Rhyddid - live the questions now

Why oh why!

There are days when I ask myself why on earth I thought I could fit out a narrowboat. Today has been one of those days. Yesterday I cut a hole in the roof for the flue for the repositioned cooker This didn't go quite according to plan as I soon realised I was trying to cut a hole through a roof brace! This is not really a good idea especially with the tools I have available. So the flue had to move. I suspect the new position will grow on me; I didn’t have a lot of choice, so live with it.
I covered the hole last night and trusted the weather forecast. This morning a trip to Wicks and Screwfix and then on with the work. Once the flue is in place it will be a bit of a task to move the cooker, so a good bit of work before I can seal the hole properly. The first task is to cut a hole in the side of the cooker for the air inlet, Screwfix had a 63mm cutter, so that went okay. It went downhill from there. There is a 60mm flexible hose connecting the fitting in the side of the boat to the air inlet on the cooker, as I have moved the cooker this is not long enough. Now I’m sure somebody reading this will tell me they have a length of hose in their garage or know just the web site to buy it from, if you do, please keep it to yourself. I had to buy some trunking from Screwfix, they didn’t have what I really needed, but as Buster, the diesel fitter is booked for Saturday, I took what they had. So I had to cut the trunking to suit and tape it together with gaffer tape. I then realised that the air inlet already in the side of the boat from the cookers old location needed to turn round, so I move the freezer and the worktop out of the way, take the window out so I can get a spanner on one side and a screwdriver on the other. With a large hole in the side of the boat it decided to rain, not just drizzle, but heave down. Window back in and decide it is lunch time. Lunch over and the sun is back out, so window back out, move the fitting and go to put the worktop back to discover that the end panel holding up the worktop is in the way of the air inlet, or the other way round, it doesn’t really matter. So a bit of re-design and some boxing will be needed, of course by this point it’s raining again. So at this point I have the air inlet sitting in the hole the wrong way round as to re-fit it I need the window out. The new hole for the flue is covered with a large plastic bag held in place with bricks, it is pouring down outside and the patter of rain on the plastic bags reminds me of Scout camp and sitting in a tent in the rain. My only consolation is I decided to try a home delivery from Ocado yesterday and I have a very nice pint of Badger Long Days to cheer me up. The forecast for tomorrow is sunny intervals; it’s what happens between the intervals that bothers me.

Weekend update

Well the work has continued, nothing really justifying more pictures, I am however getting on. The fridge has been ordered and should arrive this week, the flue for the cooker has been ordered and likewise should be here this week. I finished wiring the relays for the heating pumps and now I have all the parts I can get the pumps and thermostats wired this week. I have been to B&Q and bought another 600mm cupboard to fit the microwave under the worktop once the new fridge is in place and the old fridge has gone to a friend to be a beer fridge. Aldi have some 12v under cupboard lights for £14, so I have bought a set and put up as wall lights, they look okay, get rid of the wires poking out of the wall and when I do find some proper wall lights they can go under the kitchen cupboards.
I also got the front doors rubbed down and some more danish oil applied, hopefully they will survive the winter better this year. So there we are, still making progress.

Kitchen worktops and central heating!

Well after a week off I feel that the fitout of Rhyddid is really moving forward again. After buying the kitchen worktops some time ago and having had an abortive attempt to cut them myself I had them cut professionally and finally I have a kitchen worktop and if I say so myself, they do look rather good. I also made a really good start with the central heating, I know it is August, but at the speed things have been happening recently on the fitout I might have heating by Christmas!

