Meantime

Now I apologise in advance if this is seen as controversial but it's all in the public domain. Most of The Broads companies are run as Limited companies, it is perhaps significant that the one that has been the main subject of this thread is run as a Limited Liability Partnership, a company structure more normally used for professional services companies such as accountants or solicitors.

So we appear to be going full circle here. If I read you right you appear to be saying that large yards run by accountants are done so to extract maximum profit from the customer for the shareholders or owners, at the expense of the boats looking a bit more shabby. One has to wonder if the bean counters take or encourage the same approach when it comes to maintenance or making those ageing batteries last another year than they really should.

Why? I've never understood this logic. There are only so many hours in a day. If it takes one lad / yard hand an hour to clean a hull, a yard such as Bridgecraft probably need 3 or 4 to clean all their fleet. If another yard is 10 times bigger, it just needs 10 x as many lads / yard hands. It's the same equation whether its mechanics or cleaners for the inside of the boat. Personally I would say its easier for the larger yards as they have more staff available to redeploy to cover for illness / staff absence.

I suspect this has more to do with the other topic of running engines at moorings, than rising water levels and health and safety. People have complained in the past about being told off for not being "quiet" at the quiet moorings and I along with many others have defended the owners of the quiet moorings and their right to enjoy their properties in peace and quiet without listening to the throbbing of boat engines on moorings that they are providing and then being abused when they ask people to turn off their engines. You reap what you sow and now even those who knew what quiet moorings meant, are going to pay for the loss of this facility!!

Really? I think trading standards would have had something to say about that. The advertised price for a litre of fuel is just that, the price you pay for a full litre from a calibrated dispenser. Even before the recent fuel duty changes for Red diesel and before the EU insisted on derogation for Red Diesel finishing in 2008, there was a smaller amount of duty that needed to be paid on Red diesel and that would have meant selling diesel at the advertised price and paying the relevant duty. Adding in an allowance for an undefined amount of other items such as gas or lube oil would have made the duty calculation impossible.

I believe they market it as an electric quant. There are now seven boats fitted with them. Hmmm! Note to self, wonder if I can get a toll reduction by telling the BA I only have a diesel quant fitted.

We must have been posh, we used to take a compendium of games!

Your never going to get anywhere near enough moorings with power so that anyone who wants to plug in can and use what they want. Therefore the answer has to be to manage expectations rather than promising what cannot be delivered. If you market that a boat has shore power, put a big disclaimer alongside it that power is only available at a limited number of moorings and then only in sufficient quantity to power a small percentage of the mooring spots. Then moving to the onboard electrics move to installing USB charging points all around the boat so that people can charge their multitude of tablets, phones etc straight from a USB port which is way more efficient than using an invertor to give 240V and then letting them plug a charger in to knock the voltage back down again to charge their phone. The chances are the phone charger is left plugged in and the invertor on even when the device is charged. Provide one small 300W invertor for powering anything else that cannot be charged directly from a USB port, or for if they bring their own games console along or laptop etc. Finally make sure there are enough batteries on board, in a good enough condition to power the boats onboard systems such as electric cooker or the heater without the requirement to have the engine running. Finally and this might prove to be a little controversial, but hire boats are not allowed to navigate between sunset and sunrise so fit a dusk to dawn sensor that stops the engine from being started when it is dark outside.

Sorted, providing the yard then replaced the ropes on the other boat. What's the chances those ropes are still on that other boat now?

Why is it that whenever I see posts such as this I'm reminded of that sign on the approaches to Wroxham, "Please do not throw stones at this sign" Well intentioned and well meaning I'm sure, but they just seem to accelerate the downward spiral of a thread at times! Best to leave it in the capable hands of The Mods or make use of the report button.

Hey don't bring me into this dispute!

The WRC in recent years has run a ferry across to the Carlton Marshes, I wonder if in years gone by there used to be a ferry across to a public staithe? One of our locals members who has taken to not posting anymore may have been able to shed some light on it.

I would imagine the Blue hose to be the feed from the water pump. I would assume it goes right into the T piece to feed the cold taps and left into the calorifier. This is a similar setup to how mine used to be. I used to find that after a fair bit of engine running that the cold would sometimes run a little warm as hot water expanded back out of the calorifier. I over come this by fitting a non return valve between the cold feed into the calorifier so that hot water couldn't return into the cold circuit. Off course you need to be sure to have a pressure relief valve fitted to the calorifier.

For reference, in its non marinised state the thermostat would live in the housing where the temperature sender unit is and just above it would be connected one of the radiator hoses. When they are marinised the thermostat is moved to live under that square cover directly below your figure 2 on the heat exchanger and the small bolt is there as one of the bleed points.

