nicknorman

Well I'd say it is still used quite a lot in home automation for very low bandwidth data due to very low power and better range than Bluetooth, with easier meshing. I think you'd be struggling to get a year out of an AA battery supplying a BLE device.

No, but will use some DPC membrane to keep the damp from moving into the wood since they don’t make wood like they used to. The entire house is made from granite walls with internal timber framing pegged into the granite, and lath and plaster. It’s lasted since 1880 so wood will be fine! No, the Victorian Scottish house with granite walls and no DPC only “works” because there is a ventilated air gap between the granite and the inner room lining.

It will be Kingspan or equivalent between the studding, leaving an air gap between the insulation and the granite walls as that has to be ventilated. Not quite sure how thick it will be yet, I don’t want to reduce the room size much. Maybe only 50mm but even that will be massively better than lath and plaster between room and externally ventilated wall space.

Certainly if the logistics were easier I’d be keen to take the stove home and refurbish if properly. But circumstances are conspiring against me, I have a full calendar apart from 5 days on the boat with the in-laws culminating in the BSS. Maybe if I just have the new stove top on the boat and say I will sort if before winter the BSS chap will be OK, it is after all just an advisory for a private boat and the stove works fine as it is. On return from boat I then have 1 week at the gliding club followed straight afterwards by tackling the house kitchen - completely gutting the room back to the granite walls and re-lining with insulation, followed by new kitchen units. That will take many weeks and possibly run past the BSS expiry end of Nov, so I really need the boat to pass first time!

No they are a bit funny about that, and anyway what would I do with the old one? It’s 12 years old of “leisure” use so should still have plenty of life left,

I did look at a new or refurbished one but it’s not just the cost, it’s the logistics of living 400 miles away from the boat. I can easily put a top plate in the car next time we go down, an entire stove out and in is a lot harder to organise.

The top on our Squirrel cracked open last year. It is right at the edge near the front. No gas leaks out etc but really I need to fix it ESPECIALLY as BSS is due soon. Although it is only an advisory for private boats, it doesn’t look good… So my question is, apart from the new top and new screws and washers, do I need anything else? Is there rope sealing between the top and the sides? No doubt it will be a pain to get the screws out and I am concerned that it cracked in the first place due to the sides swelling slightly from corrosion and thus the new top might not easily fit. Any advice on this job welcome…

For logic level switching you really want gold plated contacts because otherwise as you say, a tiny oxide layer can prevent the voltage getting through. I originally had some quite expensive boat lighting momentary action switches - but they turned out to be fairly crap for the above reason (just switching logic level virtually zero current) and I replaced them with keyboard "tactile buttons" on my own design pcb (because there is a group of 6) with 3d printed facia. Now works flawlessly.

Most switches that are rated for ac, also have a current rating for dc which is usually quite a bit less. But with a house light switch probably rated at at least 6A ac, when running a led or 2 at 12v dc, it will be operating at much lower current and thus last adequately. Of course the whole concept of moving bits of brass around to turn things on and off is pretty archaic, all our boat lighting (and everything else) is switched using MOSFETS.

Isn't AI wonderful! But anyway, and taking up your habit of emboldening things, as I said despite the wings falling off the plane there is still no requirement to wear a parachute when flying. You don't seem to understand this crucial point that once you reduce the probability of a disaster happening sufficiently (even though not to zero), you no longer need to cater for it. If you try to do so, you tie yourself up into knots (of parachute cord!) Currently, starting from such a low base, there is massive opportunity to address the installation process rather than worrying about what might happen when it is done badly - and lets face it, a Li cell gassing is not really in the same league as the wings of a plane falling off. Yes I get that there is currently not qualification or courses, that is the problem that should be addressed. As you say, linking in with domestic battery installations would be a good start, with a little add-on course to add "boats", exactly the same as gas safe people need add-ons to work on lpg and boats. The costs you quote are small beer for a professional. This is what you should be pushing. It is outrageous that anyone can set themselves up as a "marine electrician" and install Li batteries for money, without necessarily having the slightest idea what they are doing. You can't do it in houses, so why is it OK on residential boats? I see that as being particularly offensive. DIY people doing their own thing, either well or badly, is less of an issue because generally it will be them suffering the consequences of incompetence. It is exactly the same with lpg on boats - I can install a complete lpg system on my boat if I like. It will of course be checked at the next BSS but that might be 3 years away. By law I can do gas work on our house if I like, provided I am competent to do so. That will never be checked. Or if the house blows up I will rightly be imprisoned because clearly I was not competent. But if you are paying a professional to do a job that has potential safety issues, there should be an expectation that they are competent. At the moment there can be no such expectation. I don't have a dog in that fight because I have already installed my system and any legislation regarding who can install is highly unlikely to be retrospective. In summary, just like the GSIUR, you should need to be qualified and a member of a trade body (with insurance) to install Li systems for money. If you are DIY, you should be competent. By law.

How fortunate we are that we don’t have people like that on here.

Not odd really, that is the essence of Facebook groups and why I think they are the devil incarnate. You set up a group and surround yourself with like minded “groupthink” people, no dissent allowed. And then you think that is the only valid truth because everyone agrees with you.

