sebrof

I shall have to put them on the to-buy list. Trouble is, it's a long list.

It's a good point, Tony, and one which I didn't fully take on board when you first posted it. Nibble, I have a proper switch, but it's difficult to get access to, being under the floor in the short space between the engine and the engine-room wall. On the other side of the wall, also under the floor, are the batteries, which explains the location. It looks as though I am going to have to take up the floor. My guess is that the set-up is really quite old. However, like the engine, the switch was probably designed to last for ever, so it's quite possible that the fault is elsewhere. What I think has been established (probably!) is that the fault goes back to the new electrical installation. I think that the switch was originally connected direct to the old black isolator, and the electrician simply re-wired it to the VSR with a fuse in-line. The boat was sitting on the mud most of the time, so probably he didn't test the installation other than to make sure it was charging correctly. By putting in the 100 amp fuse, he must have assumed that the switch isolated the batteries when the BT was activated. Surely, if the switch doesn't isolate the batteries, there would be a danger of destroying any alternator or charger connected to the BT batteries when the BT is operating. There are two 100 amp fuses connected to the VSR, one for the domestics and one for the BT bank. I agree that it looks a bit odd having only 100 amps when I have 100 amps worth of charger, but the domestic fuse has been fine. I take the boat out regularly, and sometimes return with the domestics down to 60% of charge. Turning on both chargers has never caused a problem. They are Victron Phoenix 12/50s. And in answer to your question, Tony, I will let you know as soon as they are charged. Sounds simple. You presumably need a switch to isolate the BT bank when not moving, otherwise you effectively then have just one battery bank.

From cold, like many engines, they benefit from having lots of throttle.

I have a JP3 and no starter motor. It's an easy engine to start when you know how. If you have a pawl on the injector pump, move it so that the throttle can be opened more than normal, and wedge it wide open. With the red compression valves screwed in tight, and de-compression levers upright, turn the engine over several times, until the injectors creak. Then speed up, using just your right hand, and resting your left hand on the nearest rocker cover next to the de-compression lever. When you're going well, throw down the lever on the first cylinder with your left hand, and keep cranking until the first cylinder fires. If it doesn't fire, then the most likely causes are: 1 You are not getting fuel. Bleed the system to the injector pump, and crank the engine a few times. The injectors will creak when the fuel is getting through. 2 There is not enough compression. If you can turn the engine with the levers down, you have a compression problem. This may cure itself once the engine starts running, so identify the cylinder with most compression, and try to start with that. If that doesn't work, you may need professional help. Get a friend to help with the levers, if the first cylinder isn't working. Don't strain yourself. You can get up quite a good speed by working up to it gradually. Trying too hard is a waste of effort because the flywheel is heavy, and you are better off letting the speed build slowly. Once the first cylinder has fired, throw down the other levers, and un-wedge the throttle. Then listen to that lovely gentle thumping sound and thank God you have a real engine. Don't worry too much about being in gear. I often start mine in gear when in a hurry to evade creditors or get to the pub. Just make sure you are moored securely. ETA: I used to pine after a starter motor. Now I am happy to keep my back strong by hand cranking the old beast.

Thanks, but the engine was not running. I was using the two 50 amp chargers, which were charging both battery banks (although the domestics were at 100% SOC, so presumably not taking much). The fuse is 100 amp. The point is that the fuse did not go until I used the BT. I can see that the BT might well overload a 100 amp fuse (its own fuse is 355 amp), but that circuit should have been disconnected by the 12/24 switch.

You are talking about different things. All else being equal, a deeper prop will bite the water better. If the price of a deeper prop is a heavier boat sitting lower in the water, then obviously the increased drag will counteract the more efficient propellor.

It all depends whether you regard your fridge as a cold drink dispenser or as a way of keeping food fresh. Fridges don't use a lot of power if you don't open the door too often. In my experience, an 80/100 watt panel will power a fridge and a laptop (for a couple of hours) and the water pump on a reasonable day. But I am not going backwards and forwards to the fridge all the time.

Once again for luck: I will try that with the towel rail on but the rad stats turned off.

It's nearly 50 years since I did physics at school, but I remember that a shunt wound motor draws a low current at start-up, and then maintains a constant speed. When the load changes, more current is drawn and speed is maintained. So if your motor is shunt-wound, this would explain it's ability to maintain its speed, irrespective of load, and you may also not need to worry too much about the initial current draw. However, I would worry about taking 950 watts out of a 1000 watt inverter. Not much room for error, or for somebody to plug in his mobile phone charger. Why not bite the bullet, buy a proper 2KW sine wave inverter, and enjoy being able to use all sorts of useful gadgets which would cost far more if bought in 12V form?

