Boat safety certificate
Every four years, boats on the UK canal and waterways require a safety examination called a Boat Safety certificate, or BSS.
Most of the stuff they’re looking at is to do with your fuel and energy supply and isolation. That means the batteries, the gas and the diesel.
There’s a set of guidelines published in the Boat Safety Scheme, and compliance is dependent on one of their certified inspectors visiting your boat and ensuring it meets the required standards.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the inspector Mark Paris, based in Thrupp, (just down the road) come and do an inspection. It failed due to a leaky regulator.
The pressure in the gas system to the stove had dropped off, and it’s something I had noticed by a slightly less aggressive flame.
I was going to check on this device because of that fact.
It’s called the regulator.
This is a new regulator with has a pressure gauge on it. This can be used to a)see how much gas is in the can. b)see if it is leaking.
The gas bottle is full. And since replacing the regulator, my system is gas tight. No problems.
There were an number of other lesser things which were also been brought to my attention. These include fitting fuses to the battery side of two of my solar panels.
Additional solar
When I fitted the additional panel, I bought a battery side fuse to fit. This sits between the battery and the charge controller, (which controls the solar panel output). If there’s a short circuit on the battery>controller side, the fuse will trip preventing stopping the batteries from blowing up or the wires melting, or something nasty like that.
My existing sets of panels fitted had already been wired with fuses when I put them in. This last one I hadn’t got around to. So, that was a job I had to do.
As you can see, the fuse was able to go into the existing fusebox alongside the existing fuses. All I had to do was run the MC4 cable to the back, insert the fuse I bought from Bimble Solar, connect it up press it in and put the box back in place.
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