On Schedule !

Week 118

Sunday

The fitter was largely involved with an amateur radio activity on Sunday morning, leaving home just after 9am and not returning until just before 2pm, a little earlier than he previously envisaged.

His first job,once home and changed, was to eat the lunch that he'd brought home with him. Then he went into the garage and spent about an hour wiring up the circuit board shown in the picture. The new valves can be seen as can a 12v bulb which is temporarily masquerading as a substitute boiler pump to prove that the circuitry works. The blue and brown wires at the top left of the board will be replaced by the wiring to and from the thermostats on the boat and the wiring to the valves will probably need to be extended once the valves are installed on the boat.

With the wiring and testing done, the fitter went dancing around the garage, hopeful that, save for the actual installation, the saga of the valves is finally over. The circuit board was then screwed to a small piece of plywood which we hope will make installation on the boat a lot easier.

Next came the task of applying the fourth and final coat of varnish to the Ash and the Houdini hatch liner, a job which took a little over thirty minutes.

And so ended the garage exploits for the day and possibly the week. The fitter then headed for the laptop where we wrote a small report relative to the morning's activities and then renewed the boat's licence. It wasn't until he actually paid the amount that he realised that he should have delayed the process by a few days so that the credit card assignment was made in the next accounting period, earning him a few pence of interest in the interim.

Next it was time to complete last week's notes and write up the start of this week's.The fitter then spent a while drawing out the wiring diagram of the circuit board so that this could be fixed to the boat just below the circuit board for future reference. What he still has to work out though is where exactly the circuit board will be fitted on the boat so that it is easily accessible if maintenance is required. Perhaps the dance around the garage was a bit premature.

Monday

This does look to be a quiet week boat wise. We've run out of boat related things to do at home and have no immediate plans to go to the boat before the weekend to arrange some work to bring home - not that there is now much still to do.

Monday was a classic example. A (delayed) train for a day in London that included a meeting that went on far longer than the fitter wished. He then returned home (on a punctual train), had his meal and spent the evening working on the laptop.

Tuesday

Yet another delayed train journey to London. Luckily only one meeting but a load of paperwork to attend to and then another (delayed) journey home. Lest anyone should think that the fitter is being unduly cruel, we would add that we believe that if a train (or bus or plane) is advertised to depart/arrive at a specific time, then anything other than that time is either late or early (and he checks his watch regularly to make sure that he has the correct time). One of the worst things they ever did on the railways was to say that anything up to ten minutes late was still on time. Tosh! That immediately took away any incentive to try and run to the advertised schedule.

If you know that the bus goes at 10am you make every effort to be at the stop by 10am (and a bit before). If you tell a friend that you'll visit them and arrive about 10 o'clock, you think you have a little more scope and don't try so hard. Anyway, that's nothing to do with boat building as we've never actually indicated when the fit out will be finished!

Again, the evening was spent on the laptop, although less so than on Monday evening as the fitter wanted to watch a television program before going to bed.

Wednesday

The fitter didn't have a good night on Tuesday. He woke several times and lay awake from about 4am. He made a cup of tea around 5.30am and then lay again until we decided to get up at about 8am.

We ate breakfast and then the fitter spent about an hour on jobs around the house that have constantly been pushed to one side whilst work on the boat took priority. At least those jobs are now done.

The majority of the rest of the day was spent either on the laptop or tackling paperwork associated with the visits to London. It wasn't all work as the fitter kept checking the various posts on the forum, a couple of which, related to boat wiring/safety are of specific interest as we still need to make sure that we have the earth wiring correctly installed. We also want to re-arrange the way the batteries are connected to try to extend their life.

The evening was also spent on the computer but this time on some programming tasks.

Thursday

You won't believe it but the morning train to London was actually on time, the first that the fitter has experienced since the new timetable. The journey home, earlier than normal thanks to a hospital appointment, made up for it though. The preferred train was cancelled - a long technical reason that makes the fitter's blood boil - and the alternative was then slightly delayed.

The fitter made the hospital in good time and then had to wait for nearly thirty minutes for his X-Ray. In the end he was snapped in the A & E department because the other machines were busy. Unexpectedly, that only required the minimum of clothing to be adjusted and was all over in seconds.

Back home, the fitter made for the laptop to deal with his mail. After eating he checked his mail again, whilst Mrs. Fitter watched one of them soap thingies, then we went off to the quiz. Only three teams present and our team came first.

We returned home afterwards and were in bed just before midnight wishing that the warmer weather would arrive so that we'd have an excuse to stay on the boat (and get to bed earlier)!

Friday

The fitter woke quite early. Mrs. Fitter made the tea and we eventually got up just after 7am so that the fitter could be sure of getting to the osteopath on time, especially as he was going to drop Mrs. Fitter off at the supermarket on the way.

