Jess--

That is the reason my workhorse landcruiser was converted to LPG and de-catted before it was put to work. working (at the time) in hot air ballooning meant it spent a good amount of time pulling heavy loads in & out of stubble fields. Common vehicles (all lpg/decatted or old enough to have no cat) range rover, discovery, nissan patrol, jeep cherokee and landcruiser amazons. I know of one crew that switched vehicles mid-season (from a battered cherokee to a better looking one) and forgot to remove the cat, 3rd flight it went up in flames (total loss and heavy damage to the trailer although the balloon survived) Edited to add... The reason for lpg conversion before removing the cats is that is the easiest way of removing the requirement for having a cat on the exhaust for MOT purposes, of course the fuel cost savings running a 4.7 litre V8 make lpg conversion attractive too

turning off all the radiators may actually prevent you getting hot water... on my previous boat the alde fed 2 systems 1. radiators in the main cabin area (isolatable by a big valve in the back of a kitchen cupboard) 2. radiator in the bathroom (probably originally a towel rail) and the calorifier for either to work the pump had to be running (so for hot water in summer we could isolate the radiator loop and run the boiler on max for hot water)

It's just a shame that most of the turbines in the shallow puddle (assuming you mean the turbines off the coast of skegness) aren't connected to the grid yet, the cable to connect them is being laid a couple of miles down the road from me.

you would need either a specialised controller or 2 controllers for wind & solar (there's no electrical reason that you couldn't run 50 controllers). wind turbines require smooth airflow to work well so any trees or hedgerows etc will vastly reduce your output meaning you need a far stronger wind to get anywhere near the rated figures. generally they only work well high up (well above anything to disrupt the airflow) or in coastal locations where they can catch the fairly constant sea breezes, on inland waterways they don't seem popular because of low / intermittent output and constant noise.

from memory of reading up on newer designs a few years back newer reactors burn far more of the fuel leaving a lot less (as in 90%+ less) to deal with and also due to their design could be fueled using spent fuel rods from older reactors. The problem we have with the currently active generation of nuclear reactors is that they run relatively cool so that they produce power and material suitable for weapons. Of course nobody wants a nuclear power station anywhere near them and some areas that are stable enough for them are unsuitable for other reasons (cornwall is a good example where the background radiation from the granite is above the safety limit for a nuclear power station)

Virgin used to throttle their PAYG sims data speed by half. we tried a virgin payg sim and a virgin contract sim in the same phone / location etc and the results were always that the pay monthly sim got double the speed of the payg sim we always assumed it was down to billing update intervals from EE to virgin and virgin trying to prevent PAYG customers getting more than they paid for (which obviously doesn't matter on a pay monthly customer since it will just go on the bill)

It used to cause problems in the hot air ballooning industry since they run on propane (usually from calor) who insist on charging the duty and leaving the company to reclaim the duty from the Govt, confusing things even more was the fact that a lot of the road vehicles used by the balloon Co's were lpg fuelled (mainly because it's cheaper to run big 4x4's on lpg than any other fuel) which lead to monthly forms detailing how many litres were purchased (to claim the duty back), and how many litres were put into road vehicles (to pay a higher rate of duty)

If your area is covered by Three they have similar deals (unlimited everything for £20 or 100gb & unlimited texts/calls for £18)

I swear by Bosch for cordless tools although I always go for the blue (commercial use) rather than green (domestic use). This goes back to when I was working at a fibreglass boat manufacturers (now long gone) and had lots of different makes of similar ages available. Black and Decker lacked torque (would constantly jam up) and the battery lasted a couple of hours. Makita had plenty of torque but (at the time) no variable speed and the batteries were dead within an hour DeWalt & Makita seemed to have the torque, unfortunately more than their gearbox could withstand (every single one had stripped gears), I never found out how long the battery lasted as I never found a drill that still worked. Bosch had the torque, keyless chucks (new at the time), variable speed and the batteries lasted almost a whole day within a year every drill had been replaced with the bosch drills (which saved a lot of arguments over who got the decent drills today) Since then I have always used them (more like abused them) and have only managed to seriously damage one, a small metal rod went in the vent for the motor and smashed the cooling fan (still works but I know it has cooked the motor as drills don't normally smoke), it's replacement is still working quite happily on the 12 year old batteries for the damaged one.

