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Battery Towing Tractors. A Cunning Plan to Replace Diesel Boat Engines


Jen-in-Wellies

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@Tumshie's link to a ride on lawn mower video got me thinking. Perhaps the basics for one of my electric towing tractors already exists? A quick Google shows that ride on electric lawn mowers of similar size are starting to come on the market.
This one claims to be able to mow 2 acres on a charge, with a 38" diameter set of blades. If we reduce that to 36" (3') for a bit of overlap in the cuts and 2 acres is 87120sqft, then this can cover 5.5 miles on a single charge of its 48V 75Ahr (3.6kwhr) lead-acid battery. The actual overlap of cuts in practice will be more than 2", so the distance travelled when mowing 2 acres is longer. As a boat tractor of course it would not be using some of that power to spin cutting blades and it will be narrower than 38" again without the lawn mowing bits. Cost is US$2,700. More battery storage and LiPo's instead of lead acid and you can start to see what a modern boat tractor might look like.

 

Anyone got one they'd be prepared to lend for a trial? It might accidentally end up in the cut as we relearn how to tow boats!

 

Jen

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4 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

@Tumshie's link to a ride on lawn mower video got me thinking. Perhaps the basics for one of my electric towing tractors already exists? A quick Google shows that ride on electric lawn mowers of similar size are starting to come on the market.
This one claims to be able to mow 2 acres on a charge, with a 38" diameter set of blades. If we reduce that to 36" (3') for a bit of overlap in the cuts and 2 acres is 87120sqft, then this can cover 5.5 miles on a single charge of its 48V 75Ahr (3.6kwhr) lead-acid battery. The actual overlap of cuts in practice will be more than 2", so the distance travelled when mowing 2 acres is longer. As a boat tractor of course it would not be using some of that power to spin cutting blades and it will be narrower than 38" again without the lawn mowing bits. Cost is US$2,700. More battery storage and LiPo's instead of lead acid and you can start to see what a modern boat tractor might look like.

 

Anyone got one they'd be prepared to lend for a trial? It might accidentally end up in the cut as we relearn how to tow boats!

 

Jen

 

You  could use it to mow the tow path whilst towing the boats, now If you could add an hedge trimmer CRT would no longer need Fountains. ?

Edited by cuthound
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3 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

@Tumshie's link to a ride on lawn mower video got me thinking. Perhaps the basics for one of my electric towing tractors already exists? A quick Google shows that ride on electric lawn mowers of similar size are starting to come on the market.
This one claims to be able to mow 2 acres on a charge, with a 38" diameter set of blades. If we reduce that to 36" (3') for a bit of overlap in the cuts and 2 acres is 87120sqft, then this can cover 5.5 miles on a single charge of its 48V 75Ahr (3.6kwhr) lead-acid battery. The actual overlap of cuts in practice will be more than 2", so the distance travelled when mowing 2 acres is longer. As a boat tractor of course it would not be using some of that power to spin cutting blades and it will be narrower than 38" again without the lawn mowing bits. Cost is US$2,700. More battery storage and LiPo's instead of lead acid and you can start to see what a modern boat tractor might look like.

 

Anyone got one they'd be prepared to lend for a trial? It might accidentally end up in the cut as we relearn how to tow boats!

 

Jen

So when you say lend it might be a little more accurate to say sacrifice for a greater cause ?

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You can get farm/work standard electric quad bikes, but I don't think they will be towpath legal. I would be quite surprised if you couldn't get electric racing quads cos they would just be sh..... oh there's that shovel. 

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1 minute ago, Tumshie said:

You can get farm/work standard electric quad bikes, but I don't think they will be towpath legal. I would be quite surprised if you couldn't get electric racing quads cos they would just be sh..... oh there's that shovel. 

Any trial of an electric tow device would definitely need CaRT approval as they would need special dispensation. If someone seriously wanted to have a go, then it would need to be sold to the appropriate management with all the appropriate greenie well being buzz words.

 

Jen

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1 minute ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Any trial of an electric tow device would definitely need CaRT approval as they would need special dispensation. If someone seriously wanted to have a go, then it would need to be sold to the appropriate management with all the appropriate greenie well being buzz words.

 

Jen

http://ecochargerquads.com

 

For your perusal fun zoomy quad bikes. 

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1 hour ago, cuthound said:

 

You  could use it to mow the tow path whilst towing the boats, now If you could add an hedge trimmer CRT would no longet need Fountains. ?

Of course, if you meet a boat coming the other way being towed by another mower, who ever drops their tow rope to let the other pass over it gets their tow rope shredded!

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9 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

We need bizzard to come up with some meccano bungie powered tow device connected to lock winding operations. 

 

Forget all this tractor rubbish. 

A PTO at one end and a set of lines running down one side of the canal and back up the other, the PTO pulls the line through allowing a boat to be clipped onto the line and pulled along with it. ETA you could even use a lister as the PTO if that makes it and better. :unsure: Lister do make some rather good electric PTO. 