The fitter picked Mrs. Fitter up on his way back and filled the car (tank) with petrol on the way home. A quick check of a postal address via the Internet and then it was off to the shops, from whence we returned just before midday, by which time we'd missed the mid morning cuppa, so had an early lunch, which dragged on even longer than normal. It was around 1.30pm when the fitter returned to the laptop to check mail and forum and then catch up on some work that he'd brought back from London on Thursday.

The fitter did a bit of Internet trawling before finally settling down to try to crack the problem he'd brought back from London. He eventually broke for his evening meal and then returned to the laptop for a while to finish off the task. He brought these notes up to date before returning downstairs for some television and a bedtime drink. We didn't want to be too late to bed because he want to get a full day in at the boat on Saturday and that means an early start before it gets too cold.

Saturday

We should have put a bit more urgency into getting up on Saturday morning. Instead, we lay there until well after 7am with the result that, by the time we'd dressed, had breakfast and done a few other jobs, it was nearly 9am by the time we hit the road. We called at Screwfix on the way to pick up some screws and some adhesive.

We arrived at the boatyard, unloaded the car, lit the fire and the gas boiler (for the radiators) and then went for a cup of tea with the boss. With one thing and another it was 10.30am before we went back to our boat, so we didn't bother with an 11am clock cuppa when the time came.

The first job was to have a tidy up, so that we could make more mess later!

The ceiling panels around the Houdini hatch are not supported - because the longitudinal battens are cut away where the hatch goes. Consequently, the ceiling panels sagged very slightly. This would have made fitting the trim difficult, so we cut a couple of pieces of softwood to the appropriate length and screwed them on to the top side of the panels, edge on, to remove the sag. And that was the first messy thing we did, because we had to remove some of the excesses of foam to ensure that the softwood didn't foul the liner when it all goes together.

Then we set the (hand powered) mitre saw up and cut the first couple of pieces of trim for the Houdini hatch liner. We have decided that we may have problems getting the pin heads to sink far enough into the the trim so that they can be fully covered with filler, basically because the ceiling panels are floating free and unsupported so the nail gun has nothing to fire against. Consequently, we decided to screw the trim to the ceiling - almost the only place that we'll have exposed screws.

Furthermore, to make sure that the join between liner and trim is neat and tidy, we decided to glue the trim to the liner and then screw the whole assembly into place. With the first two pieces of trim cut and pre-drilled - pre-drilling, should make fitting easier, we glued one into place, went off to start work on the plumbing and then, just before we went to lunch, glued the second piece of trim in place. These are the two pieces of trim along the length of the liner which has the straight edges - the trim across the liner will need to be curved slightly to match the shape of ceiling.

We had to stow as much as we could off the bed as we needed to get to the far side wall of the boat to work on the plumbing alongside and behind the boiler. We then turned the mattress on its side and slid it along the floor, leaning it against the wall outside the bathroom. Finally, we stood the bed base on its side and removed all but one of the legs and leant the frame against the corridor wall in the bedroom. We could now get to the panelling alongside the boiler.

The fitter had contemplated fitting his little circuit board as close to the ceiling as he could to keep wiring runs short and the wiring tidy. He then intended to cut an access panel into the bulkhead at the foot of the bed in case he need to get to the circuit board. He clearly didn't know his own boat because when we looked at the bulkhead it was clearly evident that the boiler was so close to the outside wall that there wasn't any space to fit an access panel. We had to think again but before doing so, needed to remove the part of the bulkhead alongside the upper part of the boiler so that we could get to the wiring - the fitter did try to demount the terminal block on the top of the boiler but that wasn't enough to get to all the wiring that he wanted to.

We eventually removed the trim across the ceiling and removed the screws securing the bulkhead support to the floor - the bulkhead has been cut into several pieces to facilitate access to the boiler and airing cupboard. We could now see and access everything we needed except the supply wiring (from the fuse panel) and the connections to the wall mounted thermostat. These had been cable tied together and fixed to the boiler's exhaust hose. We could probably have got to them if we'd needed to but decided to try to work without doing so as we reckoned that we might have problems getting a replacement cable tie around the hose.

Next we had to work out how the room thermostat worked. It had three used connectors, having been wired up according to the manual. One was the supply, the second the return feed, having passed through switch and thermostat control. The third was connected to the second but had a resistor in series and went straight back to ground. We did some experiments and decided that the third wire was not needed, which made life a lot easier.

It was approaching 12.30pm by this time so we decided to stop work on the plumbing, fit the second piece of trim to the liner and then go for lunch.

We returned from lunch around 1.30pm and decided to try the Houdini hatch liner in place. It fitted well but the glue holding the trim hadn't fully secured the trim to the liner through the varnish on both, with the result that both pieces of trim came loose as soon as any pressure was put on them. Blue air time again.

