Jen-in-Wellies

I'd expect the hours meter, especially an LCD one to break before a well maintained Beta.

Also got one of the55cm New World cookers. Can confirm it works very well. Good for roasting and baking, with reasonably even oven heat distribution. Have done a family xmas dinner with it. Would get another.

That's just crazy torque. ?

Gaming won't be a problem when you are on a shore line, but will consume a lot of your limited power if you do it while away from your mooring + shore line and have to generate it yourself. Easiest way to find out how much it uses is to get a power monitor plug like one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Monitors/b?ie=UTF8&node=1938287031 That piccie looks like Park Hill flats in Sheffield. Now all done up and apparently very des res. Jen

As long as you don't travel more than 65,535 nautical miles your Excel spreadsheet will work fine. You don't work for Serco on Test and Trace by any chance? Jen ?

£25 a day times 358 ('cause you get 7 days a year free) is £8,950 a year. A bargain for a London mooring! CaRT claim their mooring fees are based on the local going rate. If I was an owner of London moorings I would be very annoyed about being undercut like this.

It is a bit weird, especially since a metric tonne and imperial ton are as close to being the same mass as to make no difference in most circumstances. Especially in a 40 ton/tonne gin palace where the difference between the two will only be couple of G&T's in weight.

Only £200? What about all the water voles who'll starve this winter? Tiny Tim, the sign makers son dying of consumption? All your fault. Jen? <advertising Feature>Buy Your Waterways Signs From R Cratchett and Sons. Sign Makers to the Cycling and Rambling Trust and other Fine Charities</Advertising feature>

I don't know the area much, but I'd imagine that along the Thames to the west of that London would be the place to go looking for a hood maker. Lots of cruiser and gin palace style boats on the river that will be a market for hooding. Is this cover to go on the bow, or stern (rear) of your boat? Just that you talk about a cratch cover for a cruiser stern., A cratch is a feature of working narrowboats originally to hold fodder for the towing horse in the bow area that has evolved in to the modern leisure boat cratch cover. If the cover is for the stern area, then the term is more usually pram hood. Good luck with your search. Jen

The 7l/min is under ideal conditions, so if the outlet from the pump goes straight in to a bucket and there are no restrictions, or crud slowing it down in the pipe from the tank you should get something like that. To the shower, or sinks, then long pipe runs and sharp bends and angles will slow the flow rate down. However, 7l/min should be perfectly adequate for a shower on a boat. Lots have pumps of similar specification. It won't be as prolific as a domestic power shower, if that is what you are used to, but it will do the job. Jen

They are being ignored you say? Clearly not enough signs there. CaRT must put more signs up immediately. Perhaps in some sort of chicane formation. Lycra is a privilege, not a right.

Out of interest, how long have you had these on your boat? How do they compare price wise with rigids?

If the water is covered by boats, then life is less better. It stands to reason.

CaRT claim that a quarter of their income is from boaters, so we paid for one side of that sign. If you look very carefully there is a mooring bollard icon on the side facing the water to let you know there are mooring bollards there, just in case you haven't seen them, what with them being painted white, so we get our moneys worth. The far side no doubt says "Away From the Locks" as @Bod reckons. The left hand side says "To the Water, Where It Is Better By". They missed a trick, 'cause the top doesn't say "To the Ground" and buried in the concrete it might not say "To the Sky", for the benefit of any water voles tunnelling through the bank. Water voles being another CaRT favourite for spending money. Jen

Some stuff on the company and the engines here. It reckons they did make marine engines, but they were also used in fire pumps, Hillman Imps and Lotus road and Formula 1 cars at one point. An industrial museum my family were/are involved with had a fire fighting pump made by they. Very small and light. Jen

The power that can be extracted is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. This is why turbine manufacturers headline figures are at high wind speeds you'll rarely see. If one says 600W at 30mph, then at 15mph it might only be producing 75W and at 7.5mph, 9W. The drop off is dramatic. Jen

Some are available with a cover to reduce the risk of water ingress when not connected. Got one on my boat. Gone cruising with this in place for weeks on end, with no water getting by. Who are you to call Plug ugly?! I'd worry about putting the shore lead through a window. Running over a metal edge with relative movement from the boat and wind.

