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Hire boat fuel charges


Justin Smith

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15 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Johny Foreigners rip off innitt.

 

I have to say, I find cafes a total rip off too. Have you seen how cheap the flour is they use to make the cake they sell at £1 a slice?? And don't get me started on tea. 100 teabags cost £1.50 yet tea shops will stiff you four quid for a pot of tea containing two tea bags and a splash of milk which also only costs 59p for half a litre. 

Rip off tea shops, I say. 

:P

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On 14/04/2018 at 21:56, Justin Smith said:

We tried to make maximum use of the heat from the (gas, and therefore not chargeable) hob !

Um, you were not using the hob for room heating???  This is not generally considered advisable.

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2 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

Um, you were not using the hob for room heating???  This is not generally considered advisable.

Under what circumstances would it be inadvisable ? We`re assuming the hob has working thermocouples to turn off the gas should the flame go out and the boat has ventilators in the ceiling (for the carbon monoxide), but I thought these were both legal requirements ? If the aforementioned thermocouples aren`t working one would think it`s also inadvisable to use the hob for cooking.

A hob gives off heat as a by product of cooking, why is it OK to use that heat as a by product of cooking, but not on its own ?

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8 minutes ago, Sally Grim said:

Isn't carbon monoxide heavier than air? Or do I remember wrongly? 

AFAIK carbon monoxide is marginally lighter than air, carbon dioxide is heavier than air. On this subject, I though all boats had carbon monoxide alarms ? The last boat we hired certainly did.

Edited by Justin Smith
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On 15/04/2018 at 03:14, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I have to say, I find cafes a total rip off too. Have you seen how cheap the flour is they use to make the cake they sell at £1 a slice?? And don't get me started on tea. 100 teabags cost £1.50 yet tea shops will stiff you four quid for a pot of tea containing two tea bags and a splash of milk which also only costs 59p for half a litre. 

Rip off tea shops, I say. 

:P

:P

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59 minutes ago, Justin Smith said:

Under what circumstances would it be inadvisable ? We`re assuming the hob has working thermocouples to turn off the gas should the flame go out and the boat has ventilators in the ceiling (for the carbon monoxide), but I thought these were both legal requirements ? If the aforementioned thermocouples aren`t working one would think it`s also inadvisable to use the hob for cooking.

A hob gives off heat as a by product of cooking, why is it OK to use that heat as a by product of cooking, but not on its own ?

On our boat there is a notice by the hob that it is not to be used for space heating, I assumed that was a BSS requirement, but perhaps it is not if all boats don't have that.  Anyway, take a look at this for a reason not to use the cooker/hob for heating http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-40779427

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27 minutes ago, john6767 said:

On our boat there is a notice by the hob that it is not to be used for space heating, I assumed that was a BSS requirement, but perhaps it is not if all boats don't have that.  Anyway, take a look at this for a reason not to use the cooker/hob for heating http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-40779427

As I understand it the grill was being used as a space heater whilst the men were sleeping. That`s obviously more risky, but, one would like to know, did the grill involved have a gas shut off for no flame ? If so was it working ? And the boat did not have a carbon monoxide detector......

As a side point one could argue that, if safety at all costs was the number one priority and cookers heat was deemed dangerous, hire companies should be including the fuel as part of the hire charges because to not do so is obviously going to encourage people to use the ("free") heat from the cooker as a heater.

Edited by Justin Smith
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25 minutes ago, Justin Smith said:

As I understand it the grill was being used as a space heater whilst the men were sleeping. That`s obviously more risky, but, one would like to know, did the grill involved have a gas shut off for no flame ? If so was it working ? And the boat did not have a carbon monoxide detector......

As a side point one could argue that, if safety at all costs was the number one priority and cookers heat was deemed dangerous, hire companies should be including the fuel as part of the hire charges because to not do so is obviously going to encourage people to use the ("free") heat from the cooker as a heater.

CO is CO I would say, irrespective of having a detector or not and sleeping or not, it is still dangerous.

I presume you a referring to hire boats that have diesel central heating.  All the ones that we hired had gas central heating, so if it is that important then pick one with gas heating not diesel.

