Not setting out!

Travelled to the boat yesterday and stayed overnight. Unfortunately not the start of our annual long cruise as Judith's illness means our immediate plans are dependent on her appointments. We were intending to cruise to Bath, about 3 weeks ... we will be there this Saturday to see a matinee performance of Dancing in the Streets, about 40 minutes by road! If appointments permit, we're hoping to cruise towards Stratford on Avon to find out how Judith copes and if well maybe continue on the Avon Ring or pick up our plan to cruise to Bath.
Did some jobs ... finished fitting ballast to balance new holding tank, fixed catches on panel to access new under bed storage, lowered engine mounts and treated limescale accumulation in the toilet (the cause of the toilet's 'heart attack').

Doing some jobs

At the boat today refitting batteries. I had these at home to charge and test. One battery had a dud cell so that was replaced. Don't understand but voltage of dud battery was the same as the others. I currently have only 2 batteries fitted for the bow thruster and it can take 3 so may fit it there ... bow thruster being non essential! Foolishly forgot that there are 2 terminal sizes and the batteries with the larger terminals need to be closest to the isolating switches so spent time having to swope terminals after the batteries were in place.
Also fitting concrete ballast to compensate for taking out the steel holding tank. All went well until I tried to refit the bed and realised that it was too high for one of the bed cross bearers so one padstone and one paving slab brought back to cut and fit another time.
A 50-50 day!

Bed base back in

 Bed base remade and refurbished. The mattress is in two parts with the smaller part covering the slats across the passage way. The mattress join is under legs when the bed is made up and never been noticed. There are 2 slides and each latch positively onto a bar on the hull side. There is now access from this side to the space under the bed not taken up by the holding tank.

The replacement lighter slats are solid wood. The originals are plywood but because of a fault in the ply composition some of the sliding slats had cracked.

I still need to sort out some extra ballast under the floor under the bed and under the bed to compensate for the difference in weight between the steel holding tank that needed 4 to manoeuvre it out and the plastic tank that I carried in.

As I'd hoped the natural plastic side allows the fill state of the tank to be viewed. I have refitted the original 'alert'sensor so not relying on constantly checking its state. I'm hoping that the new smaller tank, with just the 2 of us, will only need a pump out every 2 weeks. It's currently about half full but a lot of water was put through the system when sorting out the blocked toilet.

New engine mounts fitted!

New engine mounts fitted without lifting the engine. Ada had an Aquadrive so left all connections in place and levered up engine and supported it on blocks whilst removing and replacing each mount in turn. Extracted the bolt and then took off the mounting retaining bolts. Getting to the underside to take off and then refix the mounting bolts was excruciating ... I needed to be about 150mm shorter and 20 kgs lighter to fold myself up and reach under the engine.
Took most of the day so not sure I'd do it again without lifting the engine as only the Aquadrive and the exhaust would need to be disconnected.
Took off the bed parts to remake the bed at home to create the extra storage under the bed ... and after that back to the plan to take off and test all the batteries before we set off mid June!

Disappointed readers!

19 readers for 'Introducing Ada' and only for 1 or 2 for each of the following post ... 17 readers must have been very disappointed to discover Ada is a narrowboat!

Ada's toilet had a 'heart attack'

With daughter having a fortieth birthday treat, we had care of granddaughter, N, for 2 nights. We had decided a short cruise in Ada would be a treat for her. All seemed well with the first dry weekend since March forecast until, at 8 o'clock on the first evening, the macerator toilet failed to empty! The motor was running, but not the normal sound, and only a small amount of water was being taken away. Could I have done anything plumbing in the new tank? No, so need to take out and strip the toilet ... at 8.30 at night.
The toilet was installed when the boat was new, 14 years ago, and has worked faultlessly ever since. Having it go wrong was always one of my concerns. Three connects to remove, electrical ... just a plug and socket, fresh water supply at the solenoid ... jubilee clip but a bit of a fiddle having been there for 14 years, and the 1 1/2" foul water discharge ... to remove it involved some leakage of foul water. What I found was the innards furred up and a valve in the discharge pipe blocked with debris that had broken away ... just like a heart attack! The innards were remarkably simply ... how is the high cost justified!
Massaging the rubber pipes and rinsing them removed the furring but he valve had to be scrapped. It seemed a delicate mechanism but its only function appeared to be preventing a small amount of water flowing back. Cleaned as best I could, reassembled and refitted by 1130 the toilet worked again but need to consider getting a replacement for that valve.
Back home a bit of online research revealed ... that domestic macerators furring up is a known problem but nothing in boating forums ... ordinary cleaning agents, that do not foam, can be used ... spare parts are very, very limited ... a phone call to Aquafax being the only source.
The remainder of the weekend was excellent with 2 sunny days and N returned to her parents in time for us all to have lunch at the Storyteller, Cheltenham, and for N afterwards her Sunday afternoon theatre club.

New tank fitted

The new tank is fitted and the bed put back together over it. I cut out a section of floor to determine if there had been any serious contamination. There was no contamination but I found the ballast included broken slabs. It was a clear statement in the build contract that it would be whole slabs only. As I now need to add some additional weight to this side of the boat I'll replace these with whole slabs.

The tank comes from Goodwin Plastics. I asked for quotes for 2 sizes of tank, this size and the same as the old one. Prices for the larger tank were the same but Goodwin was significantly cheaper for this size. After the tank was delivered I realised that I needed an addition 1" BSP female input for the level sensor. Goodwin supplied a 'patch' with the necessary fitting. Cutting a hole and fixing the 'patch seemed to go smoothly.

From the top the pipes are 1" breather, 1 1/2" pumpout and 1 1/2" input. These are connected from the tank with flexible hoses to hosetail fittings into 1 1/2" BSP 40mm domestic push fit fittings. The pipes from this point are solvent weld. The grey pipes are hot and cold water and central heating.

I asked for the f'ard tank side to be in 'natural' so that it should be possible to see the level of effluent in the tank. I estimate, for 2 onboard, 2 weeks between pumpouts ...

Next task will be replace the ballast and floor and then to remake the bed to give access to the extra storage space created from the smaller tank. When remaking the bed I will remake the 'slides' which have worked well to extend the cross bed across the passageway except the 10mm ply has not been strong enough ... 3 slats are 'cracked'.