Just when I thought the relay problem was solved, the new fuse blew. I was hooked up to the mains at the time, with the chargers charging, and gave the bow thruster a few celebratory volts. Nice powerful whirring sound from up for'ard, and the bow swung round vigorously for a short distance before the bow breast rope held it in check. Went to look at the Smartguage, and woe is me. Main batteries reading 13.85, and BT batteries reading 12.60. Both, of course, should be the same when charging (in my case the primary battery is the domestic bank, which is always fully charged when on mains power). So, yes, the new fuse has blown. But why? The (12V) batteries are in series when powering the (24V) BT, so they must be disconnected from the charging system. How, then, can they blow the fuse in the charging circuit? It's a conundrum.

It's egg on face time. I thought perhaps I ought to check the fuses, and discovered one had blown. Not easy to find, these 100 amp jobs, but Ebay came up trumps, and despite a long time spent in transit from Devon (came by horse, I suspect) a new fuse turned up yesterday (plus a couple of spares). Fitted today, and everything is working. Thanks to all who proffered advice. It may not have helped this time, but it all adds to the knowledge base, and might well be useful next time. Cheers

I come from a very long-lived family. We're also slightly dyslexic.

Quite right. But the principle is correct. 67*.6 = 40 tons But that is on the basis of an average 2 ft draught. You need to calculate that correctly, and as we all seem to agree, it is probably rather less than 2ft. Quite simply, the underwater volume in cu m is equal to the tonnage.

60ft by 12 ft equals 720sq ft which equals 72 sq m. Knock off a bit for rounded ends, and call it 70 sq m. Now work out the average draught. Take a measurement near the bow, and another near the stern and average them. Knock off 10% for swim, etc.. Let's say the average draught is 2 ft, which roughly equals 60 cms or 0.6 m. Multiply 70 by 0.6 and you have 42 cu mtrs, which is the volume of water displaced. Thanks to Archimedes we know that a body displaces its own weight of water, and a cu mtr of water equals one (metric) ton. So your boat weighs roughly 42 tons, assuming the average draught is 2 ft. Probably the average draught is a bit less than two feet, so the weight will be a bit less.

You have obviously never heard of the silent majority. If you exclude the usual suspects, who love to get stuck in whether they have anything sensible to say or not, you'll find that your own support is not quite as massive as you like to think. Whilst I admit that elements of my original post ("parasites", for example) were deliberately a little provocative in order to generate discussion, the main thrust is very relevant. Since 1997 there has been an explosion in the size and cost of the public sector, and it isn't sustainable. Something has to go, and unfunded pensions are one part of it. In some ways, our economic situation is as bad as that of Greece, and it seems that UK unions are trying to emulate Greece in another way - by going on strike in support of totally unrealistic goals. All they will achieve will be to make a bad situation worse. Things are not helped by Labour trying to undermine efforts to sort out the problem they created. And before you mention the Daily Mail again, I was once a full member of the Labour Party, and have never voted Tory in my life. Though I suspect that might change in 2105. BTW, I am delighted to see that Avon has a surplus on its pension scheme, and am very happy to concede that not all public sector pensions are unfunded or non-contributory.

You'll find it all explained on the National Statistics website. Indices of inflation are based on a notional basket of goods and services that the average household would buy. Of course, nobody is average, so the index will not necessarily reflect your own personal experience very closely. Pensioners tend to do badly because a higher proportion of their total expenditure goes on energy and food, both of which have been rising faster than most others things in the past few years. For many people, I suspect that the current level of inflation is nearer to 9%. The low price of goods imported from China has kept inflation down - for those who buy things made in China. For those who don't, inflation will be significantly higher than the official figures.

No, pensions schemes are conservative investors, and tend to keep investments for the long term. They make little money from capital gains. That is why, when Brown starting taxing pension scheme income the effect was to reduce the value of schemes by nearly a third, putting most of them into deficit. As a result, companies were obliged to pay much more into their schemes to bring them into balance with their liabilities. This reduced profits, and hence corporation tax, so Brown's clever wheeze backfired and it was reckoned that there was little benefit to overall tax receipts. Quite right. It did exist previously. What Brown did was to transfer supervision of the banks from the Bank of England to the FSA, and that is where it all went wrong. Fine, Happy Young Chappie, You will note that I omitted to mention in my post that I don't believe the moon is made of cheese. That doesn't mean I do believe it. It would make for some very long posts if I were obliged to set out all my beliefs in full in order to prevent you from making erroneous and illogical assumptions.

