Just how eco can it be?

[bizzard]

But Sir Buzz, There is always a positive side,

 

Now I propose using the deflected wind directions you speak of from wind farms and alike, to develop an idea already in use, as a mass air drying / preserving of fish ect.

But for Donuts !.

So it can't all be bad.

Things with propellers like wind turbines and aircraft engines don't really change the wind direction, they cause resistance and slow it up or speed it up but possibly worse because they twist and spin up the wind into like a horizontal tornado on the exit side.

[Paul's Nulife4-2]

Exactly !.

More efficient Air Dried Donuts, in half the time,meaning Double the Quantity, it's a win win situation !.

[bizzard]

Exactly !.

More efficient Air Dried Donuts, in half the time,meaning Double the Quantity, it's a win win situation !.

But the whirling blast would blow jam and custard off and at your face and sugar into your eyes, in fact the the blasted sugar would skin you like a shot blasting machine.

[Paul's Nulife4-2]

Whoo Hoo,

If set up by a boat yard, it could maximize Hull preparation prior to Blacking,!,

So Wind farms & Air Dried Donuts could go a

long way to curing food storage, aiding Transportation logistics, curing world Famin as well as the fruit jam centres counting for at least one of your 5 a day,

Because the Suger has been blown off and shot blasted the hulls of awaiting Boats they are less Fattening, so could now be counted as a diet

food!.

Hey I'm thinking Noble Prize for humanitarian reasons here !

Edited June 18, 2014 by Paul's Nulife4-2

[bizzard]

Whoo Hoo,

If set up by a boat yard, it could maximize Hull preparation prior to Blacking,!,

So Wind farms & Air Dried Donuts could go a

long way to curing food storage, aiding Transportation logistics, curing world Famin as well as the fruit jam centres counting for at least one of your 5 a day,

Because the Suger has been blown off and shot blasted the hulls of awaiting Boats they are less Fattening, so could now be counted as a diet

food!.

Hey I'm thinking Noble Prize for humanitarian reasons here !

Hardly noble really, the fellow Nobel invented dynamite!

[Phil Ambrose]

Hardly noble really, the fellow Nobel invented dynamite!

So now we have more bangs for our Bucks, the blast of wind from the explosions is very fierce and could be funneled towards the drying donuts so speeding up the process.

Phil

[peterboat]

 

Really? Which ones?

Hi have a look at car price guides for small cars and you will notice that diesels are missing vauxhall adam none fiat 500s some off the range none and the rest very few, ford KA none fiesta very few they are pushing the eco boost petrol VW up plus the skoda and seat equivalnt none even Jaguar who we repair have a plan to remove them all their diesels and the current generation are all bought in from peugeot and so are fords if car makers had faith in the product they would make their own

 

Peter

[Felshampo]

So when will, if ever, this lead to a petrol engine IN a narrowboat?

[MtB]

So when will, if ever, this lead to a petrol engine IN a narrowboat?

 

When all the vintage diesels have worn out....

 

 

MtB

[luctor et emergo]

I can't see a rush on petrol engined trucks yet..

[JDR]

There are a lot of aspects of living on a boat that are potentially low impact relative to living in a house. Having to be acutely aware of power use and generation, not being able to take the use of power hungry household items for granted, being more aware of the existing weather and nature in general but the thing for me that makes me raise an eyebrow when the words enviromentally friendly and boating are combined is the engine.

 

With very few exceptions to go boating on inland waterways involves running an engine, in the case of narrowboats invariably a diesel. All electric boats are vanishingly rare, normally diesel electric hybrids with powerful inboard diesel gensets. If the intention is to offset this by reducing the amount of engine use this seems to be a bit self-defeating.

 

My definition of a truly enviromentally friendly living arrangement would have to include the land to grow your own food and keep lifestock, something which is not a possibility on the average narrowboat ( awaits inevitable picture a pig pen on the back deck of a widebeam).

 

 

 

 

[peterboat]

I can't see a rush on petrol engined trucks yet..

Trucks dont have that much of a problem they can fit the kit to try and clean up the particulates and NOX. They can fit the very high pressure injectors and they have adblue etc on little cars it is a problem

 

Peter

[luctor et emergo]

Thank you peter for explaining that to me. I never knew why I had to fill two different tanks on my truck.

[Tony Brooks]

I can't see a rush on petrol engined trucks yet..

 

No, but a very high proportion of Reading Bus's single deck fleet now run on compressed natural gas and their engines are 5 cylinder petrol jobs. I can't see why the system would not be applicable for local delivery work. However I understand the cost of the gas plant at the depot was high, so expanding CNG use for small operators would depend upon a larger one installing the [plant and allowing access.

[Phil Ambrose]

There are a lot of aspects of living on a boat that are potentially low impact relative to living in a house. Having to be acutely aware of power use and generation, not being able to take the use of power hungry household items for granted, being more aware of the existing weather and nature in general but the thing for me that makes me raise an eyebrow when the words enviromentally friendly and boating are combined is the engine.

 

With very few exceptions to go boating on inland waterways involves running an engine, in the case of narrowboats invariably a diesel. All electric boats are vanishingly rare, normally diesel electric hybrids with powerful inboard diesel gensets. If the intention is to offset this by reducing the amount of engine use this seems to be a bit self-defeating.

 

My definition of a truly enviromentally friendly living arrangement would have to include the land to grow your own food and keep lifestock, something which is not a possibility on the average narrowboat ( awaits inevitable picture a pig pen on the back deck of a widebeam).

 

 

 

 

Not possible in the average town house or apartment either.

Phil

[Jambo]

I think the lower environmental impact is mostly because of two things.

You have a smaller space to heat and light than in a house.