From the Nanni manual the thermostat should start to open at 69.5 to 72.5 degrees centigrade and be fully open at 85 degrees centigrade. When the thermostat is closed the coolant should use the bypass loop which is where the calorifier is connected. Once the thermostat is fully open it will go through the thermostat and therefore not the calorifier, but unless your running the engine flat out over Breydon I don't think you'll reach 85 degrees centigrade and therefore the thermostat will never be fully open and some coolant will also still use the bypass loop through the calorifier.

Additionally if you get a short piece of the right diameter hose you can remove hoses 1 and 2 and put a short link in there. Then bleed the system via the nut and the header tank and then run the engine to see how warm it gets. Obviously the calorifier won't get warm as it will no longer be in the circuit, but your engine should run at normal temperature. Once that check is complete then replumb the colorifier back in and bleed again and then check again.

Ray, the line for the number 2 hose virtually points to where your temperature sender unit is. The nut just next to it can be loosened and used to bleed the system. If you loosen it when the engine is cold you should get water weeping out, if not there is an airlock and your engine is reading that it is not getting fully warm, because the coolant is not reaching the sender unit, which is on the side of that housing.

I think it was Caravelle 2.

Although it is worth pointing out that the divers had plenty of experience and took all safety precautions. I seem to remember there were two people there who'd had plenty of experience of diving. There were also boats out on the river and signs asking passing boats to slow down.

It was recovered to Loddon I believe and lifted out for repair and restoration. I think it was the owners son in law who ended up with the boat. He did start a thread elsewhere about the restoration, but I'm not sure he finished either the restoration or the thread. I was involved on the day, haven't seen the video for some time now. I have a sneaking suspicion the boat ended up as firewood. I hope not as a lot of effort was put into raising her. That video is actually the second attempt to raise her, the first failing due to not enough or powerful enough pumps. It was however a good advert for what happens when people on forums come together for the common good of the boater, rather than bickering endlessly.

The thing is though out of those 31 surviving companies how many are clinging on by their fingertips? Does that include Bulb Energy who are in special administration because with 1.7 million customers they were too large for the Supplier of Last Resort scheme. Last year there were 4 million customers displaced by failed energy firms. Their credit balances are protected by the Supplier of Last Resort scheme which is paid for as part of the daily standing charge which is why it has also shot up.

I'm not quite sure what you would construe as a failure then? Not one of the cheap energy providers are still in business. They were only cheap because they didn't play by the same rules as the big 6 and many of them didn't end up paying the green levies either. That means that all the consumers who stuck by the big 6 energy providers and by and large paid more for their energy than those who shopped around, are now being asked to contribute towards the failure of those cheaper providers through increased standing charges to help cover losses caused by the Supplier of Last Resort scheme. If it isn't a failure, it certainly isn't a resounding success!!

Since there is effectively no competition left in the market I'd be very surprised if you find any domestic rates that are less than the new price cap when it comes into effect in April. Certainly none are being advertised.

Whilst it may be immediately obvious why the cost per unit is going up, has anyone noticed how much the fixed cost, the daily standing charge has also shot up as part of the price cap? This is where you the consumer now get to pay for the Supplier of Last Resort scheme!! Whenever an energy company gets handed the customers of an insolvent energy company they are transferred under the SoLR scheme, which allows them to recover additional charges in relation to taking on those customers and the debts of the failed companies, so even if you thought you had chosen wisely and your supplier is still in business, you will still end up paying towards the failure of the whole competitive energy market experiment.

John, the price cap for April will be 28p per unit. 4. The price cap protects around 22 million households on default or variable rates on credit meters. The £1,971 per year level of the cap is based on a household with typical consumption on a dual electricity and gas bill paying by direct debit. Customers who pay by standard credit (cash or cheque) pay an additional £130 based on the higher cost for energy companies to serve them. The 22 million households protected by the price cap includes around 4.5 million prepayment meter customers. These customers pay an additional £47 compared to those on direct debit, which also reflects the higher cost for energy companies to serve them. The values shown in the text above include VAT and are expressed for the current Typical Domestic Consumption Values (TDCV) of 2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas, and 4,200kWh of electricity for Economy 7. The price cap is a cap on a unit of gas and electricity, with standing charges taken into account. It is not a cap on customers’ overall energy bills, which will still rise or fall in line with their energy consumption. From 1 April the equivalent per unit level of the price cap to the nearest pence for a typical customer paying by direct debit will be 28p per kWh for electricity customers and 7p per kWh for gas customers