fab

Alec in Brierley Hill is going to be selling his prized big Woolwich; he was going to take it down to the Stourbridge festival in undrcoat to guage interest, but the breach there has scuppered that idea so instead he's in the middle of painting. It's not yet advertised anywhere. The Gardner has just been rebuilt. From Jim Shead : BARNHAM Built by HARLAND & WOLFF - Length 21.34 metres (70 feet ) - Beam 2.14 metres (7 feet ) Metal hull . Registered with British Waterways number 77861 as a Powered. Last registration recorded on 11-Jul-07. To see the boat not quite in its heyday have a look at the Fairground attraction video here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_OWzDP5cnE0 For more information telephone Alec on 07956491368.

A BW engineer inspected the canal section below the Delph Locks last year when we were in dispute over end of garden mooring charges. He was not at all impressed and said he would report his concerns (not least because there's a large sainsbury's downhill from there). We were promised a copy of that report. Needless to say all we received were invoices.

Dunno about now but moorings at Engineers wharf in Uxbridge were available for £5000 pa or so way after the start of the tender trials.

That boat needs those fenders! Ashamed to say I ran into it last week; got caught one a sandbank (apparantly, its a good excuse anyway), then got caught in the current and pushed straight onto it. Crash. Boat behind was the same. One lock up the next day met a BW dredger coming down to clear the sandbank for monday; the owner will be pleased, he had a good old moan about BW and the sandbank (they'd even been charging him eofG mooring fees although he was the riparian owner of the river bed! Was bought a meal in the pub; expensive and not too good.

It is a sweet little machine, and now working well; at 18 quid a sugary coating seems ok....as long as you dont chew. Incidentally, this machine seems to take hot water with lower temperature washes too. Thanks for all the advice, and the sweet talk.

It does help,yes. Thankyou.

I ve just bought an old Candy washing machine, an Aquamatic 8, its a small one with about a 3 or 3.5 kg wash. It has both cold and hot water inlets. Unfortunately it didnt come (from ebay) with instructions. How does it decide whether to take hot or cold water, or are there set programs which use one or the other. THe program chart doesnt say. Perhaps the machine doesnt even heat its own water? I'd be grateful if anybody out there who has one of these machines could tell me, because now the boat's finished Ive decided not simply to throw away my dirty clothes...

Barely. Her draft report didnt uphold a single aspect of our complaint. Her approach seems simply to accept what BW say almost without challenge......and BW seem willing to say almost anything, safe in the knowledge that the figures are not published openly, the rules are contradictory, and they have 4 levels of "complaint" in which to dissemble and generally muddy the waters. The ombudsmans route is also risky. I spoke to Stuart Sampson during the complaint, not much of substance was said, but I do remember him giving the advice "do no harm". In the draft report the ombudsman compared our site to other residential ones. We replied, pointing out that we were not residential, and that we were unaware that either BW or the council thought we were, and if they did than they were mistaken. The group were a little worried when she then responded (my emphasis): "As you may be aware there is no one universally agreed definition of a residential boat/site. Different interpretations can be given by different organisations eg mooring managers and the council, or sometimes even by different departments of the same council,(eg planning, council tax, benefit). So whether your Council regard the moorings as residenttial is not significant. In my experience, generally private marinas and moorings are more stringent about whether or not people live on their boats than British Waterways and , if they allow it, will charge more. I believe that you are permitted to live on your boats and that most if not all of you largely do (if I am wrong please let me know), and so I think that the right comparator for private moorings is (sic) residential ones>! We were astounded and had to provide written documentation from our landlord, as well as pointing out that NO section of the council, nor BW policy, recognised our site as residential, which it most decidedly is not (its an industrial estate). One thing this episode did underscore, to my mind, is the wrongness of BW forcing themselves, as 50/50 partners, on providers or owners of end of garden moorings, where no commercial agreement is in place and BW are, effectively not providing anything additional to the licence fee. Indeed, our landlords own the canal wall itself, so you cant even argue for "access" as in a new marina. The ombudsman seems to have accepted that establishing a policy that compares all private moorings to residential ones is wrong, and anyway not within her remit. Yet this apparant about turn seemed, in itself, to have no further implications for our mooring price...ie having accepted it was a non residential site did not lead to a further reduction of the fee. What I guess Im trying to say is that the ombudsman is only human, and can get things wrong. In the end, within the criteria of the complaint, the ombudsman route was worth it. But it was a very hard and discouraging slog.