I notice that there is often mention of coal boats being breasted up while travelling, I can see this being done on wide canals simply to reduce the manpower needed to steer them (a breasted up butty doesn't need a 2nd person steering it), but you have to remember that for narrower sections they can be singled out. With regard to the subject of living on boats, originally the vast majority of people living on canal boats were the people (including their family) that earned a living carrying cargo on the boats they lived on (not people using them as cheap accommodation and working in a close by town). The original canal design was for 2 boats to pass easily (without slowing down / going though trees / grounding) at any point and moored boats on the towpath to be unusual other than overnight, the situation now is that you are more likely to find boats moored breasted up and boats having to take it in turns to squeeze between the moored boats and the vegetation on the opposite side while being shouted at for moving too fast.

I did wonder if that was the case afterwards, but I have also seen... installs where people have used the black tube as exhaust (lasts about 20 minutes) installs where people have clipped the fuel line to the exhaust (once the fire starts the fuel pump keeps adding extra diesel as long as the heater is hot)

The chinese heaters (and russian planar heaters) are copies of the airtronic heaters (close enough that physical parts are interchangeable), the 2kw versions are a copy of the airtronic D2 and the 5kw (or 8kw) are copies of the airtronic D4. I have one here that has been running 24/7 on heating oil since november, it uses around 5 litres per day (or around £2.80 a day) for BSC the only issues are fuel line and silencer / exhaust as they are unsuitable for boats. for insurance I would discuss with your insurers . I would love to know what the person installing the silencer in wotever's picture was thinking though, they have a bit of the intake tube (foil & paper) and the intake debris screen (plastic) on the outlet of the exhaust.

Warped sense of humour here.... but it amuses me that the boat at a glance appears to be named warmglow (I know it's really warsglow) reminds me of another burnt out shell which was on the bank at Starline with the name of phoenix.

they (the family) looked into it but were advised that there would be little chance of success as the car was on the public highway with the engine running and he was the sole occupant for quite a period of time which meant there was no avoiding that he was in charge of the motor vehicle (the running engine was the killer)

the old trick used to be that you put the ignition (not door) key under one of the wheels. I know of one lad that ended up with 9 points on his provisional license (no insurance / no qualified person in the vehicle + something else related) for sitting in his parents car while they were shopping, they had left the keys in the ignition and the engine running (for the heater), Put his driving back by years as his insurance jumped to 5 figures (which was 2 figures more than his car cost), it's the only time I have seen an insurance quote of over £10,000 (3rd party fire & theft) for a mini metro that was worth around £300

Have a look at what the signal levels are like with Three in your area, they offer a contract that is unlimited* everything (minutes / texts / data) for around the £20 mark, their phone sims are also no longer prevented from working in dongles / mifi units. * we all know that unlimited deals on anything really have limits, previously Three used to start looking at your usage when you went over 1000 Gb in a month. With regard to landlines we have previously had a landline installed to a wooden shed on the beach, BT will install almost anywhere but you will pay through the nose for everything (initial survey / installation / line rental), ask about non served premises, in our case it worked out at around £70 per month for line & broadband but we were probably an outlier.

for a pair of 150w panels you are getting pretty much what I would expect at this time of year. the 140w panel we had would produce 0.1A - 0.2A at 14V over winter, in summer we would expect our 140w panel to be producing around 9A (although it rarely got to this because the batteries were almost always close to fully charged) with your 300w of solar I would expect somewhere around 20A in the summer (assuming your batteries are in a state where they will accept that rate of charge)