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Jen-in-Wellies

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Everything posted by Jen-in-Wellies

  1. Wow, that was fast! An answer from the Broads Authority. They sell £1 cards, which give 6.66kWhr, so one kWhr costs 15p. That is about the typical cost for a domestic supply from the main suppliers, so it looks like the Broads are selling it at cost and not using it to recoup the cost of the bollards. Jen
  2. Which will need legislation to be changed. It can be done. Does this law apply to a navigation authority? I've emailed the Broads Authority to ask how much they are charging per unit. Will post here if I get an answer. Jen The real reason is that wind turbines are actually powered by electricity to make wind happen, not the other way round. It is part of an effort to make weather forecasts more accurate by blowing clouds to where they are needed to match what has been predicted.?
  3. Short answer is dunno! There will be major changes. Electric transport obviously, but also the ban on gas heating in new build homes from 2025. Balance that against upgrading houses with better insulation and solar panels (Labour policy). Beyond my ken. Jenny
  4. Have a look at these figures and graphs of real time grid electricity sources in the UK. Non fossil fuel sources today are not far off 50% of the total. Mostly wind and nuclear, with hydro and solar making up the rest. Fossil fuel is almost all gas, with a tiny bit of coal left. This is with a government that has banned new on-shore wind turbines for years and removed the domestic solar grants. The grid conversion to non CO2 emitting sources is much further on than most people think. Jen
  5. I hope to still be boating in two, or three decades time. Crashing in to boats Tim & Pru style. (Not Steve Heywood style!). An electric boat means they won't hear me coming. Jen
  6. Yes it is. So is any commercial work. Putting in a big diesel storage tank, with bund and HMRC compliant diesel pump will set you back tens of thousands too. You use the recharging price to pay for them over time. The government paying could be in the form of a loan repayable at the interest rates they can get on government borrowing, rather than commercial loan rates. It doesn't have to be paid for out of a big tea chest full of cash from the government. Lots of ways of doing it. This or something very like it either happens, or we are bow hauling our boats around in a few decades time when diesel gets banned, or paying tens of thousands for a horse and its upkeep. Or we carry on and the climate changes so much the inland network becomes unusable anyway. Not enough rain, so it is empty, or too much and it is flooded. What do you suggest?
  7. If it is possible to get it wrong, then people will! I've posted about this before. I made a bilge pump warning light. If the auto bilge pump comes on, then it lights a warning light to let you know it has happened. The light stays on till you cancel it. Assuming your auto bilge pump isn't clarted up with horrible bilge gunge and actually works, then you get a warning that water is getting in. Could be from a stern gland, leaking weed hatch, rain water around the hatch lids, whatever. My boat has a Volvo stern gland and basically never drips, so the bilge should be bone dry. If the bilge pump has run I want to know about it.
  8. A possible starting point for building electric charging infrastructure on CaRT waters would be in conjunction with the hire industry. As an example, a hire boat doing the Cheshire ring. This is 97 miles, which is 53.5hrs, or 7.5 days at 7 hours a day. A good trip for a weeks hire. At 1.5l/hr, this is about 80l of diesel, the cost of which is included in the hire of the boat. If a boat is out for say 25 weeks a year on average, then this is 2000l of diesel per boat. a substantial cost. There is also the money tied up in diesel stock, both in the boat tanks and in the storage tank at the hire base. The cost of carrying out engine services every few weeks and disposing of the used oil. A typical fast (50kW) car charging post can be bought for £23.6k. With installation and running a three phase supply to it, depending on location, then the cost per post is probably going to be somewhere between £50k and £100k. If a boat can go two days between charges, then you could equip the Cheshire ring with perhaps four posts, including the one at the hire base so boats leave with full batts. A boat hire company has a turnover of boats. As older ones are replaced and sold on, a proportion of its new boats could be electric for the Ring. Once the posts are in place, then they are available for private boaters too. A lot of boats are used as weekend pads, with perhaps a short cruise to the pub and back and a longer cruise for a week or two. A small proportion of early adopter private boaters would see advantages in converting, or building electric. Silent boating, green bragging rights, with somewhere to cruise. Using popular hire boat cruising rings could be a way of getting over the chicken and egg problem of nowhere to charge, so people don't make/buy electric boats. It builds a network one ring at a time until a critical mass of boats exist and demand comes for the less popular routes. The busy narrow canal network of the Midlands and Wales would be the ideal place to start this. At the moment, we see a vast network and no way of financing the cost of fitting it for electric boating all in one go. I'd suggest that one go isn't needed. Do routes popular with hire boats first, the Llangollen and various cruising rings, then extend out beyond those and private boaters will see the advantages in building, or converting to electric. Exactly how this would be financed would need to be worked out. The division of capital cost between CaRT, the hire boat companies and government (not the current one!). The price of the electric sold and how this is divided. Some joined up standardisation on charging posts and billing method between the different navigation authorities would be needed so the small schemes build up in to a network usable anywhere. Jen
  9. With a knackered seal, mine leaks when the prop is in reverse, but not when in forward. All to do with the relative position of the weed hatch and the prop. On my boat the weed hatch opens over the shaft as it exits the stern tube. A good place as this is where the rubbish tends to end up. Don't boat with the lid off. Boats can and have sunk within seconds when people set off after forgetting to put the lid back on.