Mr S, when I say government I mean central government. When I say local government I mean local government. You have confused the issue by talking about income tax on your personal pension income, in response to my statement that private pension schemes are taxed on the income the scheme receives. Your scheme is public sector and is not taxed on its income, unlike private sector schemes which are. That is the point I was making, and you are still trying to confuse the issue and claim I was wrong.

I said "And that mainly applies to private sector pensions, because most government pensions are paid out of current revenue. There is no fund.". Most is not all, and government means government, not local government. The Avon pension fund is an exempt approved fund under the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988, and therefore does not pay tax, unlike private sector schemes. It was the payment of tax you were unclear about, and you are now better informed. Just so you fully comprehend: Your pension scheme is not taxed (unlike private sector schemes), and you do pay income tax on your pension income. Savvy? Good night.

You might wish to read what Gibbo has to say about galavanic isolators. http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/galv_tran.html

The FSA themselves have admitted they got it wrong, and the FSA was the creation of Brown. Kindly eschew references to irrelevant history. Are you deliberately obtuse, or can't you help it? Where does the government's money come from if not from the private sector? Just because there is sometimes a subsidy (normally a drop in the ocean) to a few firms doesn't mean that the private sector doesn't provide the nation with the revenue that pays for government services. If you are correct, you are very lucky and very unusual. As for your kids, I notice you didn't say whether their schemes are still open to new employees. Most public company final-salary schemes are closed to new entrants. Another totally irrelevant point. Try to keep to the subject, old chap. We are discussing the present predicament, not the Boer War, or Wat Tyler's Revolt. Nina. As you know full well.

Do get your facts right, old chap. Pension payments have always been taxed. It's the income received by the pension funds that G Brown started taxing. And that mainly applies to private sector pensions, because most government pensions are paid out of current revenue. There is no fund. I apologise profoundly for that. Schweizer, Schweizer, Schweizer. I think I've got it now. :-) I was thinking of Albert, not a bad man to be confused with. Is that it? You think I don't know that people at different levels get different pensions? Get back under your stone, old chap.

I am afraid it is very much still in my head at the moment. It will only work in a river or tidal situation with a reasonable flow. And it is in two parts. I plan to drive a 24V alternator from a propeller which can be lowered over the side. It would need to produce about 60 amps, so the prop will have to be quite large. A water wheel might work better. The power produced would drive a ground-source heat pump with its coil in the river, rather than buried in the ground. The coil would be a fraction of the size of a ground coil because of the much greater heat transfer provided by flowing water. This should be more efficient than an air-source heat pump in very cold weather, because the river water would be warmer than the air temperature. I will first try to use it to heat the existing radiators. If that isn't satisfactory, I will next try under-floor heating. There's going to be a lot of "suck it and see"! But the main challenge is to get over a KW from the river with a portable and easily-dismantled device. The rest is off-the-shelf technology.

Had G Brown not taken responsibility for bank supervision away from the Bank of England, and given it to a quango that knew nothing about anything, it is arguable that the excesses you describe would not have occurred. Capitalism is the law of the jungle, and for that reason it has to be carefully controlled. Brown's problem was that he didn't realise that, and just let everything rip. Meanwhile, he took credit for the boom. Now, it's convenient for your argument to select three years out of the past 100 when major British banks needed tax-payer funds - which by the way, will be repaid in due course. The rest of the time the banks you mention have contributed massively to employment, to exports, to the economy, and to tax receipts. As for pensions, there are now almost no final-salary, index-linked pension schemes left as far as people working in the private sector are concerned. If your old company still has a final-salary scheme, then it is most unusual. It is more likely that the scheme has, at the very least, been closed to new entrants. Existing pensioners, like yourself, are OK, provided that the company you used to work for is still able to support it. And I rather doubt that your pension is fully indexed-linked. Take a look at the small print, and if it is like the vast majority you will find that rises are capped, often at 5%, or even 3%. Why have final salary schemes disappeared? Because G Brown started taxing them. Why did we have a property bubble? Because G Brown encouraged it. Notice a common theme? Which bit, Tony? By not being specific, you are liable to be accused of sweeping generalisations. How can the public sector subsidise the private sector when its income is derived from the private sector? You're rambling. Your advice would carry more weight if you led by example. Perhaps Mr Schweitzer could stop gloating about his pension, and his public sector colleagues could stop striking. At a time when so many people are seeing their incomes reduced, his complacent "I'm all right, Jack" attitude strikes a rather sour note. Hence my response.

Agreed.