For the central heating I am having a number of skirting board radiators along the corridor. The radiator by the back door is mounted under the coat hooks and is on the hot water circuit so it should keep coats dry even in the summer; well it has been a bit damp recently. The remaining radiators are on a single run with the room thermostat mounted in the bedroom, they should provide about 4kw of heat, I’ve no real idea if this is sufficient, the normal calculations for central heating systems really don’t seem to work well on boats. I’ve had comments ranging from, ‘hope you’re getting your wood burner in before the winter, you’ll need it’, to ‘we’ll be down to you for a warm this winter then’. Hope fully somewhere in between would be good, I am hedging my bets though and planning on getting the wood burner in for the winter. It’s not that I don’t trust my central heating, the wood burner looks really good, I want the weight in place so I can get the trim sorted and sitting by a glowing fire with a good book and large malt is a very pleasant way to spend an evening!

I have also got the wiring for the heating pumps in place, I have probably made it a bit more complicated than necessary by having the thermostats switch relays to control the pumps rather then switch them directly, but the thermostats rating is a bit close to the pump load so relays it is. I’ve just realised that this section is meaningless to some of my readers, but it does make the post a decent length and bearing in mind that posts have been a bit scares recently I feel it’s a good thing!

The final job this weekend was to replace the kitchen sink pump, it seemed like a good idea eighteen months ago and to be fair it has worked okay for most of that time, however the food waste from washing up is taking its toll and after one particularly grim Sunday when the pump didn’t work as I emptied the washing up bowl and the content flowed out of the pump box over the floor, yep not pleasant, it was time to replace it with a whale gulper and a little foot switch. Works well so far and no nasty drain odour each time the pump works!

So that was my week off, very productive and no IT, excellent!

Finally some boat work

Well it has been way too long since I did any work on Rhyddid, but at long last I have felt like getting on with things again. After I had to move the cooker I realised I would need to move the pumps associated with central heating and water heating and finally I've got down to it. The pumps are now sitting just above the floor, between the feeds to the skirting board radiators and the hot water tank, this means they are more accessible than before. There is still some work to do on the wiring and all the copper pipe joints need soldering, which will be my first proper plumbing. Anyway I've made a new start and I might have central heating for the winter!

London to Brighton by bike!

So a few weeks ago a group from work decided we would sign up for the British Heart Foundation London to Brighton bike ride, Sunday was sign up day and seven of us, known as the Pharonian Peddlers, will be undertaking this little trip. We have a sponsorship page setup so if I could ask my regular readers, I believe there are one or two, to lend your support that would be great. 

Rhyddid update

Well after the fabulous weather this weekend and the first drinks on the pontoon, hardy folks us boating types you know, I’ve made a bit more progress on the kitchen front. As the cooker has moved next to a cupboard this will mean the side of the cupboard will need insulating, so Saturday was clear the dining room to give me somewhere to work and get the cupboard out so I could make a frame of 1”x1” batten, glue thinsulate to the cupboard and then cover in fibre board. Next I needed to make bracket to take the end of the worktop, so one of shelves from the kitchen cupboards that I held on to got cut up and fixed to the top of the cupboard with an end panel to support it. It all feels fairly solid, just have to wait and see. By the time this had all been achieved, the toilet cassette emptied, the sun was shining and an impromptu gathering was forming on the pontoon, so a quick tidy up and armed with a particularly fine Argentinean red, I adjourned to the pontoon; well it doesn’t do to rush these jobs you know!

So Sunday dawned and after church more work on the kitchen was the order of the day, well morning at least. As I had moved the cooker I realised that the floor under the cooker would need some bracing, so moving the cooker (all 270kgs) to one side I used the slats from the window blinds to brace the floor. As I had the floor up, I took the opportunity to extend the bracing I had already put it place to the heavy use areas. All in all a pretty productive weekend and a bit of socialising to boot! Plans are afoot to buy a patio heater between a few of us so we can enjoy the social side a bit more.