 

6 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Excellent. Too big, too powerful, too fast for this application, but good fun and shows that all the technology exists.

Yeah, thery're full sized quads expected to do all sorts of different jobs - but I do loves me a good farm quad. :D

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Boating is still predominately a leisure pastime, and residential boats are the minority. I can barely see the tractor idea working for liveaboards, but it would be ridiculous for leisure boaters. A pleasant day's cruise is about enjoying the scenery with a gentle chugging/swish of the water over the prop in the background. Not driving a tractor on a towpath for 15 miles. 

 

Tractors simply wouldn't work on long stretches of rivers such as the Thames, and would make single handing on any waterway impossible. Thankfully the idea is so "out there" that I can not imagine it happening.

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9 minutes ago, Tumshie said:

A PTO at one end and a set of lines running down one side of the canal and back up the other, the PTO pulls the line through allowing a boat to be clipped onto the line and pulled along with it. ETA you could even use a lister as the PTO if that makes it and better. :unsure: Lister do make some rather good electric PTO

It sounds good to me. I am not sure how the Phantom of The Opera comes into it though. 

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1 minute ago, Mike on the Wey said:

Boating is still predominately a leisure pastime, and residential boats are the minority. I can barely see the tractor idea working for liveaboards, but it would be ridiculous for leisure boaters. A pleasant day's cruise is about enjoying the scenery with a gentle chugging/swish of the water over the prop in the background. Not driving a tractor on a towpath for 15 miles. 

 

Tractors simply wouldn't work on long stretches of rivers such as the Thames, and would make single handing on any waterway impossible. Thankfully the idea is so "out there" that I can not imagine it happening.

Have you actually read the thread? All these objections answered multiple times. It takes a while, in between the posts about voles. No one is forcing you to go boating this way. It makes no change to the canals, other than restoring the tow paths to their proper condition as tow paths, rather than muddy tracks. I am merely offering it as something to be tried.

How about a pleasant days cruising in complete silence without the hammer of a diesel engine and the whirl of a propeller in your ear? Being able to hear the bird song around you. Self driving tractors a distinct possibility, or walking behind one and guiding it as you go, as you would a 'orse. Does that sound like it could be fun? It does to me.

 

Jen

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How about a Shetland Pony they are hardy little buggers, I'm not sure quite how much they can tow but I've seen one drag a full grown man out of a horse box, tug him over onto his belly and proceed to drag him at full speed round the lorry park of an agricultural show, thankfully flat out Shetland isn't very fast (amusingly it's not very slow either:giggles:). I also think a Shetland could survive a whole summer in well deck of your average narrowboat, even when kept in a field Shetlands have to be fenced off into bare earth postage stamp sized areas to stop them gorging themselves into Goodyear blimps. 

 

They have all the power of a full sized horse shrunk in the wash. :D

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1 minute ago, Tumshie said:

How about a Shetland Pony they are hardy little buggers, I'm not sure quite how much they can tow but I've seen one drag a full grown man out of a horse box, tug him over onto his belly and proceed to drag him at full speed round the lorry park of an agricultural show, thankfully flat out Shetland isn't very fast (amusingly it's not very slow either:giggles:). I also think a Shetland could survive a whole summer in well deck of your average narrowboat, even when kept in a field Shetlands have to be fenced off into bare earth postage stamp sized areas to stop them gorging themselves into Goodyear blimps. 

 

They have all the power of a full sized horse shrunk in the wash. :D

You know how you often see full sizes horses wearing coats to keep them dry. If the owners forget to put them on they shrink and you end up with a Shetland.

Not sure I fancy mucking out a well deck every day, even if it can be mostly pushed out through the scuppers!

 

Jen

1 minute ago, Chris Williams said:

Imagine the chaos at the re-charging points, bad enough with water and sewage, now we want lecky.

Already covered in a previous reply. 600W or so of solar on the roof of the boat could be enough to charge a spare set of batteries for the next days boating in the summer, so no queue at the recharging point. In winter, not so many people going boating, so no queue at the recharging point.

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17 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

I didn't!

14 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Me neither ssssshhh! 

In the case of a tractor it's the turny bit at the back - the engine diverts power to the turny bit at the back which then powers the implements attached to it. But you get smaller ones too. 

iu.jpeg

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Drain the canals.  C&RT at Todbrook has shown they know how to do this sort of thing  Fill the canals with a lucrative contract to take council landfill waste.  Purchase a jamjar to house the displaced precious wildlife. Tamp down the waste & make firm.  Obtain cheap rails from cancelled HS2 projects.  Install 3rd rail electric system.  Add 2 steel-wheel motorised bogies under every boat with 600V DC third-rail traction.  And get an EU grant for the project before 31st October.

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