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.