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Daventry Canal Association

Locks, Boat Lift or Inclined Plane?

 
What is the best way of raising boats from the Grand Union Canal to Daventry Town WaterSpace?

There are basically three options: locks, a boat lift or an inclined plane. All three methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

Locks

Advantages:
  • Manually operated locks are fairly simple to use, and don’t usually require supervision. Boaters are quite capable of operating the locks themselves.
Disadvantages:
  • Locks require a lot of water to work efficiently. Unless there is a good, consistent supply of water, back-pumping of water will be required to provide sufficient flow.
  • Operation of manual locks is slow (1 hour or more to negotiate 4 locks).

Boat Lift


Advantages:
  • Water consumption is minimal as only the water displaced by boats entering the boat lift is lost.
  • Due to the counter-balance of the boats only a small amount of power is required to lift and lower boats.
  • The amount of time it takes to use the boat lift is much quicker than that of using locks (perhaps 20 minutes).
Disadvantages:
  • The boat lift has to be manned.
  • Expensive to build and operate.

Inclined Plane
  • Advantages and disadvantages are similar to that of a boat lift.
  • Overall operation time of an inclined plane is probably about 30 minutes.
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