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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/05/17 in all areas

  1. If you convert your dog to gas you will have it CORGI registered.
    5 points
  2. Did I not mention it's a 12V dc dog, fitted with a 240V AC adaptor? I'm thinking of converting it to gas as long as I can use non standard chocolate pipework. The bloke who going to do it is not quite gas safe registered, but I will have a home made papier-mache fire blanket which I knitted myself standing by in case of problems (I'm currently using the fire extinguishers to store petrol in). Fortunately, the boat came with 25 years left on the BSS certificate, so I've been able to wire the anodes to the shore supply with bell wire which I think should reverse the minor pitting. Since I did that, the mice have been less of a problem, so maybe I'll not modify the dog as I don't like messing with things I don't understand. To be fair, the wine bottle corks had pretty much solved most of the leaks, but I'm off to do the blacking now with roofing felt which is on offer at B&Q. I'm hoping that will stop the leaks and preserve the hull, since it worked pretty well on my shed. It's true what they say, boating is a really cheap way of life, isn't it!
    5 points
  3. Just to close the loop, I thought I would reply to close this thread. Ray T kindly offered to come out with us on Sunday and show us the ropes (well more how to steer and do locks). He did an absolutely fantastic job including doing some prep ahead of the day with some 'must read' literature. As a result we have a good grounding in what to do - and what not to do - so the first delivery trip up to Knowle went really well with no dramas at all. Well done Ray T. I am really glad I posted on here to ask if someone was willing to spend some time with us as it could have taken us a month of screwing up if we hadnt asked. I would really recommend any newcomers do the same. I will offer my services in a similar way once I have picked up the necessary experience (in 35 years time!). What a great forum this is!!!!
    4 points
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  5. 4 points
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  7. I would literally bet the farm that Richard Saillet had been operating for decades before I ever had the misfortune to know him. The way he operated during the time I rented his mooring and lived next to him and his wife/business partner was insane. He had about six scrappy cars off the road parked all over the compound, and burner mobiles in each. You'd come in after dark and he'd be sat in one of the cars on a phone laughing and making hand gestures, and would look like a rabbit caught in the headlights when he spotted you. He was prolific on dating sites (Plenty of Fish and likely others) and would always be getting caught out by his wife trying to arrange meets with some seriously elderly women. He and his wife had only been married a few months at that point, and they had only been together a couple of years-having met on a dating site. One memorable time as he was driving out of the car park to go to a trade show, one of the shop staff had just found one of these burners and taken it to his wife. She went through it and found that this "trade show" overnighter was actually a meet from a dating site, and chased him out of the car park as he pulled away, waving the phone behind him as he burned off and screaming at him. All this was totally standard behavior for him, and that I witnessed first with my own eyes, not rumours from the towpath. I left his mooring in 2015 when the business was spiralling down-the shop was half empty because the suppliers had all cut him off for non-payment, and the shop staff weren't being paid, despite him going to Gambia (where he has a house) regularly for holidays. The office was full of piled up final demands and court notices, you literally couldn't miss spotting them as soon as you walked in it was so bad. The admin girls used to spend pretty much all day lying to creditors on the phone. At that point they were working hard at separating EcoToilets both on paper and in practice, moving it to a new premises in Leicester, presumably to avoid it being taken down by the Canal Shop's debt as it went. But the EcoToilets business was/is 100% him, his baby, his grand plan to retire rich. I left the moorings in 2015, because I didn't feel safe there and I was very clear with Richard that that was the reason. He had three online moorings adjacent to the shop in a row nose to tail with no other boats or people within shouting distance after shop hours, with me in the middle. He was moored on the one side of me, and for a while (although not at the time that I left-he had been booted out for being too gobby about the shit Richard got up to) moored on the other side was a convicted sex offender. He also had a friendship/business dealings with a man that I in no way ironically refer to as the devil, who had previously physically threatened me over (no seriously) my asking him to return a plate he had borrowed. When I was eventually told that the guy behind me is a convicted sex offender who has to sign in but please don't tell anyone, I confronted Richard about mooring me (a single woman) next to him, knowing that the only way off my boat was past his, and that often he and I were the only ones there. Richard Saillet asked me why I was worried about being moored next a paedophile given that I was hardly in his target demographic (I did not know until that point that the guy had been convicted of child sex offences) and finished off with something along the lines of "and look at you, you should be so lucky anyway." When I went to tell him I was leaving the moorings and sort out my shop tab, he went literally mental-like a Jekyll and Hyde thing, and stood over me screaming and threatening me (right in front of his wife, two admin staff and with a client on the phone), and told me he would chain my boat up if I tried to leave. I went to tell the owner of the entire compound ( who didn't care, because you know, that's how Saillet got away with his bullshit for years etc.,) and after, phoned a friend in a panic. While I was on the phone to her, he came running (literally running) across the yard screaming and threatening me again. He has been getting away with his badness for years, and I have no doubt that he has come off very lucky to get just eight years after having finally been caught for what I can only dream are the worst offences in a long career as a professional scumbag. In the time that I knew him and his wife, she was horribly unhappy and in poor health having just begun to really see what kind of man she married. She had thrown her money into his business, and could not walk away without losing everything at 70-something. From the picture I have of it all, she was a victim too, albeit I have had no contact with her since I left. It's all horrible and grubby and disgusting but I am very glad that now it is all out in the open. So many people thought he was awesome and defended him rigorously when some of this genie first started to break out of the bottle.