Boater preoccupations

In the short time I have been living on a narrowboat, just over 15 months now, I have come to realise that boaters have 3 main preoccupations. Top of the list is toilets, next is usually the weather and finally batteries. The endless conversations boaters will have regarding cassette versus pump out are amazing and my neighbour throws a fly in ointment as they have a composting toilet, very new wave they are. The cold weather over the last few weeks has left us cassette people feeling very smug as we walk up the pontoon to empty our cassettes at the elsan point as the pump out people fret as the boats are frozen in and so they can’t get across to the pump out point and are left having to ration toilet use on the boat to night time only and using the marina facilities during daylight hours. How it makes up for the times of emptying a cassette on a hot Sunday afternoon at a ripe elsan point because you forgot that morning and you know it won’t last till the morning!

Now if you live on a boat you are a lot more aware of the weather, if you are moored on the river it goes up and down in level by inches overnight, leaving the unsuspecting boater waking up on the floor with a boat at a precarious angle and when it rains the flow goes up to a sometimes quite astonishing rate and if you haven’t moored securely, it is the weir for you. So you do become slightly fixated with weather forecasts and every boater has their favourite forecast and many hours can pass discussing the pros and cons of your chosen forecaster, who is always spot on!

The choice of batteries for your boat is something you can agonise for hours over and everyone you ask will have an opinion, the type of battery, the capacity of the bank, 12v or 24v the choices are endless and as the weather gets warmer, well that is what my preferred forecaster is telling me, batteries will replace weather as the second favourite preoccupation of boaters, but I don’t believe anything will usurp toilets as the all time favourite.

Finally an update

It has been way too long since I posted, but to be honest there just was not much to say. Progress on the fit out has been non-existent or if anything backwards. To start with the shower was clearly leaking so during the freeze a couple of weeks ago when I started using the showers in the marina and found I didn’t need to change my routine much, I took the plunge, or rather a hammer and chisel, and started removing the tiles. Not good, the shower has obviously been leaking from day one, the floor underneath the tray will need replacing and the bottom 30cm of the bulkheads round the shower cubicle will need to be cut out and replaced. Then having found that on a Sunday morning the person who I hoped would make a flue for the cooker and connect the diesel arrived with some drain pipe to make a template for the flue, after much twisting of 15 degree bends and measuring, there is no way I can achieve 50mm of clearance between the flue and the wall, necessary for boat safety, so the cooker needs to move. So last Saturday, Dave kindly arrived to help me swap the cooker and freezer. In best NLP practice of always looking for a positive out of potentially negative situations, I will gain more storage, an extra 300mm of worktop and it will look much better with the front of the cooker facing you as you enter the boat. I can also move the pumps for heating and hot water to a much better location than they were in. It will mean running the pipes from the cooker boiler under the floor, but that gives me an excuse to buy a battery circular saw to cut the floor. Yes I know I could probably borrow one, just put it down to being a male thing and retail therapy is always good for you.

I decided a few weeks ago that even though they are more money I would put in a 12v fridge and freezer. It just seemed daft to convert 12v to 240v to run the fridge and freezer. This meant I needed more DC circuits and less AC circuits, so this weekend I have removed the Traveline that was included with the engine as I really don’t need it and have put in regular consumer units. The energy solution AC change over unit has a high load output which is only available when the generator or shore feed is available and a low load output for battery only running. The only thing that really needs a decent load is the washing machine so I have put a 4way unit on the high load output and a 10way unit on the low side. More taking things out, but I end up with a much tidier and safer install and reusing the AC distribution panel for DC gives me 22 dc circuits, enough for anyone!

So I am hoping that I have finished undoing things and I can start making progress again, we will see.

Homophobic 'tattoo' vicar keeps newspaper column

Let's be honest, if this bigot had made insulting comments about immigrants, disabled people or anyone else, he would have been sacked and in all probability prosecuted, but it's okay he only insulated gays, and we don't count!

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-9270.html

What the church fails to realise is that they people who talk inclusion, tolerance and understanding of different life styles, not people who want to exclude anyone who does fit their idea of 'normal'.

Rhyddid location

I have been asked by a couple of people if I could show them where Rhyddid is moored, so courtesy of Pin in the map is the exact position of Rhyddid.

Google map location and Google earth location