You still don’t get it. Let me explain further… In the case of the wings falling off, well the aircraft had been designed and maintained by highly qualified professionals. So did the investigators say, as you are saying, “well the aircraft was designed and built by highly qualified professionals and so there is nothing more we can do to prevent a recurrence, let’s buy shares in parachute manufacturing companies!” No, they will have look closely at the processes involved to try to identify what went wrong, and address it. Maybe someone lost their licence, I don’t know. But those shares in the parachute companies never went volcanic. In the case of the ABC, we are starting from an extremely low base. The system designers and installers almost certainly had no relevant qualification and certainly no licence to practice. They were self-professed “professional experts” who set up a business to earn money without having to have any knowledge, experience or competence. So a good starting point to prevent a recurrence would be a qualification that ensures people understand how to professionally install Li boating systems safely, such that the probability of a venting event is similar to the probability of the wings falling off a plane. A good starting point is NOT to say “well they were professionals, it happened, and so the only recourse is to take steps to reduce the impact when it happens again.”

So when the wings fell off the Canadair plane near Marseille a decade or so ago, was the reaction from professional and highly qualified accident investigators “OMG the wings fell off a plane, we must in future make provision for this happening again by making all passengers wear parachutes”? Amazingly, no it wasn’t. Instead the effort went into trying to work out why the wings fell off and to prevent recurrence. And so we come to the ABC boat which was such an insignificant event that there was no sort of formal investigation at all. And the reaction is “we must make all boaters with Li batteries wear parachutes” Oops I meant “we must make all boaters with Li have battery boxes vented to outside with enormous fanned vents.” And never mind focussing the effort on prevention. It just sets a wrong and TBH rather childish and uninformed tone.

Li cell rupture and venting is potentially very dangerous and needs to be mitigated against. But it’s being tackled in the wrong way. It is not feasible to create adequate ventilation provision on a narrowboat that stops the gasses getting into the habitable area and/or stops them encroaching adjacent boats or people and/or does not introduce other risks eg sinking due to large vents and/or is not prohibitively expensive. In aviation, the wings falling off an aircraft is potentially very dangerous and needs to be mitigated against. So do all the passengers have parachutes so they can be saved when the wings fall off? No, because that is not feasible. Instead, the effort is directed to ensuring that the wings don’t fall off in the first place. There is still a tiny chance that the wings will fall off, the certification standard does not assure that it can never ever happen, but it is considered remote enough to be an acceptable risk, and evidentially 99.99% of aviation accidents are caused by things other than the wings falling off. Although it has happened. So it should be with Li batteries. The emphasis should be on preventing the rupture, not on what to do after it has happened. So for example it could be a requirement to have an independent battery disconnect device attached to the battery terminals, which would check for pack over-voltage, high cell temperature etc and disconnect autonomously. This extra layer of security on top of a properly designed charge control system and BMS with ability to disconnect, would ensure an adequate level of safety, ie making venting not impossible, but an extremely remote possibility which is as acceptable as the possibility of the wings falling off an airliner.

Oh dear, perhaps that’s where I’ve been going wrong?

It’s just the KandA really. We’ve only cruised it once, not rushing to go back. We were passing some moored skank boats behind a wide beam hire boat that was really crawling along, as we passed a particularly unsuitable boat (sailing yacht) barely moving mostly in neutral, the owner came out shouting angrily that he was going to “shit on our boat!” for making his boat rock a bit. I’m so annoyed that I was too slow to shout back “well bring your own toilet roll, we’ve run out!.” The general rule is that the further north you get, the nicer the people. There are too many rats in London and the SE. And that is just the people! MK is not too bad.

Ok can we move on to “mooring up”? NO! you don’t moor UP! You can either moor, or you can tie up. That’s it.

You are of course perfectly entitled to call it what you please, and be as wrong as you please! I only mentioned it to bring out that “steering” and “driving” have different meanings, stemming from history. The operator of a coach and horses is said to be “driving”, because they are in charge of the means of propulsion as well as the steering, whereas someone steering a horse drawn boat or butty is the steerer because they are not in charge of the means of propulsion. It is quite amusing and ironic that people wishing to be all historically correct choose to use the word “steering” which they hope will give them gravitas, when in fact all it does is expose the fact that they don’t understand the origins of these words. It’s a bit like people who garnish their boats in fake rivets. Oooops…

Sorry but I think “steering” is a little pretentious. Of course back in the day of horses, all the person on the boat had to do was steer - hence steerer was the appropriate term. But that was 100 years ago and now we have engines, there is more to operating a boat than just steering it. You have to drive it, ie forwards, backwards, different engine speeds, in just the same way as you do in a car. Hence the correct term these days, for anyone not trying to cling on to those rosey horse drawn days of yore, is “Driving”. Unless it’s butty of course.

You are erroneously conflating insurance issues with build standards. A hire car is built and maintained (including the MOT) to exactly the same standards as a private car, it is only the insurance that is different. The same applies to narrowboats.

And those ones in London - Bow Locks.

Very true, although it is of course “fewer posts” not “less posts”. Grammatical imprecision probably has a direct correlation with hitting lock sides on entry.

Phew! Just as well I don't have a wife, son or daughter! But the point is that someone moving your boat professionally should have their own insurance. In the case of the OP, he doesn't want payment so I guess that doesn't count as "professional". But equally you have no idea whether they are competent or not. Most probably they are. But you don't know. If some random towpath person said "I'd quite like to borrow your boat free of charge for a while, as I know you are off on holiday for a couple of weeks" what would your reaction be?