David Mack
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Posts posted by David Mack
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I just picked up on the OP saying "The good news is that I'm in no particular rush and once I get as far as Middlewich I'm within commuting distance." and as I'm not too up to date on the Longport to Middlewich part of the trip I gave that a miss and told him the bits I do know about, that and an offer of help if he had a problem near me was I felt a pretty reasonable thing to do, sorry if I didn't live up to your expectations David.
K
Its not my expectations that matter. Its just that by only covering the route from Middlewich you have missed out most of the locks the OP will have to do (single handed), and that was one of his concerns raised in the first post.
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I don't know what the law says specifically about licensing moving premises, but it must be possible because they sell booze in bars on the sea-going ferries, some of which I suppose are registered in the UK and therefore subject to English (or Scottish) law.
This may be urban myth, but I have always understood that boats (and trains) do not need a licence to serve alcohol when moving, but do when tied up, and the booze cruise trip boats work on this basis.
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Do you have some evidence to support this ?
Not that I can quote, but I did read it somewhere quite recently from someone I regarded (perhaps erroneously) as a reliable informed source.
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This is a trip of 48 miles, 6¼ furlongs and 2 locks from Middlewich Bridge No 172 to Leigh Pipe Bridge.
Second part of the trip
This is a trip of 20 miles, 2 furlongs and 15 locks from Leigh Pipe Bridge to Rufford Lock Footbridge.
But you missed out the first bit of the OP's trip, from Longport to Middlewich, which has rather a lot of locks, as well as a long tunnel.
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70 foot.
So why do you need to go in at Glasson? Can't you go from Eastham (or Liverpool) around to the Ribble Estuary and Ribble Link?
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That looks very nice.
But entirely bogus. Its not a tug, its a converted horse boat. While the LMS locomotives and First Class carriages may have carried maroon paint and gold lettering and coach lines, LMS carrying boats cabins would have been plain grey, just like LMS freight waggons.
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Hi All,
12' x 60' Sailaway
I am keen to run by you my current thinking for the heating system. I am working to the following principles.
Minimal engine running time - I am a continuous cruiser so my engine is run as little as possible - I move every 2 weeks generally (depending on minimum stay requirements) and hope not to run my engine for electricity (I have a 760 watt of solar, 917Ah batt bank) or hot water (via solar hot water panels/tubes - not purchased yet) when I don't need to (hopefully Apr-Oct I understand) although when I do run it I would like to capture as much of the excess energy as possible.
No cold periods - with my job I will from time to time be traveling , 3-4 day trips, at short notice, the system will need to kick in whether I am there or not equally I don't want to wake up in a freezing boat (even if my stove was to keep lit all night) or come back from work to a cold boat in the evening. Therefore heat should be on demand, program-able and easy to monitor (app/web access etc).
Automatic - I would rather the system automatically switched and kept itself in check or alarmed if there was a problem rather than manual switching.
Efficiency - I want everything to be as efficient as it can be with as little heat lost from the system (or more importantly the boat) as possible.
Resilience - through disparate and non-reliant systems, I want to be able to have 1 or more of the systems to be able to be out of the service and the other working. I can live with no hot water if I have heating and visa versa
Cost - it is a consideration but it isn't a constraint. If there are decent gains to be made on a long term basis by making an investment in equipment then I would want to consider it.
With this in mind plus many hours studying I have come up with the following setup, I stress this is my (potentially corrupt) thinking so far and I am looking to amend, streamline or scrap where sensible, efficient or more cost effective.
See 2 x diagrams below..
The boat is principally heated by a 10.5kw range oven/stove. It will have a 4kw backboiler retrofitted to it and also a 2.5kw Charnwood flue boiler to capture heat as it escapes through the flue. According to an online calculator i require 7.6kw to heat the boat space.
The backboiler and flue boiler are plumbed in series, the flue boiler sits above back boiler and a three way thermostatic valve (1) and a VT112R Three port bypass valve (2) set at 55 degrees keep the fluid (presumably water antifreeze and inhibitor) local when the stove is initially lit. When vale (1) opens it starts the Webasto (Thermo Top C 5.2kw) working, pumping, firing and testing temp of the water until it reaches set temp and then continues pumping but not firing.
Once the 2 thermostatic valves are open the hot water first flows through a gravity fed radiator, this will be positioned high on the bulkhead between the stern cabin and the galley and will alloow dispersal of heat in the instance of the pump breaking down.
Valves 3 and 4 are SP333 and are electrically connected in series to the 12 v pump/Webasto (not sure which or both) and therefore only open when the system is pumping (thermally initiated via a sensor just after valve 3 on the main loop). I plan to include an alarm which sounds if the the power to the pump/Webasto fails but heat remains in the gravity fed loop (powered on the same battery bank as my bilge pumps and other emergency/critical systems and separate from engine and leisure).
Valves (5) and (6) are SP333s too and are governed by equipment that measures a temperature differential between radiator loop and calorifier and switch accordingly ( I am aware this precludes hot water from being produced by the stove anyone know of a way around this?)
(8) SP12C controller vastly increases solar efficiency.
What I haven't worked out yet is where an expansion tank, header tank and any emergency pressure release valves need to go (presumably between the stove and valves 1 and 2 somewhere).