Because you are 'off grid' you automatically use less power, water etc because it's a pain in the posterior manually getting more of it and loading it onboard.

Our carbon footprint is lower than house dwellers, mostly because of this, I reckon.

 

Exactly right. The nature of the lifestyle enforces efficiency and frugality on us. If you were to compare living on a narrowboat with living on an equivalently sized house with the equivalent appliances then I would expect that the house would come out better but the fact is that you wouldn't live in a NB sized house, you'd live in something considerably larger and you'd have more appliances (in most cases). This frugality is partly offset by having to use dirtier fuels though.

[Jambo]

 

We dont find it very good though, so stick to the good old fairy

 

Have you tried Bio-D? I find their washing up liquid and laundry detergent are both pretty good and better than Ecover. They do 5L containers which last for ages:

 

http://www.biodegradable.biz/

[Jambo]

 

 

Thanks Mike.

 

So far, not a single person has flatly contradicted me.

 

Lots of people saying there are ways to reduce the negative impact and others who say 'don't be so negative to new posters' but no-one so far has nailed their colours to the mast and claimed unequivocally "lving on a narrowboat is the best possible way to minimise one's environmental impact".

 

Is there anyone here who actually believes this? Or do we have that rarest of things, a CWF consensus that people claiming that narrowboating is an envirnmentally sound lifestyle are kidding themselves?

 

 

MtB

 

I don't believe that "living on a narrowboat is the best possible way to minimise one's environmental impact" but I don't think anyone's suggested that. Clearly there are more sustainable ways of living than on a boat fitted with a diesel engine and solid fuel stove.

 

But it can be a low impact mode of living and it can also be lower impact than living in a house.

[MtB]

 

I don't believe that "living on a narrowboat is the best possible way to minimise one's environmental impact" but I don't think anyone's suggested that. Clearly there are more sustainable ways of living than on a boat fitted with a diesel engine and solid fuel stove.

 

But it can be a low impact mode of living and it can also be lower impact than living in a house.

 

If saving the planet is important to you, then buying a boat to live on is, by definition, a backwards step and a daft way to go about it.

 

Of course living on a boat can be lower environmental impact than living in a house, just as living in a house can have a lower environmental impact than a boat.

 

I hold that a house designed for the lowest possible environmental impact will be streets ahead (pun intended ) of a boat designed for the lowest possible environmental impact.

 

 

MtB

[peterboat]

 

No, but a very high proportion of Reading Bus's single deck fleet now run on compressed natural gas and their engines are 5 cylinder petrol jobs. I can't see why the system would not be applicable for local delivery work. However I understand the cost of the gas plant at the depot was high, so expanding CNG use for small operators would depend upon a larger one installing the [plant and allowing access.

Its the way forward no mater what we do diesels produce some unpleasant stuff whereas CNG/lpg are very clean. Years ago their was a fleet of hire boat running out of Whaley bridge on LPG quiet and clean thats the way to go

 

Peter

[Jambo]

 

If saving the planet is important to you, then buying a boat to live on is, by definition, a backwards step and a daft way to go about it.

 

Of course living on a boat can be lower environmental impact than living in a house, just as living in a house can have a lower environmental impact than a boat.

 

I hold that a house designed for the lowest possible environmental impact will be streets ahead (pun intended ) of a boat designed for the lowest possible environmental impact.

 

 

MtB

 

I would agree with your last statement but it's moot because most houses aren't designed for the lowest possible environmental impact (as aren't most boats).

 

But the key difference is that houses have 24/7 gas and electricity supplies and they have programmable heating and hot water systems and so living in a house means that you have access to comfort whenever you want it and that usually leads to increased energy demand. On a boat you generally don't have access to heating on demand and your electricity supply is usually considerably restricted so a much lower demand is enforced on you.

 

We can even put some numbers on it. Average gas demand for a home of 50m2 or less (the smallest category the data has) is 6,800kWh per year which is the same energy as in 850kg of coal (domestic coal has an energy content of about 8kWh/kg). The same size of house uses on average 2,300kWh of electricity per year or a little over 6kWh per day.

 

850kg of coal sounds like a lot to me and of course you can generate a lot of that heat using wood rather than coal. And electricity consumption of more like 1kWh per day is closer to the mark and the majority of that can come from solar.

[MtB]

Jambo,

 

Yes I accept and agree with all your points.

 

One thing missing though is the fact that people tend not to cruise around the cut in their houses so use no diesel.

 

Like your point regarding the tendency to use the home comforts in a house because they are available, I hold that people living on a boat are rather prone to burning diesel as the move the boat around the cut

 

 

MtB

[PiRSqwared]

SNIP.

 

All in all, if you are serious about reducing your impact on the environment, live in a house.

 

 

MtB

You seem to have misspelled "cave" at the end of that statement.

[MtB]

You seem to have misspelled "cave" at the end of that statement.

 

Now that's just plain silly. Living in a cave is considerably less convenient and civilised than living in a house, or a boat.

 

Although I suppose quite a few boats on the cut are no more sophisticated inside than a cave.

 

Just have a look around inside some of the boats for sale at Whilton if you need evidence!

 

MtB

[ditchcrawler]

Hi have a look at car price guides for small cars and you will notice that diesels are missing vauxhall adam none fiat 500s some off the range none and the rest very few, ford KA none fiesta very few they are pushing the eco boost petrol VW up plus the skoda and seat equivalnt none even Jaguar who we repair have a plan to remove them all their diesels and the current generation are all bought in from peugeot and so are fords if car makers had faith in the product they would make their own

 

Peter

I have driven diesels for the past 30 years, but I don't think I will get another, some places diesel is 5p a lt more than petrol and small petrol cars are getting the same sort of mileage as diesels now.