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42 minutes ago, john6767 said:

CO is CO I would say, irrespective of having a detector or not and sleeping or not, it is still dangerous.

I presume you a referring to hire boats that have diesel central heating.  All the ones that we hired had gas central heating, so if it is that important then pick one with gas heating not diesel.

I asked the bloke form the hire company about gas heating and he said there was "all sorts of safety implications about it and that was why it wasn`t fitted to hire boats any more". Whether that`s true or not, the cynic in me says if you were a hire company and could hire a boat out where the customers paid for the heating (rather than you), what would you do ? ! ?

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Turning at junctions - includes exiting from a marina:

There will of necessity be enough room for the boat to rotate - if not then over time boats longer that 60ft will have worn the banks away to allow that! 

The problem is that this assumes that the boat is not moving overall so that it rotates properly about its centre of rotation. But then you do have to come out of the bridge/branch/marina or whatever, so will be moving forward. I am sure that there are as many methods to counter this as there are boaters but here's mine:

Firstly, come out as slowly as you can and use reverse to come as close to a dead stop as you can before going hard ahead with tiller well over (too far and you may lose the turning effect). As you turn, alternate forward and reverse (I sometimes refer to the technique as a reverse turn) This relies on the fact that most boats turn more vigorously forward than reverse, so that if you are already turning with forward, the boat will keep rotation for some while when in reverse - almost regardless of what you do with the tiller. Once you have countered the forward element of the motion then you can start with forward and tiller over to increase the rotation.

Also worth remembering that if the side of the boat is hard against an edge, then the curved shape will cause the boat to turn if the forward thrust is pushed into the edge with the tiller. (just don't look at the blacking!) This can be used to give the boat a start. So, coming out of Autherley Stop, keep the boat as right as possible, push the tiller right and the bow will start to move left. Well before the stern passes the end of the wall (it's rounded anyway) ease off and start to slow the boat to near standstill. If you have spare crew then they can push the bow as it passes out of the lock.

But I am sure that there will be other suggestions. It is easier to do than to describe! In most cases the only thing you don't want to do is to assume that you can drive out at full speed in a continuous arc. Oh, and have someone check that there is no approaching boat on the 'main' line.

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  • 1 month later...
On ‎14‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 21:56, Justin Smith said:

A bit of good news here. When we got back to the hire base (Viking boat hire, JD boats Gailey wharf) they only charged us 96p per litre. By my reckoning that's only a few pence more than Turner`s, so I had no problem paying it. It`s just a pity I didn`t know that price at the start of the hire ! The boat from Viking, Niord a 60 ft NB for two and a half of us, was pretty good actually. A few things went wrong but almost every hire boat we`ve ever had a few things go wrong so I didn`t hold that against them. It was well equipped, including with that holy of holies (for a hireboat) a reasonable number of hooks and shelves ! We used about 67 litres of fuel taking it easy doing about 73 miles (to Market Drayton and back * ) and with the heating on about 4 or 5 hours a day. We tried to make maximum use of the heat from the (gas, and therefore not chargeable) hob !

The negative is it just emphasises how much of a rip off was the £1.45 per litre that Alpha Craft charged us.......

* Question : how are you supposed to turn sharp left out of the Shroppie onto the Staffs and Worcs when you`ve just come out of a lock and are hard up against the side (so can`t get the rear to swing to the right) ? When it appeared to be impossible to get round we could only think to to reverse back in and then cheat by pushing the bows out.....

 

 

The seller of the fuel could tell them the normal split is 60/40 ?

We were at Herbert Woods boatyard yesterday and noticed they were charging £1.20 per litre for diesel. Significantly cheaper than Alpha Craft`s £1.45, but still pretty pricey, JD boats charged us 96p/L only about 6 weeks ago.

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41 minutes ago, Justin Smith said:

We were at Herbert Woods boatyard yesterday and noticed they were charging £1.20 per litre for diesel. Significantly cheaper than Alpha Craft`s £1.45, but still pretty pricey, JD boats charged us 96p/L only about 6 weeks ago.

Diesel on the Broads has always been a rip off,even before the duty split they were only a few pence less than white in a garage.

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