Look forward to your thoughts
(1) http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/wood_burning_stoves/ESBE-load-valves.html
(2) http://www.honeywelluk.com/products/Valves/Other-Valves/VT100112R/
Range stove - http://cast-iron-stoves.co.uk/product/milan-105kw-wood-burning-multi-fuel-range-oven-coo/
Flue boiler - www.charnwood.com/range/stove/charnwood-flue-boiler.aspx
Without wading through all the detail (as I'm on the Blackberry at the moment) that looks hugely complex and completely OTT!
If you want automatic temperature control, remote startup, web access etc. then you can only sensibly achieve that with a diesel (or gas) fired system. A fairly conventional setup with an external control / comms module should suffice. For redundancy get yourself a solid fuel stove with back boiler, but only to be used when you are there.
Moderate cost, minimum complexity, maximum reliability, easily maintained, minimum electricity consumption. Why would you need anything else?
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No, I was being serious, the only way I can get Old Friends on to my home canal the Lancaster is via Glasson docks from Ellesmere (Port). - out to sea and back in again. It has been done, I may never get the chance weather wise, or have the bottle, but it's on my list.
How big is Old Friends then? I thought the Ribble Link locks were the same size as those on the Glasson Branch.
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I have NEVER had a condition of insurance that my boat had to be surveyed.
Have you ever owned an older boat?
You can get Third Party only cover for a boat of any age without a survey from Basic Boat Liability (and probably others too), but be aware that their cover is not as comprehensive as other insurers (e.g. no towing).
For Fully Comp most (all?) insurers will want a survey on an older boat, although the precise age when "older" starts varies a little between insurers.
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Nick Beech was the salesman, John Compton was the surveyor,
At a quick look his website says all the right things, and he is IIMS qualified.
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I have always wondered about running a bath boat
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CRT have a contract with the boatowner, and so have a means to levy the charge. How would they get a landowner to pay?
In many cases, where the mooring is end-of-garden, rather than a farmer's field the landowner and boat owner are the same person anyway.
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We've just bought a 'rechargeable stick vacuum' from Aldi. Haven't used it yet,
I would see whether it is any good before spending more money on an alternative charger.
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Dammit it's 'flew', surely?
Only if it is over the Cuckoo's nest.
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We had a tale on here some time ago about a newish boat owner who commented that his water tank very rarely needed filling.
After some discussion and a little investigation, it transpired that a weld had failed between his integral steel water tank and the canal outside ...
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In a major city recently I heard a mother shout at her child (approximately 4 years old) "Come here you little sh*t"
Now he may well have been misbehaving but what has he learnt from his mother.
My next door neighbour in the first flat I owned referred to the boys upstairs as "F'ing Mark" and "F'ing Ian" due to the way their mother always shouted at them.
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The water in your canal boat tank just swills around in there, gathering scum on the surface and gradually becoming a breeding ground for bacteria & viruses that love swimming! I'm sure if it's changed often it's fine for showers, cleaning your teeth and washing the dishes - but you'd be playing with fate to drink it, even boiled.
When you fill up from a water point you get chlorinated water from the mains. Both the water itself and the standpipes you get it from have to meet minimum standards. The chlorination means that, provided your tank is clean and not open to contamination, the water should remain safe to drink for weeks or months.
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Amazing
Some more:
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This is a serious question. (Why do I feel the need to put that in front of most of my questions..lol).
I have previously considered quietening my engine, so that when running it charge batts, sitting inside the boat you dont hear...dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdum for 2hrs. Instead of quietening it, I'm thinking of playing instrumental music, which is created in the same musical key. That way you dont hear the engine, and it just becomes part of the bassline.
Surely I'm not mad?
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Didn't the no1's spend the last two hundred years pissing inthe canals ?
Maybe. But where did the No.1s do their No.2s?
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We had a problem like this at work. Couldn't access websites that referred to our sites at Gaydon or in Essex!
You'd have real problems with sites in Scunthorpe, Penistone and Lightwater then!
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No. The point being made was that petrol engined boats are unsafe. Which in itself just isnt true.
Poor management of them is unsafe, but how can you legislate for stupidity?
Well of course you can't. But its just that when the owners of diesel powered boats are stupid, the consequences are generally (but not always) a lot less severe.
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When I was on a business trip to Riyadh a few years ago I got a message up on screen that access to this site had been blocked by the Saudi Morality Police, but that if I thought the site was OK I could apply to have it added to the list of acceptable websites.
I quickly decided I could do without my CWDF fix for a few days.
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Why do we let convicted foreign criminals into our country? Don't we have enough of our own? Even convicted foreign murderers are welcomed with open arms! It seems to happen quite a lot... Are these cases just oversights or indicative of a liberalism which borders on stupidity?
Well in this case it seems the Latvian authorities hadn't included him on the list, so the police and immigration authorities were completely unaware of his past. From the Telegraph:
The Home Office operates a computer system called the "Warnings Index" or "WI" which contains information shared by foreign countries, including European Union states, on terrorists and criminals.
However Latvian authorities have insisted they were under no obligation to forewarn their British colleagues about Zalkalns conviction.
"According to law, we don't have to inform about previous convictions. We didn't get a request back then whether he was convicted. Once we got a request, we answered," said one Latvian official.
Historic Boats for sale online
in History & Heritage
Posted
Thanks for that. I may have been wrong on the grey, but this does support the view that the boats would have carried a 'utility' livery appropriate to freight carrying, rather than the maroon and gold which Tebay (and other boats) now carries.