id_rather_be_welding

I'm a liveaboard with pretty constant year round use, so don't mind a contract if I get free bits of kit every now and again, they offer discounts, and of course it needs to work reliably. For what it's worth, when I do need to contact 3, which isnt often, I am usually speaking to someone within a few minutes who can make decisions and implement changes, and things can be sorted quite quickly. I've been with them for 10 years now, and just a little customer loyalty dividend is stating to return which is a good thing. Proof of the pudding will be getting a better data speed and reduced loss of service. Although I have been able to do most things with daily Teams/Zoom etc over the last year, if there is one person in a meeting with latency problems, it will generally have been me. With an antenna and better router, fingers crossed that improves.

Well I've managed to get a B535 router from Three free with a new unlimited contract at £18 pm, and have a ordered one of the Poynting Omni Directional antennas to go with it, so am looking forward to more consistent and faster data - thanks for help all. Not quite as good as the £15 pm that @Loddon managed, but I'm not unhappy

Yes very good tip. I've had a similar experience, and when the data went from 15gb for £20, to 'unlimited' for £17 I was chuffed. I spoke with them this morning and they said I was due an upgrade on 4/7 and yes the B535 could be part of that.... I just need to keep the little Mifi box from overheating for a few weeks now the sun is coming out. The little white box that preceded it didn't seem to mind the sun as much

Well I have my existing three sim unimited monthly so will probably stick with that, but thanks for the offer!

This seems much about expectation management. If I had 15mbs I would be on cloud 9. I manage with sub 10mbps - but I do work with GIS, Synchronised sharepoint projects, databases, and I stream BBC and Netflix etc. Why do you say 15mbps is not usable? What can you not do? My problem is when my meagre sub 10mbps completely fails, and I can do nothing.

Hi folks. First visit back to CWDF after many years away, but great to find out it is still with us providing this invaluable forum.... I'm wondering how you got on @andybarrett1.? I have been using a Huawei 4g and then 4g+ mifi hanging in the porthole for several years after switching from a zoom router, external antenna and Huawei dongle which began for me in 2010, but I am now getting very disrupted by the overheating issues described by @AndyM, and erratic connection, and am thinking of switching back to router and external area. Like many my connection is now critical to my work which is data intensive, and I need it to work reliably daily and be quick. I am mostly static, and three has been generally very good over the last 1 11 years. Most of my boat is 12v so I can sort a stabilised dc power source. If poss I would also prefer not Huawei but will go with the flow if the options aren't as good. Thanks

You are right, and this is not what I suggested. Imagine a boiler in a stove on a narrow boat with a copper pipe coming out of the boiler through the wall of the stove, and then and going vertically up till it meets the gunwhale lining. The pipe then turns through 90 degrees and runs downslope along the boat to wherever the water cylinder or radiator is - this might be some distance away eg 7 or 8 metres away. The pipe then passes through a coil within the cylinder or a radiator (so losing most of its heat), exits the cylinder/radiator near the base and then is routed at floor level back to and up into the boiler. In my book the foot long piece of pipe that sticks up above the boiler is the pump, as everything else is down slope. The hotter water in the boiler has got somewhere it wants to go in this short length of pipe, and this pipe is not as hot as what it is inside the stove - so there is a thermal difference, a potential which causes the circulation. The longer this piece of pipe, the greater the volume, the better the pump.

Maybe. Perhaps a little pump would be needed with that system. But I dont think that it is that the tank has to be above the heat source (there are many boilers that sit partly higher than the tanks they heat) but that there needs to be a clear rise in the pipe work above the heat source where some cooling can occur, to create the pump that powers the thermosyphon.

Having had a really good thermosyphon boiler for 15 years in our old boat that sits in a old dedicated woodburner, I have plans on the new boat to have a second coil linked up to heat exchangers formed by copper pipes pushing against the cabin sides of an unlined engine room. Anyone done this? I think as well as having enough rise to power the thermosyphon, getting a really good contact between steel and copper would be key. I know someone who was planning to use his handrails as heat exchangers for hot water - big volume and nice easy rise all along the length to power a thermosyphon, but I don't know if it actually worked. Should have done.

Was that a premonition?? I sent some pictures of the starter to a guy called John at R.C.V. in Cannock. He phoned back this morning and said "that's not an SL5, its a BS5, and I reckon if you take the solenoid cover off, and give a bit of a clean to the solenoid, it'll tell you if it's 12 or 24v. So I did what he said, and it is 12v. So that's all good. I feel a bit stupid...but it'll pass, it usually does! Having taken off the solenoid cover, I can see that the data plate is an important bit of insulation - and if damaged would be replaced, most easily with the same bit from another damaged starter. thanks to all

thanks - that'd be appreciated.

