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Saving water at Foxton


Proper Charlie

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We went up and then down Foxton in the last few days. Various different volockies told us that they had been instructed to favour boats coming down over those going up (ie: if a boat arrived at the top they would give it priority over one that had arrived at the bottom, even if the one at the bottom had booked in earlier). I asked why, and was told it was a recent management edict to save water. None of the volockies could tell me how it was saving water though. I would have thought that whether a boat is travelling up or down it is still causing a lock full of water to come down the flight. Can anybody explain the thinking behind this practice?

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The event which costs most water on a staircase is teversing the direction of travel. If all the boats are one way they  cost a lockful each.  At Bingley 5 it costs 4 locks to reverse the flight from down to up. At foxton I think it costs one extra lockful to reverse each staircase.

Otherwise coming down is exactly the same water cost as going up.

N

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2 minutes ago, BEngo said:

The event which costs most water on a staircase is teversing the direction of travel. If all the boats are one way they  cost a lockful each.  At Bingley 5 it costs 4 locks to reverse the flight from down to up. At foxton I think it costs one extra lockful to reverse each staircase.

Otherwise coming down is exactly the same water cost as going up.

N

At Bingley this summer they went to one direction in the morning and the other in the afternoon I believe for exactly this reason.

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More than you could ever want to know about the efficiency of working locks, http://www.caffnib.co.uk/locks.htm  The following is an extract:

 

Now imagine a longer staircase, let's say a five-chamber one, such as Bingley Five-Rise on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Suppose a boat has just come down, so that all chambers are empty, and a boat wants to go up. By the rule, the top four chambers must be filled. The lock-keeper (Barry) starts at the top of the flight and walks down opening all the paddles as far as the ones at the top of the second-last chamber, then, as each chamber fills, comes back up, closing the paddles as he goes, until the top chamber is filled and all paddles closed. This uses four lockfuls of water. The boat may then enter the bottom chamber, and ascend the flight by emptying each chamber in turn into the one below. For the final rise to the upper level, a final, fifth lockful must be drawn. No more water is used if the cycle is reversed to take a boat down, so to alternate at Bingley takes five lockfuls per cycle, or two-and-a-half per boat.

As with the two-chamber system, following boats still need only one lockful each, so here it is much more efficient both in time and water to run streams of boats in one direction. The huge extra water requirement may be thought of as required to change the direction of the locks.

 

What's the simple, fundamental reason why the lack of side ponds make a Bingley-type staircase so much less water-efficient than a Foxton-type? I'm still thinking.

 

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With the side pounds at Foxton and Watford you don't need to reverse the "staircase". If a boat has come down and the flight is clear of other boats coming down then you can just ascend the flight. You don't need to fill the locks above to empty into the lock you are in, there is sufficient water in the side pounds to fill the lock.

Edited by Alway Swilby
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4 minutes ago, Alway Swilby said:

With the side pounds at Foxton and Watford you don't need to reverse the "staircase". If a boat has come down and the flight is clear of other boats coming down then you can just ascend the flight. You don't need to fill the locks above to empty into the lock you are in, there is sufficient water in the side pounds to fill the lock.

In which case there’s no difference between going up and down, in terms of water saving?

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More to do with the long pound Harborough to Kibworth at the bottom constantly being drained lower while the locks towards Leicester continually leaking. Boats had to be helped through again this week. A week ago we were on the bottom in the marina  at Debdale and couldn’t get out. Still low but we managed to get out this morning for a fresh air run down to the locks for a beer before hiding in the reeds for a couple of days.

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2 minutes ago, Tuscan said:

More to do with the long pound Harborough to Kibworth at the bottom constantly being drained lower while the locks towards Leicester continually leaking. Boats had to be helped through again this week. A week ago we were on the bottom in the marina  at Debdale and couldn’t get out. Still low but we managed to get out this morning for a fresh air run down to the locks for a beer before hiding in the reeds for a couple of days.

In which case, wouldn’t they want more water down Foxton to maintain that pound?

