Fast pace

Dave is now rapidly outpacing my ability to keep up with progress.  By last weekend all the portholes for restoration had been removed and ready for taking off to Craig.  Lots of work done.  The pipe work on the water tanks are now ready for connection to the pump.  The cabin portholes are now all cut out and the supports for hanging over the side to cut off the outer layer of the porthole covers are now complete and ready for Dave to start work there.

Phew, it wears me out just trying to keep up with his progress on the blog let alone the work.  Well done Dave!

He was kind enough to share some of his photos of his work.  See below with explanatory notes.


Before.  Note the square window closest to the camera.  This was used to replace the missing ones at the front.  It had that engine air vent right in front of it anyway.  Also all the rear portholes (the round one for example) are now gone too.

As you can see below the original front of the ship wheelhouse only had two windows in.  You can now see (later below) that all the slots have windows in (5 windows in the front in total).  Makes a huge difference to the view.

Dave on the scaffold.

The pipes below are lead.  They had to be cut into short chunks to make them liftable.

These two sea ports originally carried out waste water from various places.  One will now be taken off and closed up and the other will be the air vent for the sewage tanks (apparently, if you dont vent them you can get gas build up and a lot of smell).

You can see here below the first 4 round discs that cover the portholes up in the cabins. The first 4 from left to right have now been removed ready for the first restored ones to go back in.

All the large portholes from the living areas are now removed.  First 4 have been taken for restoration.

Pipes everywhere!

Cabin porthole spaces now cut out.  Getting close to the point where the new ones can be fitted.

These are the new windows in the front of the wheelhouse.

Hard to see but the two 6000 litre water tanks have now had their pipies fitted ready to be connected to the water pump and the filters.

Lead pipes still to be moved.  I feel my back aching already!

Portholes ready

Exciting times.  The remaining portholes are restored (big thanks Craig) and will be collected tomorrow.  Big bill too but they look superb and worth every penny.  Dave has worked hard this week and has cut out all 8 porthole holes and is building the hangers to allow him to cut the remaining bits off the outside.  Then the 8 can be fitted and thats the cabins done (well the first set at any rate).

The next set of large portholes is now ready to cart back to Craig to be restored.  Hopefully they will come apart without massive engineering work as per the last 4 of the smaller ones. 

Dave has fitted the pipework to the water tanks so I can start to put those in place now (Dave doing plumbing work, what jobs can't Dave do!) with the new water pump and start to lay piping.  Will be starting to measure the rooms for battening and get the wood on order.  Then my favorite job of all.

I get to buy more tools :->

I will need a saw to speed up the job.  Off to B&Q (or screw fix).

Bog standard

A brief visit to the boat at the weekend has shown that Dave has made fantastic progress.  All the holes for the cables are in place and ready to start lining (need grommets) and placing conduit.  The toilets are out and the wall between then taken down.  This has left a roughly square room which will be a lovely size for a toilet and vanity unit.  Its one of those decision you make which turned out to be a no brainer.

The toilets though were just the beginning.  The toilet sewage pipes ran down through the floor and into the cabin below before routing down to a seaport in the wardrobe.  Nice.  Who wouldn't want a sewage pipe in their wardrobe!

Dave has done a superb job at removing the pipies.   Turns out they were not steel or copper but lead.    If you can imagine trying to cut and remove a 2 meter long toilet sewage pipe attached to a ceiling made of thick lead then you can imagine the fin Dave had.  It all had to be cut into short sections as the sheer weight of the pipes were unbelievable.  Even trying to lift a 2ft section from the floor was no joke.

But as usual, Dave managed it and came out the other side uninjured.

All other pipes were removed and capped and the cabin ceilings are now all but clear of pipes.  The toilet floor will need concrete to level it but that should not be a big issue.

The pipe below is just one of the lead sink drains.

The main sewage outlet in the wardrobe now capped off.  Had to be done well as this is only just above the water line.  No leaks wanted here.  The sea ports on the other side will be taken off and welded over.  This will free up some space.  This one can stay as it will enable me later to fit a sewage outlet (much smaller) to enable us to pump out sewage from the ship to a boat.

There are a few minor bits and pieces for Dave to complete before we can start the rebuild but we are close.  The porthole fitting will start soon.  I am still waiting for the last 4 portholes which I hope to get in the next week.  We have decided to restore the main ones in the rooms that will be regularly inhabited and leave the rest.  Especially the ones in the bathroom as that will be a wet environment and would require lots and lots of cleaning.

I am still investigating the electrics and heating.  The pipes from the water tank (the thread) has been identified and a simple pipe will join the two water tanks up and enable us to us one pump to extract the water (hopefully).

