NB Caveat Emptor Blog

After picking up the bargain calorifier today, I popped to Screwfix this eve for some more parts to complete the job...

Picked up a loft tank, a small one to use as a header for the radiators and boiler:



This turned out larger than expected - it's an expansion vessel to take up the water that'll expand when hot, to avoid it dripping from the PRV and increase capacity a little. No idea where I'm going to hide it on the boat though...



Random plumbing fittings, no idea why the 1" BSP tank connectors I've bought don't actually fit the range water outlets, they should do!



And this was supposed to be a 25m coil of 10mm microbore, to get the oil from the tank to the cooker. They've given me a 120m coil of 15mm BPEX poly-butylene barrier pipe. Might have to take it back I guess! They've billed me for the right stuff though, so they must have just picked the wrong one!



Need to decide for tomorrow morn what's going to site next - there's just not enough space or security on site to actually leave all this stuff there!

PC

Been a busy first day on site today, with Ben. Started early at 8:30 to collect stuff together and get over to the boat.

I managed to catch up with Ray, the boss, [not Ray the welder] about the hull work needed. He suggested prepping today (at 38ukp/hour) and letting the other Ray decide what to do on the welding front tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. The only visible work today has been a bit of grinding back of the affected area and a little piece of D-bar welded on.

So, plan for the day was to get on with emptying the final bits and bobs from the open space, and build the new wall, but first we had to deal with removing the old bathroom window and installing a new one next to it - as well as capping off the old hole...

Ben's tidying up the GRP with the flap disc, after cutting the new hole on the right - old window hole on the left:



New window in place and sealed... There is a bonded piece of ply over the old window hole from the inside, which will get covered in glassfibre later on.



The wall went up next, not without some faffing around to actually get it onto the boat, including removing the hatch. This is made up of two pieces of 19mm ply, one small piece acting as a filler to make up the width against the hull side. These aren't keyed into the floor, thank goodness!



Whilst talking to Ray earlier, and following Ben's idea to install the range cooker this week, I asked about calorifiers [pressurised hot water tanks] and discovered a second hand one in the shop - about 70L, single coil - perfect for the job. I got it for a very reasonable £50.



Whilst throwing the old stuff out into the skip, we did a bit of wombling and came across this handy piece of flue pipe with roof collar, so home it came! I'm thinking this might be one way of keeping the old stove until the new cooker works, but that might not be possible. Either way, a bargain for free.



Back to the proper work, Ben got on with adding some new battens to the cabin sides, and starting adding the Selotex/Kingspan PU foam insulation - we're off to buy the main lot of this in the morning.



This one is in place to give an idea of how narrow this doorway will be - seems fine to me, but we'll see. We could always come up with a bendy door/wall interface to give a bit more shoulder room.



Since it was well dark by then, we called it a day.

Lots more to do tomorrow, including finishing the insulation, getting the ceiling panelling up and starting the wall outer covering in veneered [Oak] ply. Going to take the bath to site tomorrow to make sure it fits, although it might come home again for a later date!

PC

Hmm, despite a late start this morning, post beers last night with friends, I managed to get a fair bit done.

I'd been looking at the sorry state of the gunnels and decided that it wouldn't hurt to give them a quick wire brush and a lick of paint... Part of the thinking here was that this is where the cabin top [GRP] joins to the steel hull, and I'd spotted some rust going on, as well as one leak on the inside - so it'd be a good plan to find out how bad it was and, during the week, put a bead of sealant down this seam.



Safe to say, this took longer to prepare than I'd expected - it was a good hard couple of hours with the angle grinder and cup brush before I could start painting...

The results are much better than I'd expected, given the surface prep wasn't that good... It's painted with Screwfix value grey floor paint.





After getting all that done, Ben popped in for a quick site inspection before starting work tomorrow - he seems to think it'll all be okay, and won't take too long.

It was starting to get dark, so I dug out the site floodlight and got on with ripping the rest of the old bathroom out. The toilet/water-pump wall was a right bugger to remove, and I've ended up leaving the bottom section in place, as it's got pipes running through it, and I want to sort that out tomorrow.