In 2006 the Delph Marine Mooring Group (at Delph Marine/Canalside Industrial Park on the Stourbridge canal close to Nine Locks) complained to the Ombudsman about the way our end of garden/factory moorings had been priced. In fact the complaint was precipitated by BW’s refusal to answer a letter the group sent by recorded mail. A BW employee subsequently told the group by phone that no one in BW was going to answer the letter and the issue was not up for discussion. The letter itself was necessitated by BW staff threatening, after an alleged “review”, to close our site on health and safety grounds if we challenged the fees that had been set. Of the 3 BW staff at the meeting where that corker was offered the patrol officer subsequently “failed to recollect” that conversation and the two others could say nothing further as they were no longer in the employ of BW at the time of the complaint. The promise made at the same time to supply a copy of the findings of the review/survey was also not honoured. The only thing moorers here received was an invoice, with no covering letter of any type. On initially complaining to the ombudsman we were put through BW’s second level complaint procedure. BW denied everything. The recorded letters had arrived at a busy time, the patrol officer failed to recollect, everything had been explained, the price already included a huge discount. no one can be sure of what was said etc. They did, however, offer to reduce our invoices by 20% by way of apology for the “way matters were handled”. Since they refused to reduce the fees, however, we pursued that aspect of the case with the ombudsman, and she agreed to investigate “that BW had failed properly to follow their own procedures for setting prices for their “end of garden” moorings and had neither set the price fairly nor explained adequately why they believed it was reasonable to set the price at that level” To her evident relief, she has recently issued her report. It concludes its 18 pages with the recommendations (obligatory): “I recommend that British Waterways: 1)set the mooring charge for 2006/7 at 36.25% (ie a 27.5% reduction on the 50% rate) of the price of the comparable BW moorings ie £19.47 per metre; 2)make a similar reduction for the price back to January 2005, using similar comparable moorings. (By my calculation that would make the 2005-6 fee £18.85 per metre, based on £52: I do not have figures for 2004-5.) 3)the invoices for the period up to January 2007 should be reduced by a further 20% in line with the commitment given then, as compensation for the way some matters were handled previously; 4)that BW consider, and report back in the next 6 months, whether and how the approach to setting prices for end of garden moorings could be made clearer in future.” Throughout the complaint, and contrary to their own procedures laid out in http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/images/A...ngs_Pricing.pdf British Waterways failed to supply satisfactory explanation. Most of the above discount relates to the industrial nature of the area which BW blatantly said it had given when it hadnt (and even while it raised the price still further during the complaint), but also BW insisted it had the right, in charging for water space, to assess facilities supplied privately by our landlord, or by arrangement amongst ourselves ( two of our group have taken small units on the industrial estate), as chargeable at 50% of their market value. If this policy was region, or nationwide, we were probably not alone in having been forced to pay over the odds to BW, for facilities that they didn’t supply. This complaint has gone on for way over a year. BW has been willing to employ untruths and sophistry, that from the groups point of view, are blatant lies, and to do so at all levels of the complaint procedure, and with a worrying level of impunity. Our End of garden rate for 2006/7 has now been set, finally, and after an up hill slog on our part, by the ombudsman, at £19.47, a reduction of £7.39 or so a metre and excluding the "apology" discount, and more than that for 2007/8.

Just to let any Isuzu owners know what has happened to my neighbours engine, a still shiny 3 year old marinised Isuzu55. It's mostly been used stationary for charging, and was being used in this fashion when he noticed a chang of tone; it was always quite a gentle chugger, but he described it as changing into a crazed sewing machine. The reason became apparant quickly. The air filter had come off. It had been attached on the top of the engine to the aluminium rocker cover with two nuts and bolts. Not welded. Not even any locktite, two nuts, two bolts, two washers. Underneath the bolts, inside the rocker cover, guess what......an inlet manifold. The two nuts and washers on the underside of the rocker cover had vibrated loose and dropped down straight into a cylinder, breaking a piston so far and as yet he doesnt know what else. The marinisers are taking responsibility so far, although they say its never happened before, but if you have an Isuzu with an air filter on the top (and its not just this model), it may be worth giving it a look over pronto.

BW seem to be forever quoting, from the 1999 BW framework document, an overriding instruction from government, as follows: "2.6 British waterways should maximise, as far as practicable, revenue from its activiites by charging a market rate for its services. Whenever paracticable it should directly charge its customers for benefits received consistent with prevailing market rates and only resort to grant-in-aid to fund activities where, in agreement with the Seceratary of State, there are wider social benefits or it is impractical or not cost effective to charge directly for servicces provided." The word maximise seems to be BWs priority, and might suggest that the number of evaders are not the overiding cause of the recent hikes.

A wet and dry vac (aquavac or similar) is a very good tool for getting water out of the boat. After that as much air flow as possible.

Mine was doing the same... again no leaks. Only found a leak after the calorifier had cooled down, from a faulty pressure relief valve. Worth checking.

Exactly