  10. Post codes work well in built up areas, but less well out in the sticks. They were never designed to be a navigation tool, just a way of speeding postal sorting and delivery. They work well surprisingly well for navigation, but you do get glitches, as @Mike Todd describes.
  11. +1 on camping mat. Mine was around 10mm thick. A single sheet across the inside face of the top plate. Not a drop gets past. Jen
  12. Forgot to check if the cat was snoozing in the drum?
  13. Not heard of them before. Can they be applied DIY, or do they need a professional to do the work?
  14. But much less often as she'll be able to use a more effective paint system than the potable water ones she'd need for the integral water tank.
  15. Another option that's not been mentioned yet may be a flexible bladder inside the existing tank. You'd still need to derust and paint it to stop any ongoing corrosion progressing in the steelwork. Not used one, so no idea what they are like. The ones in this link come in a maximum of 200l, which is less than half the size of the stainless tank on my boat (450l) It may be possible to fit more than one to get the capacity. These would be the easiest to install, compared with opening up the steelwork and fitting a rigid plastic, or stainless tank. Jen
  16. I moved on to my boat to avoid gardening. I have a few spider plants and cacti inside and sometimes a tub of something on the roof in the summer. Fountains mow the lawn for me. I suffer from yellow fingers, the opposite of green fingers. It's the tendency to kill most plants left in my care.
  17. Check the cabin bilge under the floor is dry. If it is an older boat without a bulkhead between the engine bilge and cabin bilge, then there may not be much you can do about this. Assuming this is a narrowboat of some sort. Don't dry laundry on board. How many and where are the low level and high level fixed vents on your boat? Do they meet the BSS requirements? They allow moist air to escape generated from breathing (assuming you ignore @stegra's advice), cooking etc as well as allowing fresh air in. Jen
  18. If their address is close to the S&SY Navigation, you could collect it by boat! Thanks.
  19. If the aerial amplifier is being powered through one of the coax leads, then a capacitor across the shield will stop the amplifier working. Better to install a different aerial with no built in amplifier and isolate that with a cap, then have an amplifier between it and the radio. Is the aerial one designed for cars? If so, then they often use the metal roof of the car as part of the aerial design and rely on an electrical bond with the roof to work most effectively. If this is the case with yours, then to carry on using it and not get the stray return current through the hull, you'd have to have a separate metal plate, isolated from the hull on to which to mount the antenna. Jen
  20. Indeed. A one stage I moved from Scotland to Staffordshire. I liked the Scottish oatcakes, but never acquired the taste for Staffordshire ones. The difference in taste is due to Scottish oatcakes being wild and hunted in the mountains, whereas Staffy ones are farmed. A heather based diet, rather than grass and silage fed.
  21. Have you used it for engine deck boards? How does it stand up to the heat rising from the engine? How do you attach the 2x1 reinforcement? Screws, given the difficulty of getting stuff to stick to PE? Not come across this stuff before, so keen to learn. Jen
  22. I agree that something like Hydrogen would work well for long distant travel in a way that battery electric does not. A few years back everyone thought it would be "the future". Since then, EV has overtaken it in cost and actual vehicles on the road. I'm not convinced it can catch up if the EV infrastructure is built before Hydrogen is cost compatible. It may never catch on after that and become the BetaMax of vehicle technology, vs the EV VHS. Superior, but unable to compete against the higher customer base and infrastructure availability of their rival. No blinkers here.
  23. To add to @Alan de Enfield's answer. Shore bollard power is incredibly cheap compared with other ways of making electricity on board. Solar, although free, has a high capital installation cost. The price of the electricity from a shore bollard over winter will be tiny compared with other boating costs. Jen
  24. Can you help me out here. I can't find any that are actually available, or any prices. Only future products with glossy web sites, short of detail, or limited trials being run in various parts of the world.How deep a google dive do I need to take to find them?
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