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Are pretty shocking. Northamptonshire county council went bust in 2021. It’s services have been suffering ever since. Perhaps one of the most noticeable of these is the state of the roads, which seem to be something of a running joke.

After going out working last Thursday, I’ve got this little bit of content illustrating exactly what I mean!

Shocker.

Claiming for damage caused by potholes

By the time I’d got out of the village, which was under 2 minutes, the tyre had deflated enough to be on the rim.

That’s not generally consistent with something which can be repaired.

That night, I wrote an email to the council and ordered the tyre.

I got a reply the following day.

I’ll keep you updated as to what goes on with this…

Now into Twyford wharf

After spending 3 weeks in Spiceball Park, in central Banbury, I’ve moved around 3 miles south.

I’m now at Twyford Wharf.

With the windows, the road noise is now non-existant.

I’ve done some posts previously about Twyford https://www.michaeltyler.co.uk/?s=twyford

Sunday sailing

I had to do some chores:

• Get water: Fill the water tank. After 5 weeks, it was almost empty.
• Empty the waste water: From the pump-out toilet; doing a self-pump out (often smelly). Cropredy marina tried to charge me £25 last time. It’s usually £12. Takes about 20 minutes to do it manually.
• Gather and chop some wood: Standard. Wood for next week including some kindling. Cut it up using circular saw and the solar power from batteries.
• Clean the engine sump pan: It had filled up pretty full with a mixture engine oil and coolant water. This needed pumping out with a 12v electric pump.
• Grease the oil glands: On the drive shaft and steering gear. Need to do it every now and then.

These jobs meant I got a bit mucky. By the time I got down to my new home mooring, I was pretty tired. Also, I’d had to re-adjust the fanbelt which was squeaking pretty badly coming through the main part of Castle Quay, the central area. It needed to be tightened up. It’s always difficult to judge how tight it needs to be. Tight seems tight, it’s only when it starts squealing like a banshee that you realise, your tight wasn’t tight enough.

Otherwise, it was a really nice, sunny day.

Battery developements

The stop-start battery in my Audi, I’d been told when it went in for a service, had become a bit of a problem.

Stop-start simply means the vehicle shuts off when it comes to a standstill, supposedly, saving fuel and reducing pollution.

Mine’s not been working for the last 2 months.

I don’t think it’s saved me any fuel not having one.

It is something I want to get fixed, none the less, so I took it into Halfords.

They do a free battery test.

The customer service assistant handily came out and did mine as quickly as it took to get the equipment.

Free battery and alternator test

The test on the battery showed it had charged to 131% of capacity. I know from the boat, when batteries absorb ‘too much’ charge, this is usually an indicator that they’re shot. It’s simply not being absorbed, it’s ‘surface charge‘ which is useless and dissipates as soon as the charging ceases.

Turns out the alternator was fine. Alternators tend to give out some distinctive symptoms when they go wrong. You would generally know if it was on the way, either through console error lights or general problems with the starting, running and cooling of the engine.

It didn’t have any of these problems.. The diagnoses was given, it’s your battery.

So. Looks like I’ll be buying more batteries very soon and all the fun that entails. I’ll be doing a blog about fitting LifePo4 batteries to a narrowboat soon! There’s something to be excited about.

In the spirit of post-industrial decay, I’ll leave you with this picture.

Until next time.