second hand parts) and sells it as a fixed and repaired car.

"Wade" is a brand of pipe fitting, so your Wade valves could be anything. Can you post up a photo please? Spraying with LDF is highly unlikely to have been the cause of them getting stiff. LDF is formulated to be very benign.

In the time it takes to obtain some glass fibre matting, some copper wire, some LSX and to actually carry out the wrapping of the joint as Tony describes, the joint could probably be dismantled and re-made properly, with 100% certainty instead of the 50/50 chance of success with bodgery. The biggest uncertainty associated with doing it properly that drives people to bodgery is how drain of the water out of the pipe prior to dismantling it and fixing it. Working out how to do this is usually the first and only difficult step in fixing a leaking joint properly.

Rather like accident-damaged cars, 'end of economic life' is more a matter of opinion than fact, in my opinion, and depends a lot on whose opinion it is! The scrapping of a narrowboat seems very rare down here. No matter how bad one is, there always seems to be someone who sees it as worth the effort of patching it up and squeezing a few more years of life out of it or selling it on for a few £k as a doer-upper. In fact NB Esk's post is the first time I've ever directly encountered someone saying they've actually scrapped one themselves.

I've never heard of FSX but Fernox LSX is a very useful sealant for use when plumbing. It is broadly the same stuff in the tube as transparent Dow Corning silicone bath and shower sealant (if ten times the price). If pressed I suspect Fernox might be able to show there is some minor difference in the chemical make-up of it but I think the differences would be mainly in the packaging. It is however intended for use as a jointing compound in threaded joints and face-to-face joints during assembly of the joint, not for slathering all over the outside of an existing, leaking joint. If slathering it on the outside of a leaking joint works at all, it will be by pure luck. As withy points out, the water pressure from a slowly leaking joint is still highly likely to just push through the LSX jointing compound as it has no structural strength before setting and still very little after. The correct and successful way to fix a leaking joint is to dismantle it and reassemble it correctly, not plaster stuff around the outside of it. And... ~breathe~

My on-line CRT mooring on the K&A ia about £3,500 a year.

And for comparison, a gas ring is typically 2kW or a bit more.

Point of Order... The above is not true. There is nothing preventing installation of a gas system and gas cooker on a boat which is otherwise electrically powered.

Brake pipe corrosion is a good example. I had a car fail on brake pipe corrosion but another MoT place passed it. Back in the day as a teenager it was commonplace for us to just take an MoT failed car to a different testing station rather than fix the supposed faults and get either a pass, or a completely different lists of fail points which might be easier to fix. On Minis, A40s Morris 1000s etc it was common to get fails for marginal stuff like body corrosion, wear in steering box or rack, corroded brake pipes etc and different examiner who take a different view. Anything which both MoT stations picked up was generally did need fixing. Back in those days most MoT test stations used their inspections to feed work to their workshops, so it often felt like a fail was more likely if they were short of work than if they were busy.

Does the manual have anything to say about the dosing pump spec or part number?

Brill, your tongue is just right, you'll get in the lock just fine!

Which water pump? On the engine cooling system? Or the one supplying domestic water? Or the shower waste pump?

I don't need an anchor, and my maureen steaks are in the coal box!

Would you fail your food hygiene inspection if they found your anchor and mooring stakes in the fridge?

That's odd, your profile says you are up to 49 posts.

I find myself wondering if it's like the BSS, where some of it is a matter of opinion.

Angle grinder.

Life's a bitch, and then you die.

I've been advised several times by a variety of people over the past decade or so not to order food in The Swan, due to hygiene issues.

Or (nearly) empty the water tank in the bow. Them little waves slapping the uxter make a horrendous noise on one of my boats when the water tank is brim-filled.