Friday 25 May 2012

Oven ready

The hot days have brought back memories of past suffering.  A 600 ton oven baking in 28 degree is not a place one would want to work for long periods.  Especially not while doing grinding and welding etc.  So commiserations to Dave who has reported in this morning that despite being cooked at gas mark 8 for 8 hours a day this week he has completed a load of work.

The windows are now in the wheel house!   Can't wait to get a look on Sunday and get some photos.  The bathroom is done (previously reported) and he has removed various bits remaining on ceilings etc. Dave has also started on the portholes in the windlass room (removed bolts etc) and will do the removal and plating when he returns from a well deserved holiday next week.  I'l  keep the oven warm for you Dave :->

The other news (yes, things are really starting to move again after some low levels of activity) is that we have found a company that will strip the gunk and paint from the portholes for £15 a go.  Wow.  Seems too good to be true so they will get one to prove themselves first before they get the rest.  But great price if this works out and no doubt lots of business will flow their way as I will have Dave strip all holes out, get them cleaned and then replaced.  It will look fantastic to have the brass or bronze (who knows whats under all that paint) portholes restored in that way.

This weekend is going to be about removing the last clutter (the other UPS systems) and emptying the fog horn boxes out to enable me to rehang them (yes, another re change of change of change of mind).  If that is completed I will head down to the water tanks and start to plan the pipework for them.   The water feed is to the back of the boat from the marina.  So I would like to pipe it down through the rear deck locker and into the boat that way.  However ...

There is one challenge that makes me nervous and involves the very stories that I have laughed at in the past.  The issue is that if I feed mains water in without protection then if there is a failure (tank sensor fails) then the tanks could fill and overflow and start to fill the hull.  Very funny when it happens to others.

The tanks will hold 6000 litres each so they will hold enough water to last for a long time.   But actually a regular flow would be better than fill and leave standing for months.  So a system that keeps the tanks quite low would be useful, say 3000 litres each (still a lot of water).  The idea of having them this full is they weight many tons (up to 12 if both full) which will help balance the boat.  So I think it would be good to have the water feed manual (always off) and requires positive action to have it feed the tanks but still have a cut off mechanism to prevent over filling in case I forget (I am getting on a bit you know).  That should do it.

The next challenge of course is to get the tanks (a pair) to work together.  Ideally it would be good to have two pump systems eventually, one from each tank, feeding the pipework.  This means upon a single pump failure we have a back up.  We then need to balance the tanks so that both tanks are filled and drained at the same rate (do not want 6 tons of water on one side of the centre of gravity).  Will need to think that through this weekend (always one more worry).  Would like to solve that without the need to worry about further transfer pumps etc.  But would rather not drill through tank walls to make them one tank.  That risks water moving to one tank tipping centre of gravity and pulling more water across etc.  So keeping the tanks both isolated and feeding and draining at the same rate will be interesting.  A dual feed (one from each tank) with non return values into a single pipe fed into a pair of pumps configured in parallel (but only one to start with) would probably do the job.  Then twin feeds into the tanks with independent ballcocks to bring both tanks to the same level should help.

Next job then, buy shed load of piping.  As with everything, that is not a simple choice either!

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