You could always ask Aintree Boats. They might know. I'd certainly trust their answer more than some of the ones so far in this thread! ?

Here are the questions I'd want to investigate. With steel lock gates, does it decrease the frequency of maintenance required? Are the cills and mitre surfaces still made of oak? If so, do these bits still need replacement on a 20 to 25 year basis. The Llangollen steel gates are from 1976, but how often has the lock had to be drained and them lifted out for fettling and part replacement in that time? Since with modern elth'n'safety, the lock has to be scaffolded and fenced, sealed off, drained and a crane bought in to do this, is it any cheaper in maintenance than having to do this to replace a set of oak gates? The average cost of running a lock with steel versus oak needs working out over a 25 year period. A bit more complex than comparing the straight up build cost of the two materials, but not impossible. Not averse to the idea. Steel gates have been around for a long time now that their use is "historic", just not everywhere. I remember it being said that oak gates are more resistant to being accidentally rammed than steel. Not sure how true this is. Again, the Llangollen ones have survived over 40 years of novice boaters, so they can't be too fragile. On conservation, I'd worry about a dispensation to change lock gate material over cost could be the thin end of the wedge. What if, say a snake turnover bridge on the Macc needed rebuilding? Could it be replaced with a cheaper concrete, or steel one? The same arguments could be used. With the present Cycling and Rambling Trust senior management, would a decrease in maintenance cost lead to more locks getting maintenance, or a further cut in the maintenance budget? Jen

Suppose you ran out of matches, fire lighters and kindling. If you deliberately span the ecofan blades backwards to give a reverse current across the thermoelectric module, could you get the stove hot enough to light itself?

Purely personal and selfish reasons for these. Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal. I mostly grew up near one end of this. Dearne and Dove Canal. Would give a new cruising ring near where I moor now. And a new navigation, rather than a restoration, so probably doesn't count for this topic, the River Rother link between Rotherham and the Chesterfield Canal. Another new cruising ring near to where I moor now, once the Chesterfield is fully restored, so I'd better add the Chesterfield Canal gap too.

BSS failure. Evidence of heat damage to one side... Good job high and low level air vents are only a BSS advisory. Especially in orbit, when up and down are arbitrary and you need the air that is already inside to not die. Just imagine the millions you'd have to pay for the BSS examiner to come out again for a retest.

Affectionately known as "Stinkies" to cavers. I still have one as a mantelpiece ornament. We were using larger versions, with a big acetylene generator on a waist belt, with a hose feeding a helmet mounted burner and reflector up till the turn of the century, especially for trips and expeditions abroad. Since replaced by LED lamps. Not seen one in use for over a decade. Had an exciting experience where in a narrow squeeze the hose came off the helmet burner and the escaping gas ignited. Managed to escape with only minor singes! A common party trick with cavers was to drop a pellet in to a plastic (never glass) drinks bottle, with a little water. Screw the lid down and throw it in to a crowded room. I've also seen it used to launch dustbins over roofs. We've taken the thread completely off topic now. Jen

Luck mostly. It's all down to probability, the posh word for luck. The design has an influence, giving an average life, but individual inverters can vary wildly from that average in their life spans. The inverter is made of lots of components. Each component typically has a higher chance of failing early in its life as any manufacturing, or design defects kill some of them, then a low probability of failing for a period of time, then an increasingly high probability of failing as the component reaches the end of its life and various ageing effects kill it off. The more components, the more the chance that a single component failing, or a combination drifting out of spec will wreck the inverter. A single bad component may kill it early. If you happen to get one in the sweet spot, then all the components age slowly and the whole thing lasts decades. One persons experience with the same make and model can be very different from another. You have no influence over early life failure, but installation and usage can make a difference to ageing and long term life. As a rough guide, each ten degree C rise in temperature halves the life of an electronic component. Installing the inverter in a well ventilated area allows it to keep cool. Humidity is a problem. A boat lived on and warmed all year round will have less humidity than one mothballed for months with the inverter in a dank cupboard. Powering up and down has a stressing effect on solder joints, eventually fatiguing them to failure. Ideal would be in a cool but dry location, powered all the time, but with few heavy long term draws for large currents. This sort of stuff was part of my job for a long time, so I can bore for England on the subject if required! ? Jen