Jess--

the heaters have 2 modes temperature mode : the heater adjusts it's output based on the thermostat in the control panel (increasing heat output when it is below the set temp) Hz mode : the heater runs at a preset speed based on the number of pulses of the fuel pump per second (ranges from 0.6Hz up to over 5Hz from memory), Higher pulse per second = higher fan speeds & higher heat output / fuel consumption.

I will disagree with you as the heaters we are talking about are diesel air heaters, there is no coolant and there is no optical sensing they work by heating the glowplug for a certain time, then spinning the fans up and pumping fuel in. If they don't detect heat with a short time of adding fuel (using the single heat sensor) they shut down with a failed ignition code (and usually retry 1 more time) as long as the heat sensor detects that there is heat (burner firing) but not too much heat the heater will carry on running at whatever fan speed and pump pulse rate it is set for if it detect too much heat or a sudden loss of heat it will shut down with either an overheat of flameout error. one thing for the OP to check... are the air inlets clear (burner and heater) if the burner intake (underneath) is restricted then it may not be getting enough air to burn at full speed and slowly chokes itself with unburnt fuel (expect white smoke from the exhaust) if the heater inlet is restricted then the heater could be overheating and shutting down

as others have pointed out the majority of narrowboats are flat bottomed, this means that your floor height inside the boat will be anywhere between 1 & 2 feet below the water line (depending on type of boat). For current boat safety regs any hull opening should be a minimum of 10 inches above the waterline, this means that your access between the 2 boats would involve climbing over a barrier somewhere between 2 & 3 feet tall. Even if you go ahead you may find that your boats start to buckle around the area of the access because you have cut away part of the hulls, the gunwales (the step at the bottom of the cabin side) isn't just there to walk along, it provides a substantial part of the structural strength to a narrowboat hull. In all seriousness my advise to you is just buy a widebeam, in the long term it will save you money as you won't have to license, insure, and maintain 2 boats and at some point in the future when you decide to sell the boat (whether to get something different or leaving the water) you will have one "normal" boat to sell rather than 2 unusually modified boats that have to stay together and will get raised eyebrows for any buyers survey. In the pic attached the internal floor would probably be at the height of the top of the grey section anything in the red section would be underwater the lowest point you could cut the hull would be around the height where you can see the 2 round outlets.

It probably would be cheaper for him, but knowing him I suspect he has other maintenance work planned that needs the site to be empty that he will get done at the same time. I know that there is currently 20kw of solar being put on the site (fitters have been there all of this week), so the disconnection may be being timed to coincide with that being connected.

A friend that runs a small holiday lodge site just had his 2 year fixed deal run out and as a result has jumped from the low 20's per unit up to 96p per unit. his current DAILY bill is between 300 & 400 pounds. he has found a new supplier that he can move to at a lower rate but his current supplier won't allow the changeover while they see an amount of over £10 owing on his account, with his smart meter reporting usage every few minutes this will never happen. His plan is to cancel midweek bookings for next week and shut the power off for 48 hours so that he can get to the point where he can pay the bill and get it to a zero balance to move away, he reckons the cost of doing this is going to be around £2000 but 6-800 of that will be offset by not having the power on and the remainder will be saved in lower electric costs by the end of Jan.

It's a fairly common contractors trick to use an 18v drill battery to jump start a vehicle with a low battery (i.e dead cell in battery) I wasn't convinced when I first saw it done on a transit, 30 seconds took it from being unable to turn the engine over to starting with no issues

I think the overstayers at Reading get wind of when enforcement is happening and pop round the corner onto the K&A so that they aren't on EA waters.

Biggest problem I have seen with the diesel heaters (webasto, eberspacher, and chinese ones) that cause them to not start up is not enough power (heater plug doesn't get hot enough & fan isn't fast enough to keep combustion going). Usually accompanied by white smoke from the exhaust (unburnt fuel + smoke) usually caused by long runs on the power cables & voltage drop along them or poor negative (it should go back to the battery not to your hull). As a quick test run an extra pair of power cables (in addition to what's there) and see if it will fire up, if it does then you know that you need thicker power cables for a permanent fix. If it does fire up after a failed start or two expect smoke from the exhaust as it burns off the fuel from the failures, it should clear within a couple of minutes.

About the needing to display a license... A few years ago CRT said that boaters didn't need to display the license as long as name / index No were visible since that is what they now use (rather than having to get close enough to read the license). then a couple of months later that statement was corrected to say that CRT didn't need the license on display but it was still written into law that it had to be displayed, very much like the last few years of tax discs on cars the police etc were checking based on registration plate and didn't need to see the paper in the windscreen but the law said it had to be present. I wonder if they removed the offence of displaying an out of date tax disc when they removed the requirement to display one.

