Jess--

I wouldn't bother with one of the all-in-one units as you still have the biggest problem with any of these heaters which is routing the exhaust and combustion air intake outside. the chinese heaters are copies of the eberspacher D2 & D4 air heaters (airtronic). they seem to come in 2 sizes... 2kw around 30cm long with the exhaust / intake centered on the body 5kw over 30cm long, exhaust / intake offset towards one end 2kw heaters are harder to find, most for sale now are detuned 5kw heaters, most of the 8kw models listed are 5kw heaters running higher fan speeds and bigger fuel pumps. I have a 5kw model sat here that was going to be installed on our boat (but we ended up selling the boat), we have test ran it for around 12 hours with no problems at all. for fitting to a boat the fuel line and exhaust silencer have to be replaced as they are not suitable. our plans were to fit the heater under the gunwale in the cratch with the exhaust going to a thru-hull fitting

Sam, I'm going to have to disagree with you, On our boat you could pull heat to the radiators from the calorifier (twin coil) by turning on the boilers pump (but not lighting it). It wasn't as hot as when the boiler was running but certainly usable heat. There 2 things to remember though. 1. the calorifier has to be up to full heat before the pump goes on (otherwise everything just went cold) / about 2 hours of cruising before switching on 2. switch the pump off before mooring if you still want hot water in the morning. Our calorifier was vertical with the engine to the lower coil and the alde to the top coil so that may have helped (by having the alde coil in the hottest part of the calorifier).

A lot of the cheap gsm alarms on ebay and similar places are 12v, have wireless magnetic switches and motion detectors and can be armed / disarmed by keyfobs, punching in the code on the panel or text message. you don't have to use the gsm side of the alarm at all. we set one up on our boat with door switches front & rear, motion sensor in the main cabin (which can be switched off from the sensor) and a motion sensor in the engine bay, we also added a wire loop that could be passed through the frame of bikes that were on the back of the boat.

we used to keep chickens which were (very) free range, in that at dawn the door to their coop opened and they were free to roam until dusk when the door closed, no fencing on our property or anywhere around us (this gave them woodland and open farmland to wander in) even though we know there are foxes in the woodland about 300 yards away we lost more chickens to tractors than foxes (the chickens were smart enough to wait until the tractor had passed before crossing the track... only to be flattened by the trailer)

We used armada to have the boat blacked and a couple of other small jobs last time and had absolutely no issues. I can see how people could have issues with the owner as he does not suffer fools, seems most people either get on with him like a house on fire or can't stand him with not much in between. Like some others we never had anyone else change a gas bottle on our boat, about the only help we have had was someone to pass the empty bottle to as we took it out.

you might be surprised, last time we went down the thames we took a polystyrene box (40mm thick) full of frozen food with us, this was stored under the cratch and kept closed apart from the few seconds when something was removed, it kept everything frozen for 6 days in july temperatures

2 problems seem to crop up with the chinese heaters 1. sooting up and eventually failing to fire. caused by not enough air (restricted combustion intake), over fuelling (pump rate too high for fan speed) or slow running fan 2. overheating and shutting down. caused by restricted air intake for the heater (not burner) or by the fan fouling the outer case of the heater (mine needed some fine tuning of the mounts to stop it catching the case) there does seem to be some variance between identical heaters which I suspect boils down to poor tolerances on the fuel dosing pumps with some pumps delivering more fuel per pulse than others. Generally everything can be worked out as most of the (lcd screen) controllers give access to pump rate and fan speed settings allowing the settings to be tuned for the individual heater, the one I have here starts up with a wisp of white smoke for 5 seconds and then burns totally clean. Like the webasto and eber heaters they do like to be run hard rather than ticking over

not if the engine & gearbox alignment is good, on our boat which has recently been sold both were original to the boat and not touched since built 28 years earlier. I suspect that it was still running on the original packing. however a misaligned engine can do damage fast, a friends boat had an engine mount fall through a box section bearer (in a way that couldn't be seen), 6 hours of running (to get back to their mooring) gave an overheating engine from the extra load, the stern tube was worn oval and the prop shaft had some lovely grooves in it. after everything was rectified (new bearers, new engine mounts, new prop shaft and new stern tube) the gearbox failed about a month later

