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C&RT say don't empty your compost toilet in our bins.


Alan de Enfield

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1 minute ago, IanD said:

I'd call it prioritising the interests of the boating community as a whole over  those of a few selfish individuals -- and if you think "selfish" is the wrong adjective, what would you use?

 

Yes I feel strongly about this, it's a perfect example of the kind of "me-first-f*ck-you" attitude that is unfortunately  becoming increasingly common in society...:-(

 

So you're against CRT paying to install electric boat charge points then?

 

There's a lot less boats with electric drive than there are with composting/ separating toilets ...

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Just now, TheBiscuits said:

 

So you're against CRT paying to install electric boat charge points then?

 

There's a lot less boats with electric drive than there are with composting/ separating toilets ...

That will change though maybe CRT will install composting collection points along with charging points? Now where are those flying pigs I mislaid 🤣

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8 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

So you're against CRT paying to install electric boat charge points then?

 

C&RT should not pay if it means subsidising the supply - if it is profitable then let them do it if they so wish.

If, it is forecast to be profitable, let a commercial company do it and take the risk, but the next thing will be boaters complaining that they are paying 50p / unit for electricity when they are only paying 20p at home.

 

C&RT are under no obligation to provide electricty charging points (no one expects them to provide diesel) so why should they. If the Government wants to introduce zero-emission proplusion then they, or the industry in general, should provide the means.

It is not C&RTs decsion to make people go 'lectric'.

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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21 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

So you're against CRT paying to install electric boat charge points then?

 

There's a lot less boats with electric drive than there are with composting/ separating toilets ...

Ooh, I expect you think I've been hoisted by my own petard?

 

Right now there are very few electric boats, but the number is rising because they're seen as environmentally better -- in spite of the fact that inland waterways boats contribute less than 1% of the CO2 that cars do. At some point -- like with BEV -- their numbers will be high enough to justify charging points. Just like for BEV these will be paid for by higher costs per kWh. If CART install points, these will be paid for the same way -- by electric boaters, by paying a higher kWh rate. But before all this happens electric boaters will pay for their own power (solar/genny) out of their own pockets, with no negative impact on others -- or even a positive one from less noise and diesel fumes.

 

Composting toilet users could do the same, pay out of their own pockets to dispose of the waste properly instead of binning it. But the cost to do this is likely to be similar to pumpouts even in the future, and would be even higher today because of the relatively small number of users -- very few of who would be willing to pay tens of pounds a time for the privilege, when one big reason for installing these toilets was to save money, and the other was the convenience of just chucking the waste into any bin...

Edited by IanD
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I have just walked past a towpath mooring where it is obvious the boater has simply dumped his/her cassette into the cut and also on the side of the bank. It's deffo a cassette as there's 'Blue' liquid puddled on the towpath. Disgusting! I didn't have my phone with me or I would have taken a photo

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7 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

C&RT should not pay if it means subsidising the supply - if it is profitable then let them do it if they so wish.

If, it is forecast to be profitable, let a commercial company do it and take the risk, but the next thing will be boaters complaining that they are paying 50p / unit for electricity when they are only paying 20p at home.

 

C&RT are under no obligation to provide electricty charging points (no one expects them to provide diesel) so why should they. If the Government wants to introduce zero-emission proplusion then they, or the industry in general, should provide the means.

It is not C&RTs decsion to make people go 'lectric'.

Same cost issue per kWh as BEVs -- you can charge cheaply at home, or pay more to charge elsewhere. Somebody has to pay for the charging points, and it's the customer.

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18 minutes ago, IanD said:

Same cost issue per kWh as BEVs -- you can charge cheaply at home, or pay more to charge elsewhere. Somebody has to pay for the charging points, and it's the customer.

 

 

And, of course Ofgem have allowed suppliers of electricity to charge EVs to charge whatever they wish in order to recoup their investment costs - unlike  marinas, carvan parks or 'house' landlords where they can only recharge what they themselves pay per unit.

 

We are a reseller of electricity so obviously come under this legislation, hence the letter sent to us some years ago.

 

 

 

Screenshot (309).png

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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37 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

And, of course Ofgem have allowed suppliers of electricity to charge EVs to charge whatever they wish in order to recoup their investment costs - unlike  marinas, carvan parks or 'house' landlords where they can only recharge what they themselves pay per unit.

 

We are a reseller of electricity so obviously come under this legislation, hence the letter sent to us some years ago.

 

 

 

Screenshot (309).png

There are valid reasons to restrict the price in residential cases (houses, marinas) where people are in a fixed place and have no other option -- though enforcing zero markup seems unfair to the people who have to install and maintain the hardware.

 

For mobile applications where people move around and need a network of charging points (cars, continuous cruisers) the price needs to be higher to pay for a more expensive to install and more lightly used network, even more so in remote locations.