The data plate is there.. The starter is 5" in body diameter and 12" long, and I don't really have a reason to suggest it is not the SL5 that the data plate says it is. It came out of the wooden Trees at Jannel's in Burton. I toyed with the idea of mixing 12 and 24volts several months back, but in the end decided I would attempt to keep things within my electrical grasp, and just have the one voltage. Is the relay you refer to essentially similar to one that Arnot has suggested from time to time? Could you give me a link or a supplier? cheers

Midlands not NW. I have a few places to try now - the art will be keeping the price sensible. I hadn't realised that some of these starters could fetch big prices - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Gardner-Commercial-M..._Accessories_SM I might give Bob a ring, as its al useful info. Now my memory is coming back to me, the AS2 we acquired had an extension on the camshaft, and then a big dinner plate of a pulley on that extension. This did write off any possible use of the hand crank, and in any case needed to come off for the full rebuild that the Mrs did. Matt

So are the numbers of the starters created logically? My existing starter is SL5A24-50. I was told that if there were the CAV 12 volt equivalent it would have been a SL5A12-50 So SL5 (5"?) A(?) 24 (volt) - 50 (?) Is the pinion teeth and the amount the pinion sticks out, included in this code? Does that mean if I were looking for a CA45, I want a CA45A12-50 I've heard the oil story too - and I can believe it, as the thinness of the oil makes such a huge difference to the ease of hand cranking. thanks

Thanks for responses - Barry - prop shaft rotation is down to 1/3 of engine, and having installed a cardan shaft, and also dropped my back cabin floor boards to only just clear a CVjoint, a pulley on the prop shaft is not a goer - and there is no where else but in back cabin if it's not on the timing end. Hugh - I will go and have a look at timing cover - I think those mounts are there - and thanks for the offer. Tim - I want to keep the hand start - I'd see this as the necessity and the electrics as the luxury but I haven't got a starter motor installed yet, so the crank is the only option. I find hand cranking it fine once the oil is thin ( it flies round) - but first thing in the morning, it's much harder to get enough speed. I guess the raised start I've seen on some engines helped this. Not a slow revving engine - I know, I know, but you know what I mean! Re starter motors. I have a CAV 24v starter for the engine, but I want this in 12v - as that is how I have installed the rest of my system. Anyone know where I might be able to do a swap? I got my 24v starter overhauled before realising it was 24v - so it is in good shape. Apparently CAV did not despatch 12v versions of this particular motor, but there are a fair few AS2s with 12v motors on them. cheers Matt

I am soon to set to on a 12v charging system that uses an Armstrong AS2. The engine, which we have rebuilt and installed in our boat, has no alternator, brackets or pullies. I am looking to charge 2 x 100A/hour batteries in one bank - no seperate starter battery. Has anyone a set up on a slow revving engine that works reasonably well using either cam or crank shaft pullies (the AS flywheels are enclosed), and that they'd share some pictures/information on? thanks Matt

We used a Flavel Collette (similar but bigger) for about 14years liveaboard (and it was second hand and well used when we bought it, but we were very poor) but worn valves saw the end of it - we wondered why we were getting through so much gas suddenly! The wire type grill elements on that I replaced with perforated steel plate when they totally fell apart, and it worked pretty well for many years more (although at the start the perforated plate lost a coating which made toast a bit gritty...). The build quality of the 1970s/80s cooker was great - cast iron pan holders and burners etc, and a well designed 3 burner hob - wish there were more 3 burners available. The quality of the Spinflo Caprice we replaced it with is nothing on these older cookers, and it is so bad to clean - great holes for bits and pieces to fall down. Clearly designed by someone who has never cleaned a hob. But it works well enough, and I'm not really complaining, although the £500 plus price tag wont be relfected in the number of years it lasts for.

Thanks for all replies

Anyone know of a source of 16Amp Double Pole Type B MCBs? I want to have a separate RCD and Breaker on our ShoreLine and know I need a DP breaker to be Rec Craft Dir compliant - but can't find a type B one from googling. Type Cs available, but then we lose a bit of sensitivity. Thanks

Sure the specifics of this is difficult but there is now good evidence of the early Human occupation of the area that is now the UK back into the 700,000s years ago - for those wanting to know more see here AHOB People (of a fashion) came into this area in the shortish warming periods between the long cold periods when the climate was too harsh. In the warm periods, the rivers and grazing in the chiltern area would have attracted herbivores and therefore people hunting them. The last time there was extensive glacial cover over what is now England was the Anglian Glaciation back in the 400 to 500,000s

Thanks for the speedy replies. So a Polarized supply is what is standard. Is the ISO not confused? This is the ISO verbatim: Am I missing something, or is this not defining an Unpolarized system - i.e. Live and Neutral are not differentiated? What is the benefit of an Unpolarised system for a boat? Is the supply halved between the 2 supplies? Thanks again

Having now got hold of the 2 ISOs relating to electrical installations on small craft without having to fork out an arm and a leg (thanks to the pointers given elsewhere in this forum), I wonder if someone in the know of which there appear to be some in these parts could explain to me in nice simple terms the difference between a Polarized and Unpolarized AC System? ISO13297 defines a Polarized System as a "system in which the neutral and live conductors are connected in the same manner to all terminals on devices or receptacles (socket outlets) in a circuit." Thanks