I once ended up sprawled across the roof of a stepnell van (probably a bedford HA), no damage to me, the bike of the van (other than a few years of people laughing about it) I have no defence... I was racing, I was concentrating on gaining against someone else and failed to notice the parked van... I was also 7 years old. I was also quite merciless when years later a friend managed to end up riding (on the wrong side of the road) head on into a parked articulated lorry (the lorry was bright white and it was a glorious sunny day)... he was trying to see where a squeak was coming from on his front wheel (It didn't go round afterwards let alone squeak)

before you try and start it.... have you changed the oil. the lpws4 has a low level oil filler (in addition to the one on the top) which from the sound of it has been underwater and I wouldn't like to guess how well the filler cap has held out the water.

we had the lpws4 on our boat and had always used the smaller filter (because that's what was on there and the ice cream tub full of old filters suggested that was what had always been on there). then someone on here had some unused oil filters for sale that the part number suggested they were for the lpws4, these were the larger ones and we found that they fouled the throttle and engine stop controls.

Knowing my dads haunts I would say theirs was around somewhere between Berkhamsted and Rickmansworth and that another was as far up as Leighton buzzard. since the bit of the headline I can make out is about teenagers (and looking at my dads age in the picture) I would guess at 68/69 theirs was motorised although probably not original, I know it started out with an open hold and slowly changed to wood / canvas top and then wooden top without adding any height because the bare hull only just cleared bridges. I wonder if this was the one that caused BW to stop allowing them to be licensed, as the story sounds similar enough (bollards pulled out) for it to have been twisted a little by the towpath telegraph

I'm unsure of exact details as it was before I was born but around the late 60s / early 70s there were a few thames lighters being used on the GU, by all accounts they only just fitted in the locks and had to have rudders turned fully to close gates, after one caused some problems by pulling bollards out when a pound drained amongst other things BW refused to license the craft making them unusable on the canal network. extremely battered picture shows My father & friends who used to live on one of the lighters holding a local paper with an article about it.

I noticed that someone who had spent a lot of time driving forklifts picked up steering a boat almost instantly

we used to get pulled and dipped about twice a year for driving a battered transit this was usually on the main road into skegness during peak holiday season, so I suspect that it was picked as a good spot to get vehicles that were not usually in the area. There were usually a few vans parked up with fed up looking owners.

Aren't they currently banned from the towpath?

we have a 10kva diesel generator that is rated to run on diesel or heating oil, however for heating oil it notes that you should derate the output to 9kva, that the exhaust will be smoky and that the time between oil and filter changes should be halved

may also be worth checking the tiny breather in the filler nut / dipstick is clean & clear (assuming they are the same type as the hydraulic boxes)

Our boat had a key hidden on the outside (well hidden and needing a screwdriver to access) in case we were ever locked out. once inside there was a spare padlock key (all padlocks on the boat were keyed alike) and ignition key. getting into a friends boat was done by removing to top hopper glass from an open window and then using the brass curtain rod to open further windows until we reached the window by the back door, once there we reached in and opened the yale lock.

one thing to check... on our boat the bathroom radiator was looped in with the feed to the calorifier from the alde boiler (all the rest were on their own isolatable loop), so if you went round turning off all the radiators you got no hot water from the alde, but if you left the bathroom radiator on you got a tank of hot water.

we have no way of knowing why they are still there, perhaps they have broken down or had some medical issues and CRT are aware that they are overstaying in exceptional circumstances or of course they could just be taking the pi**

if the 160 is a hydraulic box the first thing to check is oil level

I've always gone with "kill the engine" rather than neutral as a lot of props still turn slowly in neutral (admittedly it seems there isn't a great deal of force)

the only downside with any evaporative cooler system is that they will do next to nothing when humidity is high because the air is already carrying almost all the moisture it can

we have just sold our boat which was Stenson / MCC and have to say at 28 years old the hull was solid and it's the nicest handling narrowboat I have ever steered. they do have more gradual curves (longer bow curves & swims) than a lot of similar sized boats which I suspect goes a long way towards explaining their handling. I know when I am looking for our next boat Stenson will be high on the list of makers to look for.