 

There should be a margin cap in both cases to prevent price gouging, because unlike filling stations you can't always choose to drive to a cheaper one, but the network still has to be paid for. Maybe something like 50% margin in residential cases, 100% in mobile cases, 150% in remote out-of-the-way mobile cases?

 

The numbers would have to be decided by the government to balance the incentive needed to get companies to install the network with the interests of users not being ripped off.

Edited by IanD
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21 minutes ago, IanD said:

There are valid reasons to restrict the price in residential cases (houses, marinas) where people are in a fixed place and have no other option -- though enforcing zero markup seems unfair to the people who have to install and maintain the hardware.

 

We are allowed to charge an 'administration fee' to add onto the electricity charge, we charge the "recommended rate" of £35pa, but it will take a 100 years to get back the infrastucture cost, this doesn't even cover the costs of the meters, let alone labour cost plodding around the site reading every meter on a 1/4ly basis, then the time producing invoices etc etc etc.

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4 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Just occasionally, one has to think of other people, although, judging by the amount of dog excrement both on the towpath and hanging in bags off the trees, this does seem to be a vanishing concept.

 

Dunno about everyone else, but I much prefer the habit of putting their dog sh!t in bags and hanging it in trees, to leaving it on the towpath for me to step in. 

 

I find myself wondering if, once the new contractor bans human excrement from the bins, some of the separating bog boaters will take a lead from minority of dog owners, and hang their bags of human poo in the trees. 

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3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

We are allowed to charge an 'administration fee' to add onto the electricity charge, we charge the "recommended rate" of £35pa, but it will take a 100 years to get back the infrastucture cost, this doesn't even cover the costs of the meters, let alone labour cost plodding around the site reading every meter on a 1/4ly basis, then the time producing invoices etc etc etc.

Which as I said seems unfair. However -- like marinas -- surely you can always recover costs by raising the rental price for the pitch/mooring?

 

This obviously doesn't work for charging stations unless they can also charge a "mooring/connection fee" -- here a bigger margin on the kWh costs seems an easier and fairer method.

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5 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Dunno about everyone else, but I much prefer the habit of putting their dog sh!t in bags and hanging it in trees, to leaving it on the towpath for me to step in. 

 

I find myself wondering if, once the new contractor bans human excrement from the bins, some of the separating bog boaters will take a lead from minority of dog owners, and hang their bags of human poo in the trees. 

And if they do, will posses of "poo vigilantes" roam the canals, retrieving said bags and dropping them down the chimney of the nearest compost-loo-equipped boat they can find in the dark of night?

 

Of course it might not be the culprit, but "they're all as guilty as each other" is a principle the police have often used successfully over the years... 😉

Edited by IanD
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5 minutes ago, IanD said:

Which as I said seems unfair. However -- like marinas -- surely you can always recover costs by raising the rental price for the pitch/mooring?

 

You can only charge market rates otherwise you are even worse off as you will have spent the money and have no paying customers.

 

The provision of EV charging bollards on the canals is pretty much a monopoly they pay or they cannot move.

The only (unrealistic) alternative would be to have (say) 3 suppliers each one only be allowed to have 1 in 3 of the bollards (alternates, so  supplier 1, 1 mile later supplier 2, one mile later supplier 3, 1 mile later supplier 1 ............) so an element of competition creeps in.

T'aint gonna happen tho.

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22 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

You can only charge market rates otherwise you are even worse off as you will have spent the money and have no paying customers.

 

The provision of EV charging bollards on the canals is pretty much a monopoly they pay or they cannot move.

The only (unrealistic) alternative would be to have (say) 3 suppliers each one only be allowed to have 1 in 3 of the bollards (alternates, so  supplier 1, 1 mile later supplier 2, one mile later supplier 3, 1 mile later supplier 1 ............) so an element of competition creeps in.

T'aint gonna happen tho.

But since all sites/marinas have the same problem, doesn't this mean that market rates for rentals/moorings go up to pay for the installations?

 

It makes more sense to have a monopoly supplier for charging on a fixed network like the canals, because it's the same situation as the postal service -- the service is needed everywhere, if you own all the stations the cheaper well-used ones can subsidise the remote little-used (but still necessary) ones. If you allow open competition then you get cherry-picking and maybe an excess of stations in popular areas, and none in remote/unpopular one, where they're still needed to allow genny-free boats. Unlike cars, you can't choose to drive to a cheaper supplier ten or twenty miles away, so any competition is illusory.

 

However a monopoly like this (could be CART, could be Powergen, could be owned by the government or privately funded) goes against the free-market mindset of the current government, which says that the market is always the best solution -- in spite of multiple proofs that this ain't so with infrastructure-heavy projects like the railways, and the fact that exactly this solution for electric boats on canals seems to be working in France.