The old shower tray is a full size house, porcelain one and weighs lots - I can't shift it myself - no doubt Ben will have a plan.



Whilst removing the last of the pine cladding, I found the hole in the roof that drips on me whilst I'm in bed. It seems to be something along the hand rail - I wonder if someone's tried to fix the rail and drilled into the roof in the process?



I also discovered that the gunnels are a bit rusty, and one of my more major leaks was being held at bay by two plastic bags, taped in place. Above it, at the top of the cabin, there's a dodgy-looking fibreglass repair too. I wonder if this was an incident with a bridge?

Area covered by plastic bags:



Cabin bodge:



I even washed up, in an attempt to keep the place tidy - it's like a building site with all sorts of grime being walked through, not helped by waiting for the blacking to set before using the sink, as it drains down the side of the hull...



Also, while Ben was there, he suggested we should perhaps get the range cooker, mentioned in an earlier post, onto the boat while it was out of the water and hence stable... This requires some thought as it'll leave me with no fridge or cooker until I get it all sorted. Going to have a think about it tonight... It goes in this area here:



So, cracking on with things in the morning, starting at 8:30. Early night tonight for me!

Right, I'm still knackered, but I can't let this slide too much, so I've uploaded some pics to post here.

Yesterday, as already said, was spent sorting out the pitting on the sides, and re-blacking those sections...

Via a late Screwfix-and-Halfords trip, picked up some rust converter and a big pack of epoxy resin:



Used the converter first, the thinking being that it wouldn't be good to trap active rust at the bottom of the pits, and also that it'd bond better to clean steel:



Then filled with resin and waited a fair time for them to go hard - took a while in the low temperatures outside. They displayed a tendency for the resin to gravitate downwards, so I spent some time running around trying to fix it, and eventually gave up!



This left the areas I'd blacked around still to do:



But it was worth it to see the whole lot done... Note that I've still left the bit at the bottom as it'll need welding this week:



On a different note, Ben popped round and delivered some of the sheet materials he'd picked up for me, so they're taking space in my parents' garage until Monday... The sheets are 19mm and 12mm ply, former for the wall, and latter for everything else! The studwork timber is 38x63mm C16-grade softwood. Hopefully that'll bend enough to be useful!



And after all the blacking work, I spent a few more hours taking things apart inside:

A very open plan bathroom... This remaining wall is proving hard to remove.



This wall is staying, between the new bathroom and the kitchen, but the tiling is coming off!



Right, so back to it on Sunday.

Right, I haven't got time this eve to post photos of today's work, as I'm knackered! I'll put today's up with tomorrow's...

I managed to pick up some rust converter last night, along with a bulk quantity of epoxy resin and spent this morning using both to fill the pitting on the hull sides.

I then blacked those bits individually, then managed to get another coat done along the whole hull.

In the time during waiting for things to set and activate, and for a few hours at the end of the day, I continued with the ripping out of the interior, including just about demolishing the old bathroom. Blimey, these walls are put together in a strong way!

Anyhow, more tomorrow! Plan is to finish the ripping out, and perhaps sand and paint the gunnels, depending on a (again!) trip to Screwfix.

PC

Whilst waiting for the postman this morn, who will hopefully bring my new kitchen light for the boat, to replace the old and dim, and now dead one, I finished a quick sketch of the bedroom on the boat, to be constructed this week.



This is a view from the bow doors, facing forwards through the bedroom to the new bathroom wall.

The floating shelf in the foreground is the top shelf that makes up my desk, in reality there's more to it than that. The above bed storage is pictured, and yes, it does start sort-of in the middle of the ceiling, as it needs to be away from the window!

Weird eh?

PC

Take two bottles into the shower?



Tenacious stuff, blacking...

PC

Yup, one of the last deliveries I hope!



The idea here is that the bath and basin will drain into this, which will turn itself on with a float switch, emptying the water over the side.

