David Mack

My daughter bought a house in Liverpool while doing a Masters. The deposit was paid from earnings saved over two years working, and the mortgage repayments on a three bedroom terraced house are less than the rent for a single room in a shared house. She chooses to live alone, but could easily more than cover her costs by letting the spare bedrooms to fellow students.

The lift pump takes more fuel than the engine needs and passes it to the injector pump. This meters out the precise quantity required by the engine according to the engine speed, load and speed control setting, with the excess fuel being passed back to the tank. This also has the advantage that any air in the fuel line is returned to the tank, so helps with bleeding the system.

And do those plastic inspection hatches comply with Boat Safety Scheme requirements?

Why doesn't the OP just go down to his nearest canal, armed with a tape measure, and measure a few boats to get an idea of the range of cabin heights out there?

I once worked with some archive drawings from London Underground, which, due to the poor condition of the paper originals, had been traced/redrawn before being committed to microfiche. In the process all the measurements had been converted to metric. To avoid negative numbers, it was the practice on the Underground to give heights relative to a datum 100 feet below Ordnance Datum. So now the drawings had the levels of underground structures given in metres above a datum of -30.48 metres!

The Steam Yacht Gondola on Coniston has used Blazer logs, commercially produced blocks made from compressed sawdust, since March 2009. These are claimed to burn more efficiently, giving off little smoke with negligible sulphur content and to be carbon negative. They also produce far less ash than the coal used previously.

https://hebdenbridge.co.uk/classifieds/index.html

CRT tried that with a special appeal for the Dutton breach a few years back. Raised about 10% of the cost of the repair if I remember correctly. So nice to have, but not a game changer, and less spectacular projects are likely to raise less.

Agreed. In practice CRT seem to allow some boats an awful lot of latitude before they take action. That said, we don't know how many of the perpetual non-movers are working their way through the enforcement process, which can take a long time, particularly if the boat is the owner's home.

Do you think the National Trust is immune to the same sorts of issues? I seemed to recall various criticisms being voiced in the media of NT's approach to 'woke' issues, or the way they treat some of their farm tenants.

Regardless of the theoretical legal position, if CRT believe you have either not satisfied the CC requirements, or you have broken the Ts and Cs in some way, they may refuse to renew your licence when it expires (but will not revoke an existing licence before its end date). That leaves you with an unlicensed boat on their waterway. You can of course go to court to force them to issue a licence, and you may even succeed (although it's very unlikely). But during the time that court process takes, your boat will be unlicensed, giving CRT the right to remove it from the water. If the first action does succeed you can then go back to court again to claim that the removing of your boat from the water was not in fact within CRT's powers, and seeking return of the boat, payment of your legal costs, recompense for any damage done to the boat, and possibly damages. And again there is a very slim possibility that you might succeed. But the whole process will involve you in significant work, expense and stress. Most people decide instead to (more or less) comply with CRT's requirements, as its a whole lot easier, cheaper and less stressful.

No. It says ".9." So obviously a typo of some sort. I assumed it is supposed to be 9.x which is OK. If it really was 0.9mm the surveyor would have been duty bound to point it out. Worth checking back with the surveyor anyway though.

Where's the efficiency saving? You higlight the first bit of text you want to respond to and click on 'Quote' which opens the reply box with the quoted text, you add your reply, you then scroll up to the original post, highlight the next bit of text you want to respond to and click 'Quote' again, and the quoted text is added to the reply box, add your second comment. Repeat as necessary and finally click 'Submit Reply'. Works just as well with multiple sections quoted from one post, or with bits from several different posts. And it's clear to readers who has written what, and no need for bold or coloured text.

There aren't really enough thickness measurements in that table to confirm that all is well. But the baseplate looks to have been 12mm (or 1/2") originally and has corroded down to 9mm in the worst place measured. So while the baseplate has lost some thickness there is loads left and nothing really to worry about. My guess is that water which has found its way into the bilge has been trapped there - perhaps under paving slab ballast, or worse, ballast standing on roofing felt, so the baseplate never dries out. Better to sit paving slabs on lengths of rubber tubing or old electric cable so there is a definite air gap underneath, which will allow bilge water to flow back to the lowest point and the bilge space to dry out.

Some skin tank cooled boats have the tank set on the base plate, rather than the more usual place on the hull side. If such a tank has bilge water above it, I guess that bilge water would get warmed.

Having promoted this as part of the East Anglian Waterways Link some years ago, EA now look to be back peddling on their commitment to the project.

They own the navigation and are responsible for the locks, towpath and some of the sluices. But as it is a river, they don't own most of the channel, bridges, flood control structures etc. That leaves them with a whole lot fewer responsibilities than a canal owner, and consequently needs less funding on a per mile basis.

Which attributes the words you have written to the author of the post to which you are replying. Better to respond outside the box, with the relevant text from the previous post quoted in multiple sections. Like this (to illustrate the point, as I am not actually responding to your second paragraph).

A drain pipe fitted at the bottom of the front plate of the fuel tank, then run across the counter plate and terminating inside the vee of the swim plate would be as near as possible to the bottom of the tank, yet it is possible to put a container below the end of the pipe to collect the fuel drained off. It won't get everything from the bottom of the tank, but will be better than most boats have.

But shepherds huts and the like have a wider choice of stove. They are not constrained to a maximum of about 24 inches wide, they don't necessarily need an oven, and if they do have one it can be on either side. The requirements for a proper back cabin stove are much more specific.

"We no longer use our online boat checker, having reviewed the usage, of all the boats checked over the review period, 37% were unlicensed but already in our enforcement process. The other 63% were either licensed, in places where a licence wasn't required or the details were incorrect." https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/boating/buy-your-boat-licence/boat-licence-customer-support-team/how-we-tackle-evasion

So that leaves nobody producing proper back cabin stoves then. Brinklow produced a batch a few years ago, and said there would be more to follow, but I haven't heard of any progress. I guess the market is too small to be worth setting up production.

So is that Long Leptospirosis? Glad to hear you are recovering.

Exactly! And the repair work they carried out to their locks and bridges did not match the high standards they apply to their historic houses and similar properties. After running the canal for a number of years they lost interest and threatened to close it, unless BW took it back, which was what happened in the end. They were also major objectors to the restoration of the Higher Avon - one of the reasons they wanted to get rid of the Stratford I believe. That said, they do seem to be doing a better job on the Wey.