 

Oh I forget, that can't possibly be a good idea, France are in the EU 😞

Edited by IanD
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1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

 

It makes more sense to have a monopoly supplier for charging on a fixed network like the canals... exactly this solution for electric boats on canals seems to be working in France.

 

Oh I forget, that can't possibly be a good idea, France are in the EU 😞

As most of our power supplies* are owned by bits of the EU (EDF is French NPower German, Scottish Power Spanish), I can't see it would make much difference!

 

*And our businesses, of course.

Edited by Arthur Marshall
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2 hours ago, IanD said:

But since all sites/marinas have the same problem, doesn't this mean that market rates for rentals/moorings go up to pay for the installations?

 

Yes - the market rent will reflect the installation of electricity. Try renting the plots without a mains supply to check this out.

 

According to Alan De's way of thinking, if the caravan plot holders had a direct supply, he would never recover the installation costs.  Presumably the costs of the service roads, concrete caravan bases, drainage and other costs are never recovered either, because no separate charge is made.  Or perhaps it forms part of the rent?

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Tacet said:

Yes - the market rent will reflect the installation of electricity. Try renting the plots without a mains supply to check this out.

 

According to Alan De's way of thinking, if the caravan plot holders had a direct supply, he would never recover the installation costs.  Presumably the costs of the service roads, concrete caravan bases, drainage and other costs are never recovered either, because no separate charge is made.  Or perhaps it forms part of the rent?

 

 

 

Electricity is a variable cost so cannot be correctly included in the rent.

Provision of roads and bins is a fixed cost irrespective.

The provison of the concrete base and connecting to the main electric, water and sewers is a fixed cost at £5000 per van and is charged to the owner.

 

The annual ground rent covers rates, water and sewage, grounds maintenance, on call help when they blow the electrics. and a contribution to amortised cost of roads etc.

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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2 hours ago, nbfiresprite said:

Did a run into town this morning, on route a black bin bag wrapped itself around the prop. The bag was full of crap, It was a most unpleasant job to remove.

 

Oh how lovely for you.

 

If the scummy end of the spectrum are gonna start chucking bags of it in the cut, they might as well use a bucket and empty it straight in the cut. 

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2 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Electricity is a variable cost so cannot be correctly included in the rent.

Provision of roads and bins is a fixed cost irrespective.

The provison of the concrete base and connecting to the main electric, water and sewers is a fixed cost at £5000 per van and is charged to the owner.

Alan, you know as well as I do that you can include anything you want in the rent, whether it's a charge to pay for your electricity installation costs or anything else. If you provide more or better facilities then you can charge more rent, as has been the basic principle for any property or facility rental since the year dot.

 

Once you've done this, the amount of electricity used has no influence on your fixed costs, so I don't see how you can complain because you can't add a kWh surcharge -- you're not providing kWh, you're providing the connection.

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18 minutes ago, Idle Days said:

Perhaps the EV charging points many crave could have a poo incinerator incorporated within. 

Perhaps you should look at the huge energy costs of doing this before suggesting it?

 

Incinerating something which is largely water is a criminal waste of energy -- and don't bother coming back with "but it's all properly dried out" when we all know that this is rarely true, going by bag'n'binner blogs about "sludge" and people stepping in the result or getting it round their prop...

 

I'd also like to know who these mysterious people who "crave" EV charging points are, it's obviously not anyone who has already spent (or is going to spend) a fortune on the on-board marine generator needed for electric boats today.

 

Or do you mean future-minded people who think that in the long term it would be a very good thing for the UK canal system to have, as opposed to luddites who think that narrowboats should carry on burning diesel forever?

Edited by IanD
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1 minute ago, IanD said:

Perhaps you should look at the huge energy costs of doing this before suggesting it?

 

Incinerating something which is largely water is a criminal waste of energy...

 

I'd also like to know who these mysterious people who "crave" EV charging points are, it's obviously not anyone who has already spent (or is going to spend) a fortune on the on-board marine generator needed for electric boats today.

 

Or do you mean future-minded people who think that in the long term it would be a very good thing for the UK canal system to have, as opposed to luddites who think that narrowboats should carry on burning diesel forever?

 

It was obviously a tounge in cheek comment as opposed to a serious suggestion.

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7 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

It was obviously a tounge in cheek comment as opposed to a serious suggestion.

You got it in one.   I was nearly trying to get a thread on poo disposal back on track and away from a discussion on EV charging.  My wife has just confirmed to me that my brand of humour is indecipherable to the general population as well as her.  I shall now crawl back into my man-cave.  

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Just now, Idle Days said:

You got it in one.   I was nearly trying to get a thread on poo disposal back on track and away from a discussion on EV charging.  My wife has just confirmed to me that my brand of humour is indecipherable to the general population as well as her.  I shall now crawl back into my man-cave.  

Does that make me in ungeneral?

 

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