I'm not quite sure how this will work with a bath, if you just pull the plug, as the lid isn't well sealed and may overflow! We'll see. I may extend one of the inputs up high as a vent pipe and seal the lid with silicone as well as possible. Hmm!

At least it's here, and should ensure a switch-free automatic, house-like experience!

PC

Out of interest, en route from Alvecote to Streethay, I came across this:



This was somewhere near Hopwas, as far as I can recall.

I hope the owner knows!

PC

So, post survey, it was time to get stuck into the blacking... The boatyard had pressure washed the hull for me yesterday, which had dried out nicely, leaving just a little flaky old blacking above the water line and some remaining metal crumbliness further down.

I had a willing (?) and able (!) helper for today, in the way of my father:



I got stuck in with a big grinder and cup brush, giving it all a clean up, whilst Gren got on with using a sharp scraper to tidy up the old flakes of blacking.

That took an hour or so, and then it was on with applying this stuff:



Yes, I'm using B+Q's new version of what used to be called Aquaseal - basically cheap black bitumen paint. I've read on the Canalword forum that it's the same as the cheap blacking from Chandlers but half the price. I bought 4 5L tins of it, at £13 a tin, so very cheeeep!

Warmed up nicely in hot water:



Then on with the painting, dressed in comedy chemical style suits. The stuff gets everywhere, I need to wash my hair with Fairy liquid tonight to get it all out - especially from painting the uxter plate above my head. Gren did the rollering over the old stuff above the water, and I used a brush to get into the bits below.



I chalk marked the worst pitting, where it was getting on for 3mm deep, and I've decided (not my idea, though) to use a rust converter on them, and then fill with an epoxy resin adhesive, so I painted around the pits so I can fill them in tomorrow.

The result after just one coat is excellent:







Note shiny anode again... The paint is still wet in this pic so that's why it's shiny. The observant amongst you will note I've left a two inch gap at the bottom of the sides, where the aforementioned weld erosion is, in order to save them having to grind it off again to do the welding, if that's the route that's chosen...

We didn't manage more than one coat, as by the time the first had dried, we'd have been finishing the second in the dark!

Tomorrow's task is to fill the pits and put another coat or two on, then I must get on with ripping out the inside some more!

Cheers to my father for his help today, I couldn't have got the coat on in the day without him.

PC

Boat-refurb-day-2 started with us arriving on site at just gone nine, on a day that started fine and dry. I made a brew and went off to find out about the planned ultrasound hull survey.

The boatyard owner popped round with Ray, who seems to be a very knowledgeable welder, and poked around a bit, proclaiming that I'd need a new baseplate, that the pitting was terrible, along with needing the rudder bearing fixing, new anodes and a new stern drive gear...(!)

I certainly couldn't have afforded all that, but I did want to press ahead with the ultrasound to see exactly what we're working with.

Ray marked up a few places on the sides, base and uxter plate [counter], cleaned them with the grinder and applied the conductive gel. I did comment that I hoped it wasn't pregnant.

Turns out that the thicknesses are all quite good - about 4mm average on the base with 1mm pitting, around 5.5mm on the sides with quite bad pitting 2-3mm deep, and the uxterplate showed up a 6mm, which is how thick it would have started as!

Pics of results:




The only point for concern, really, was the external weld all along the base plate edge had cracked or worn off, and the seam between the sides and base was visible in places. I suspect this is internally welded as well, or I'd have sunk by now!



Edit, I've found the proper photo above, now!

Basically, where the side plate meets the base plate, the base plate would have originally overhung the boat slightly, and a fillet welt put in place along the right-angle join, inside and out. On the outside, that weld has worn away so there's nothing left and you can see the edge of both plates joining. In the following piccy, the red line denotes where you can see the 'crack' or join along the seam...



My suggestion for this is to grind a groove with a plasma disc into the seam and run a bead of weld down the entire length, but Ray suggests welding a 2" strip of 5mm steel along the edge, just above the seam, to provide something to fillet to, and also to provide extra thickness for wear and tear in the future. If the price works out to be afordable, I'll go with that option - if not, I may tackle the job this week myself with my MIG.

