People who live in houseboats/canalboats

[fractionMan]

If you're happy living out in the countryside, with just the occasional foray into town, you won't have any problems.

I'll second this. It's not as crowded as some would have you believe. I wouldn't want to CC in london though.

I'm currently on a mooring with enough room for a dozen boats and I'm the only one there!

 

[El Jugador]

Does this mean we've just got unlucky with the wind direction, or is there likely to be a fault which needs fixing? We've been on the boat since June and had no issues before.

We did have a complete disaster with the water system last month - the water pump forgot how to turn itself off and the overflow goes into the engine bay instead of into the cut, so the engine was drowned by the time we knew what had happened. Most of it got fixed a couple of weeks ago, and I can't think of any work that was done which might redirect fumes into the boat, so I'm not sure they're connected.

How interesting - where/from what does your water pump have an overflow may I ask? You surely can't mean your engine water pump since the engine cooling system only holds a few litres and any leak would ruin the engine long before the engine bay could be flooded? Or do you mean your drinking water pump overflowing some bath/basin or some kind of header tank into the engine bay? I'm confused.

 

[fractionMan]

Me too now I think about it

Overflow from what?

 

[ymu]

It was the main water system. I don't completely understand it, but it is a pretty standard set-up, going by the number of tow-path advisers we had looking at it. There's a discharge pipe with a valve that opens under pressure - it's a safety thing for if the water pressure gets too high, I think. The discharge pipe really should run outside the boat, but it normally only dribbles water so I guess they didn't bother.

We're not 100% sure that this was the fault, but it wasn't the accumulator and the valve has been replaced twice, and the problem has resolved since the pump was replaced. It wasn't switching itself off when you turned the tap off, just running permanently (frequently accompanied by a great clanking from the calorifier as the valve gave way) so presumably it was still pumping water out of the tank and it had to find somewhere else to go. It was pumping out several litres per minute. We caught it just as the prop-shaft went under ...

 

[fractionMan]

Possibly a lucky escape then. Sounds expensive though

I'm not sure what would happen if my pump got stuck on 'pump'. Presumably the pressure would build up in the pipework until something gave way. I guess.

 

[ymu]

The engine was actually runnning quite happily after we'd bailed it out a bit but the starter motor eventually gave up the ghost, some wiring got shorted and burnt out and a couple of batteries had to be replaced, plus the alternator but that'd been struggling for a while. About £600, but it's a rented boat so we didn't have to foot the bill.

Worst thing was the landlady screaming at us for "obviously not checking the engine often enough" for it to have got that bad. We were stranded with no water left in the tank when she saw it, so she couldn't see how frighteningly fast the flow was. She's not said a word since the engineer had a look at the fault in action - we'd have sunk if we hadn't been checking the engine bay daily. I took a video for use if she ever brings it up again.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

When you move mooring how far do you have to go? I live near the Thames and there's a mooring near me that is 24 hours max. according to the signs, but the same boats always seem to be there. Can they get away with staying a while, pissing off for one night and coming back? Who monitors this type of thing?

 

[ymu]

The Thames is covered by the Environment Agency. The rules are different, and weird, on the rivers.

If it's private land, the landowner owns the river to the centre - there may be a mix of permanent and visitor moorings in the spot you're thinking of. Or the boats may have been there from before the regulations were enforced - I know a guy moored on the river in central Oxford who says he's been told they won't be asking him to move on because he's been there from before they cared (but he is trying to sell the boat and it's crap, so this may be bullshit - but he's certainly been there for a long time whilst loads of other boats have been moved out of that area). There are also some stretches of river where noone claims ownership, so noone can move the boats on. Or the area is lighty patrolled. Or the occupants are ignoring enforcement notices.

 

[ymu]

British Waterways have the clearest rules. They define a "place" as a village, hamlet or named district of a large town. The distance between "places" will vary enormously, from a few hundred yards in town to many miles in the countryside.