    3 points
  8. A nasty piece of work. They should however have added ten years on for supplying composting toilets to gullible people also.
    3 points
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  13. I think you should work hard until you are 50 or 60 and build up a good pension plan, or one day you will find your savings gone and your health failing. Then what will you do? Unless you already have a property worth one million plus that can fund your dream long term? Nothing wrong with dreams but sometimes that's all they are. Some people's dream is to retire on a massive lottery win but this needs a 'plan b' because they never win it.
    2 points
  14. I spend the rest of the day arguing with my wife who demands to know why the **** we haven't got another means of heating the water..
    2 points
  15. Sorry Chris, I didn't mean to imply anything different. There are thousands of his units around, he personally fitted a lot of them. People aren't psychic. And there is actually some poetic justice in the fact that in the future, the only time people are likely to think about him at all is when they shit in one of his bogs...
    1 point
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  18. I would be pretty pleased to own a composting toilet, I do however have a moral issue with greasing the palms of a convicted sex offender. Hopefully the very helpful guy on FB who bespoke builds and sells really innovative ones will see a swift upturn in trade...
    1 point
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  22. Completely agree especialy when you factor in that 4 years will be knocked off as standard anyway if he is a good boy whilst there. I can assure you there will be others there is no way he will have been convicted for all offences he has commited, absolutely no way.
    1 point
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  24. Much better to just have the positives and ignore the rest eh!
    1 point
  25. It is an interesting point. There are still quite a few old steel narrowboats that are not blacked very often, and certainly have never had zinga or 2 pack epoxy applied and maybe don't even have anodes which are still happily cruising the waterways. But, I guess the ones that were not so lucky have long ago been scrapped. So is it worth the risk??? I suppose it is a bit like house insurance in that you only truly get your monies worth if the house burns down which normally is NOT what you want.
    1 point
  26. Ty for replies. I agree it seems it might be a good idea to give it a try by hiring, but, in fact I kind of think that it may or may not be "like" living aboard as a cc. Certainly I think I should gather a "feel" for boating by going to look at boats. This is not too easy, as I live in Scotland. I have lived on a boat for a few months, which was fine, the marine part of it is not a concern. I love the thought of waking up on a summers morning to the sound of the dawn chorus, and the adventure of travel to visit historic places.
    1 point
  27. The only urgent fridge help I can offer is my ability to empty it of lager should the need arise
    1 point
  28. Problem you have is people can not afford to get onto the property ladder.....you need huge deposits etc so people see boats as a way of property ownership and i applaud this as young people want to own something have the passion and drive to go it alone instead of living with mum and dad. Security of property is in my opinion handy and reasuring but not available for all.
    1 point
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  31. You are right to sticking to what you know imho, that's how I did it by getting an electrician that spends a lot of his time wiring up barges on the thames. Also you don't need to duct your artic blue as the outside insulation acts as a conduit. neil
    1 point
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  34. If you were more switched on I think you would know watt has sparked Mr Dog's current outage. I think it's just a phase he's going through.