Out came the abrasive and we removed as much varnish as we could from the areas where the glue would go. We then re-glued one of the pieces of trim, clamped it up and left it whilst we went back to the plumbing.

And now to sort out the wiring. We decided to place the circuit board on the wall, just below the gunwale and screwed it in place as that meant that we could cut any wiring to the finished length. We'd still had the bulb that we'd used for testing at home connected as this could simulate the boiler whilst we got the thermostats wired correctly. We connected up the room stat first and got it working before we'd connected all the wires that we thought were needed. Then we realised that the boiler's wiring strapped two of the terminals on the top together, connecting them internally to the live supply. The thermostat was connected to one of these terminals and meant the stat would work because it was also connected to the supply on the circuit board.

One valve was now working. We now turned our attention to the cylinder stat and this didn't work initially. We'd removed the connections to the magnetic valve (that was still plumbed in) when we started the wiring and needed to join those connections together before this stat would work. Both new valves were now working but, all of a sudden, the igniter on the cooker wasn't. As this was on the same circuit as the boiler pump we must have disturbed some wiring.

To cut a long story short, the fitter must have disturbed the wiring tied to the boiler's hose and the negative supply connection to the igniter had come loose. There was no easy way that we could get to the junction block to reconnect the wire so we connected it indirectly at the boiler. We're hopeful that the rest of the connections on the terminal block are OK and haven't yet decided whether we'll break the tie around the hose to check or whether we'll leave well alone and pray.

And now came the plumbing itself. Luckily, we can isolate part of the plumbing, so we only have to drain the fluid from the boiler's tank and what is in the pipework on the boiler side of the manually operated valves that we installed originally.

We soon had the fluid out, but not without some of it dripping over the floor. We removed the magnetic valve and installed the new one on the cylinder circuit quite easily. The other valve was a little more difficult to install because of the collection of pipes just above floor level alongside the boiler. In fact, we had to take a short section out of the return from the cylinder so that we could fit the new valve into the heating circuit.

We broke for afternoon tea now and an opportunity to check the freshly re-glued piece of trim. This had held, so we repeated the process with the other piece of cut trim before we had our drink.

We returned to the plumbing afterwards and proceeded to re-fill the system whereupon we found one of the inserts had come out. Luckily it was the insert where we'd broken into the pipework to drain the tank. That connection was now between the original manual valve and the new electric valve, so we didn't have to drain anything because the electric valve had been fitted in the closed position.

We started the boiler and also attempted to clean the excess fluid off the floor - not an easy job when the floor is in a confined space and has pipework and wiring immediately overhead. We checked our plumbing and the pipes were getting warm - we were using the switches in each circuit to operate the valves. We carried on trying to dry up all the excess fluid and soon realised that we were fighting a loosing battle because the joints on the reducers on the new valves weren't watertight. They weren't leaking badly but were leaking enough that they'd have drained the system if left unattended, possibly just overnight.

We'd use PTFE tape when we fitted the adapters but hadn't put the silicone on. We should have remembered the fun that we'd had with the non return valve in the engine room.

There was nothing for it but to drain the area again, remove the valves, take them home, re-make the joints,adding silicone and then take them back and try them again.

We were planning to spend a couple of nights on the boat the following weekend and would need heating as well as a means of heating water. We could wait until Friday before we brought the valves back but that could spell trouble if we still had leaks afterwards. So we decided we'd go home, remake the joints and return on Sunday to refit them. That would also provide us with the opportunity of fitting the remaining pieces of trim around the Houdini hatch liner and possibly getting that fitted whilst we left the boiler running so that we could keep checking for leaks.

We packed up the main tool box so that we'd could work on the valves at home and left everything else on the boat for use on Sunday. We took the tools to the car, shut the boat down and headed for home. We were over halfway home when the fitter realised that he'd not brought the narrow spanner home with him. It was almost 7pm and he wasn't going to go back to get it. But if he didn't he wouldn't be able to tighten the joints which would mean that the silicone wouldn't have cured by the time we got back to the boat on Sunday.

We diverted to B & Q on the way home and were able to find a pipe wench that had narrow enough jaws. We then went home and whilst Mrs. Fitter made a snack, the fitter was stripping the joints down and removing the PTFE tape. The fittings were left on the radiator to dry out whilst we ate and then whilst Mrs. Fitter watched some television and did the ironing, the fitter remade the joints, using both extra layers of PTFE tape and some silicone.

He finished, just in time to watch television for about forty five minutes before going to bed.

The weather forecast for Sunday suggested light snow showers later in the day. Hopefully we'd have done all we needed to on the boat and would be on our way home or, better still, back home before the weather deteriorated.

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