I was fairly sure that the seal on ours was square section but didn't comment because I changed ours over 4 years ago, don't have the boat to check any more, and can't be 100% sure of my memory. When ours failed it only leaked in neutral, we found it just after being put back in the water from blacking, we started the engine and talked for about 10 mins, then pushed off from the wharf and put it in gear to find nothing happened (I felt like a total idiot floating in the middle of the canal with no drive). I refilled the gearbox with oil and found that when in gear (only tested forwards) it didn't leak, so headed back to our mooring shutting off the engine rather than dropping into neutral.

Much as I hate paying for original manufacturer parts I went with the original part on the selector shaft seal when ours failed. the main reason for this was that the original had lasted at least 28 years before failing so I replaced with the oem part expecting it to last a decent amount of time. couple of bits of advice... 1. don't lose the ball bearing 2. if you are struggling to get the old seal out start the engine for a couple of seconds with the box in gear and nothing fixed to the selector shaft, use a cloth over the shaft as oil will pop the seal out

You may own the bank and the river bed (to the middle) but you do not own the water, EA go after fees for anything permanently in or over the water. if you look on the (non tidal) thames these days you will find that a lot of the small private jetties & pontoons are sporting what looks like an old car tax disc bearing a registration number.

our cooker had a glass cover that lifted up behind the rings, the window above had a roller blind fitted. never even got a second glance at bss time.

Generally refurbing a laptop is simply reinstall / reset windows and give it a clean

rather than tying the tiller straight try tying it hard over (to the point that the rudder is against the hull) that should take any slop out of the rudder / tiller bearings and bottom cup.

The usual raptor of choice for pigeon discouragement seems to be a Harris Hawk, we used to operate a fairground ride indoors at a shopping centre in the winter / spring school holidays and the harris hawk they used a couple of times a week (before opening hours) used to like using the top of our ride as a perch.

Green laser beams (at the max legal power for a laser pointer) is quite effective at moving pigeons on (even more effective on crows and other birds of the same family). Obviously be very careful where you aim the beam so you don't end up zapping anyone etc

I think the first part of the arm (canal to motorway) was done by Coventry cruising club and the 2nd part (other side of the motoway) was done by Coventry canal society. Our boat picked up some interesting battle scars on the cabin sides when we moored in the cruising club and the canal society brought out Panther

The biggest variable with these diesel heaters whether chinese, german, or russian is the dosing pump a tiny inaccuracy in the amount of fuel per pulse (even when it's still within spec) can result in over fueling (black smoke and sooting up) or under fueling (flame-out and white smoke / fuel vapour) I ran a chinese heater hard for 9 months, doing everything people say not to do, lots of stops - starts lot's of running on low etc (in short everything the heater could do to hold a shed at a specific temperature) and it ran flawlessly until the dosing pump failed (estimated 5000 - 6000 hours use) a replacement pump was fitted (identical) and the heater sooted up and died within 2 hours. after a clean out we found that with the new pump we had to dial back the fuel setting by almost 8% to get back to clean (almost too lean) burning, once done the replacement pump ran for over a year without having to touch anything.

at least on a 600v circuit you won't need to see if the bulb lights up

with bank transfers it is worth bearing in mind that your buyer may have limits on the amount they can transfer per day. when we sold ours they had to make payments over 3 days 10k - 10k - 7k for each of the first payments we provided a receipt that stated we had received a partial payment, how much had been paid (with bank transfer details), how much remained outstanding, and that we retained ownership until the full payment had been received. The receipt for the final payment stated that we had received full payment for the boat and that from "time / date" we no longer had any legal interest in the boat and that "new owners" were the sole owners of the boat and responsible for all requirements & liabilities.

Whether you have to pay for mooring overnight on the thames depends a lot on where you want to moor if you like to moor in the middle of nowhere you will very rarely have to pay. if you like to moor close to civilisation then it's probably 50:50 for us we only paid to moor once (the brocas in windsor) on a three week meander down the thames. I will say that if you are a CC boater that moves a bit, stays for 14 days and then moves a little bit you will find the thames a bit of a culture shock with most official moorings being only a few days and the general rule for wild mooring being overnight or a couple of nights maximum. On the plus side if it's your first time taking your boat on deeper water you will find that your boat handles a lot nicer (and no slowing down for moored boats)