    1 point
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  37. How much simpler can it be ? You cruise, moor for 14 days, move (a 'reasonable distance') moor for 14 days, move ....................................... 3 months later turn around and do it again. There have been very strict guidelines and a 'monitored CCing requirement' on the K&A (a couple of years ago) resulting in many boats being put under enforcement, some forced to leave C&RT waters, others sold, etc etc. This was a summary of the 1st Quarters monitoring : Kennet & Avon Canal, west of Devizes In August we produced the first quarterly report (covering May – July) on the Kennet & Avon Local Plan and presented it to the local Waterway Partnership for their information. The report, which is published on our website, showed that a total of 6,954 boat sightings (1,291 individual boats) have been recorded in the K&A Local Plan area between Bath and Foxhangers. On visitor moorings, 99 boats were sighted as having exceeded the free mooring period on a first occasion and were contacted to remind them about the plan. 22 boats were sighted as coming to the end of their free mooring period on a second occasion. Of these, four boats have exceeded the free mooring period on more than one occasion and been issued with extended stay charges. In terms of moving between neighbourhoods, during the period six 14-day sighting reports have been completed. 147 boats have not moved since the last 14 day sighting. They have been contacted by text, email or phone to remind them to move, or if there is a reason that they cannot move to contact the Trust. 93 have been contacted once, 36 have been contacted twice, 12 have been contacted three times and 6 have been contacted on four or more occasions. As a result of receiving multiple 14 day reminders, 18 boats have been sent a letter reminding them that if they do not follow the Local Plan they may attract the attention of enforcement officers. The attached may be of interest - there is an ever increasing number of people who want to either 'get off the rat-race', or try to get 'cheap living' around a major city, this is leading to a lot of people who have no concept or actual desire to live on a boat but are becoming boaters by default. They 'sign up' to the CC rules but then declare it 'unfair' when it is suggested that to comply it is unlikely that they either have children requiring schools, be able to work from a fixed location, medical requirements, ageing parents or 'whatever', the concept of 'continuous cruising' is just that - 'continuous cruising', stopping a few days here, a few days there and generally being 'of no fixed place'. Many boaters seem to be able to comply, but many, many 'floating flat owners' seeking an 'alternative life' have problems complying and the reality of emptying toilets & filling water tanks every few days, carrying 25kg bags of coal & gas bottles soon becomes 'a bit of a bind'. To answer your questions - yes you can do it and have a job and a car but you will need to make major changes to the accepted 'norms of life'. CC-monitoring-review-march-2016.pdf
    1 point
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  42. As other have said, please use the search facility and/or just spend and hour or three browsing this site. There are DOZENS if not hundreds of threads here discussing in detail all the questions you are asking. People here get rather weary of being asked to start from scratch when its all there waiting to be read in the first place Welcome to the forum by the way!! (Edit to moderate my comments!)
    1 point
  43. Excellent Danielle, Much appreciated, and that fills in a little bit more history. If your grandfather still has an interest, then Flamingo is often out and about visiting the historic boat rallies, and we would be delighted to meet him and reunite him to the boat, and maybe take him for a ride around if he wanted. I don't know where he is based, but we hope to be at (at least) both the Braunston show in June, and the one at Alvecote in August. Sadly both Edgware and Balham that you mention are very much unloved at the moment, and are in semi derelict state. Flamingo has come to us as a major project, so needs several years of work to make her really smart again, but we love the boat to bits, and we will get there eventually! Thanks for taking the trouble to ask your granddad about all this.
    1 point
  44. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  45. Maybe you should stick to commenting on subjects you know more about then?
    1 point
  46. Braidbar have Tiree, 58' trad stern at Poynton.
    1 point
  47. Middlewich boats has the famous Willow, which not only has a trad stern but a back cabin and an engine room.
    1 point
  48. It always makes me smile to see someone peering awkwardly around one of those aero dynamical plastic wedges people put on car roofs. I had an oncoming boat try and wave me onto the wrong side of the navigation because he didn't want to drag his roof furniture into the tree branches. I don't think so buddy!
    1 point
  49. I've got really great double glazing and I get no condensation either on the glass or frames. I also have a great oven and hob, no battery charging issues, virtually unlimited 240v electrical supply, great tv reception, and a huge American style fridge freezer. However, on the boat I have boat windows, etc, etc.
    1 point
  50. And on C&RTs latest - "you must comply with the CC rules even if you have a mooring" HHJ Halbert stated : 6:3 There are clear anomalies in both positions, CRT clearly regard the occupation of moorings by permanently residential boat owners who do not move very much as a significant problem (see paragraphs 3.5 and 3.6 above). However, neither the statutory regime in subsection 17(3) nor the guidelines can deal with this problem. A boat which has a home mooring is not required to be “bona fide” used for navigation throughout the period of the licence, but neither is it required to ever use its home mooring. The act requires that the mooring is available, it does not say it must be used. The guidelines also have this effect. The boat is still subject to the restriction that it must not stay in the same place for more than 14 days but there is nothing whatever to stop it being shuffled between two locations quite close together provided they are far enough apart to constitute different places. If those who are causing the overcrowding at popular spots have home moorings anywhere in the country the present regime cannot control their overuse of the popular spots. Such an owner could cruise to and fro along the Kennet & Avon canal near Bristol and the home mooring could be in Birmingham and totally unused. So, the answer (if you want to shuffle about) is get a mooring somewhere and never use it. Let the debate begin !!!
    1 point
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