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14 minutes ago, Tuscan said:

More to do with the long pound Harborough to Kibworth at the bottom constantly being drained lower while the locks towards Leicester continually leaking. Boats had to be helped through again this week. A week ago we were on the bottom in the marina  at Debdale and couldn’t get out. Still low but we managed to get out this morning for a fresh air run down to the locks for a beer before hiding in the reeds for a couple of days.

A lockie at Watford last month told us that they are back pumping at Stoke Bruerne then back pumping at Buckby and at Watford and leaving paddles up at Foxton overnight to get more water into that pound. The pound below Stoke Bruerne being fed by the River Tove. I wonder if perhaps they have stopped doing that now.

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8 hours ago, Alway Swilby said:

A lockie at Watford last month told us that they are back pumping at Stoke Bruerne then back pumping at Buckby and at Watford and leaving paddles up at Foxton overnight to get more water into that pound. The pound below Stoke Bruerne being fed by the River Tove. I wonder if perhaps they have stopped doing that now.

I was given the same story a couple of months ago.

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36 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I was given the same story a couple of months ago.

They did it last year as well, even though they shut the Leicester line completely from September. 

They do it every year, at some point they may actually look for the leaks and fix them rather than blaming the local yoofs for emptying it 365 days a year.

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I believe they run water down Foxton flight  still. Last year they again  worked on the flight towards Kilby Bridge but there still seems to be a lot of leakage plus nearer Leicester the local kids play their part. Was told that a boat moored at Debdale had to call  CRT help send water down 4 times last week travelling from Leicester. Draft 2’9”.

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1 hour ago, Tuscan said:

I believe they run water down Foxton flight  still. Last year they again  worked on the flight towards Kilby Bridge but there still seems to be a lot of leakage plus nearer Leicester the local kids play their part. Was told that a boat moored at Debdale had to call  CRT help send water down 4 times last week travelling from Leicester. Draft 2’9”.

What we were told in the Spring last year by the staff who were asking us to wait a while before setting off in the morning was that the repaired/replaced gates on the upper section were now reasonably watertight but had for a long time fed water down to the lower section as a result of increasing amounts of leakage. There is a regional management boundary change between the two sections and those responsible for the lower part were caught somewhat by surprise when they found that they were no longer being fed water by the other region! (There was a hint that someone thought that their birthright had been subverted!) No doubt changes in the water management process have been introduced - at least they are now better placed to treat the whole network as a single system when it comes to looking at how to use a limited resource. May sometimes take time to filter through to those on the ground, especially as more of the work is done by a day-a-week volunteers, especially the task of explaining things to boaters and other visitors..

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2 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

There is a regional management boundary change between the two sections and those responsible for the lower part were caught somewhat by surprise when they found that they were no longer being fed water by the other region! (There was a hint that someone thought that their birthright had been subverted!) 

There used to be a boundary, because for some reason right up to Foxton was part of the South East.  But under the new structure, the whole of the Leicester Line is part of the East Midlands -- so now they only have to ask themselves to send more water down (which you'd think would make it easier...)  When we were at Foxton back in May, just as the structure change happened, they were running loads of water down after the Foxton flight had closed.  

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50 minutes ago, adam1uk said:

There used to be a boundary, because for some reason right up to Foxton was part of the South East.  But under the new structure, the whole of the Leicester Line is part of the East Midlands -- so now they only have to ask themselves to send more water down (which you'd think would make it easier...)  When we were at Foxton back in May, just as the structure change happened, they were running loads of water down after the Foxton flight had closed.  

As I said my quote was from last year. In any event, I guess the underlying issue still remains until a major gate replacement happens further down, although - to be fair - they did not actually say that the problem further down was from gate losses.may be other reasons.

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By mid afternoon yesterday we had sat on the bottom moored just before the footbridge at Foxton. Lot of activity as they were filming antique road trip including coming down the flight , quite a few boats came down. Took the dog out last night and there was a definite flow towards Kilby so water was definitely coming down the flight. With a struggle we came off this morning this section Foxton to Debdale is normally quite deep but we churned mud in several places 4-6” down I reckon looking at old water marks.

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