So, all in all, she's a sound old bird, apart from the base weld.

Quite relieved to be honest!

Anyway, on with the blacking...

PC

Whilst the boatyard boyos were pressure washing the hull, I got on with making a start on stripping out the inside. It was harder work than I expected - maybe back in the 70s they'd built strongly for the hire market?



Removing the tongue and groove, as above, was quite easy, and revealed a thin layer of loft insulation - new in places. There're some mildew marks on the underside of the GRP where there's been condensation, and you can see that the handrails are screwed into place from inside, with tiny spreader washers. Must do something about that whilst this is apart.



Everything's screwed together in interesting ways, but the worst bit are the bulkheads. These are 'keyed' or 'dowelled' into the floor, and trapped either side at the top by the main roof battens, running all the way across the boat. To remove them, I had to cut across them, down from the roof [deckhead, okay...] to free the top and bottom halves separately. I'll make sure to dream up a more sensible way of putting the new bulkhead back in! The pic above shows the grooves in the floor that the bulkheads slot into.



So by the end of the day, I'd removed the main cupboard, the vanity unit and the whole bed assembly, along with most of one side of wall cladding, and half the ceiling cladding. The matresses/sofa springy bits are being kept until I buy a new mattress once I see that the new bed turns out as per the plans! The curtains are down for measurement, and throwing away, as they're vile.

Generally, the battening looks quite good, so I've asked Ben to hold back on buying too much new structural timber until we've got it all apart.

I'm taking a site light tomorrow, so I can work into the evening on ripping the rest apart - the main bathroom comes out tomorrow!

PC

About lunchtime today, Streethay wharf pulled the boat out onto the slipway. This was using a JCB and a trailer arrangement. Took two goes to get aligned as the first time we were well off the horizontal - would have been a bit difficult getting anything straight on the inside.

During the afternoon, they pressure washed the boat off for me, and I've an ultrasound on the hull booked for first thing in the morning. To be honest, it looks fine to me, with little difference between above and below the waterline. The replating from 1994 looks okay too still, and there's minor 1mm deep pitting in places. We'll see what the machine says...

The only things I've noticed are that there's a few blobby bits of external base-plate weld which have crumbled off, the rudder skeg bearing is more a hole than a bearing, the anodes are just mounting plates now, and I'd picked up a morrison's bag around the prop...

My father and I are going to be scraping, brushing and re-blacking the boat tomorrow. Might get some help from Rob from my home base, and possibly Ben Blake from UoW too, on Sat.

Ended up moored overnight three boats out, as I said before:



Lining up for the slipway...



Out of the water!



Pressure washing the junk off the hull...



Results - can't believe how effective a big pressure washer has been at removing the flaky bits.




Onwards with the work...

PC

At Alvecote, my Three dongle only managed 500kbit downstream and around 100kbit up. The latency is horrible too.

Here at Streethay, I'm getting:



If only I could get this at home base...

I'm currently considering a 2.1ghz repeater, or possibly a tall mast!

Typically the T-Mobile dongle only gets GPRS in both locations - I'm looking forward to the recently announced cooperation agreement between 3 and T-Mobile which should see better coverage.

PC

Hmm, thinking of power consumption on battery for a night at Streethay, and for future cruising, plus when I come to sell the boat, I took a risk on some LED MR16 lights off Ebay.

These are the cheapest ones I could find at £15 for 5. They're 20-LED ones, so were never going to be particularly bright. They run on AC as well as DC and don't have polarised connections, so I suspect an internal pulse-drive unit is onboard, so hopefully they won't mind the 14v from the charger. We'll see.

This is a typical 35w [I think, might be 50w] downlighter:



This is one of the LEDs:



And a view of two LED ones and the old halogen:



Conclusion? Bright enough for accent lighting, but not for main lights. Maybe a 50-LED version or spending some more money would be a good idea? I'm going to consider putting six in the bedroom and seeing what happens.

The also flicker a little bit, with one or two of the LEDs sometimes going on and off. Might be because they were cheap?

A useful experiment in any case.

PC