More holes than swiss cheese

Progress is being made on board ship.    Dave has been working hard on cutting all the holes needed for all the pipe work and cabling.  All done.  The toilet wall has been removed and the toilets too.  The door has been walled up.  Dave is due to remove the piping (eeek) this week.

The front window on the wheel house has been removed and is ready for clean up. The spinny bit makes this a difficult job.   But I am sure it will look fine when Dave has finished.

The next stage is to liberate the last 4 portholes from Craig and we are ready to go.

The list of work is starting to shrink.  The cabin portholes need fitting which is a big job and the anodes still need to be fitted.  Then the cable room and the front cabin needs a lot of steel work to do.

I think Dave will appreciate the work inside as the weather starts to worsen.

7 out of 11

The first windows arrived this weekend.  Portholes actually (I must get more nautical).  They look fantastic.  The sand blasting cleaned every piece of paint from the base and they almost look golden.  The brass on the rest has been polished and looks new.

Well done Craig for your work.  I know you have a trickier job to do on the last 4 (machining out the screws) but I am sure they will come out as well as these ones.

Photos will follow.

Meanwhile Dave is busy cutting lots and lots of holes.  He has the unenviable job of removing the toilets and the toilet pipes from the cabins below.  I owe him a beer for that.  A single pipe carried all the output of 8 stew eating irishmen for 50 years.  That pipe has seen a lot of history and Dave is not keen on the job.  Who would be.

Measure up

The windows are looking good.  One more to do in the wheel house.  The spinning window needs removing and the surrounding area cleaned.  Not a big job.

Other activity.  Now the boat is basically stripped back it was time to start planning the holes.  Lots and lots and lots of holes.  So, equipped with drill and hole cutter I started on the first of perhaps 80 holes.  The hole cutter has a standard drill bit which sits within the bigger hole cutting blade.  After about 5 mins of hard work the hole cutter had not even reached the steel.  Damn.

Dave!

I marked out all the holes throughout the boat for the routes for the heating pipes and power.  Each room had its lights marked out and the wiring routes traced.  Even radiators are drawn on the walls.

One further change that was needed though.  The current layout has the two toilets and a single bathroom.  The trouble is the toilets are very very small.   This will now change.  The wall between the toilets will come down to make one toilet and a new toilet put into the bathroom.

Job done.  All laid out.  Just got to build it now.

Its heating up

My first meeting with Gary the heating guy on Saturday was very fruitful.  I now understand how it all fits together and it was refreshing to meet someone who was laid back about how things could work and not try to sell the whole end to end solution.

So it turns out that the build should be relatively straight forward.  We calculated that a boiler (system) of about 25 to 30 KW should suffice and a twin feed tank.  However,  I was surprised to hear of course that a fire with a back boiler should feed the second coil in the hot water tank but would could not be controlled.  What this means is that there is no way to switch off the back boiler when the hot water in the tank reaches temperature.  It will switch off the gas boiler but no secondary controls.  This is an interesting risk to have.  It means that the back boiler on the fire may ultimately boiler the hot water tank.   I will need to think through that.  I also find that hard to believe and will look into it.

The second coil in the tank is designed to be fed by solar power.  So in theory that would never be able to heat the tank to a dangerous temperature.    But someone must have cracked this problem.  I will look into it.

I can also put my radiators in zones with controllers to have them independently run.   I am yet to decide if this is useful.  I am not sure why I would only want to hear part of the ship and then let the rest freeze.

The rest of the day was spent sorting the deck.  Yawn.  Not much to tell there other than the amount of scrap metal is far more than I thought.

Garbage compacting

I have to admit that it has been quiet for a while in terms of boat activity.  There has been plenty going on, just not really by me.  Dave has progressed well and all the windows in the wheelhouse should be cleaned and put back in by this weekend when I go down.  The chain holes in the windlass are now covered as are all the old porthole holes. 

The only things for Dave to do then is to fit the portholes.  However, the porthole cleaning job is taking a long time.  They have been unable to get the screws out of some and they need to be machined out.  Until that happens they cannot clean 5 of them and so we are a little stuck.

Started on the deck clearance last time.  It was taking yonks to break down all the scrap into manageable chunks.  Luckily the neighbours had taken all the wood and so that has reduce the volume considerably.  Saturday's job will be to have it all broken down into moveable bits.  Boring work but necessary.

This will then leave us in a position that we can start to rebuild the wheelhouse.  Electrics, heating piping and so on.  Yea!  Finally some construction work.

Caption competition

This photo has come to light!

Captions for this photo please.  And please be nice!

Pipes done

Dave has informed me that the pipes are done!  The tanks have been isolated as per my design.  I will need to sort out a few more bits (minor) and then I can start to fit the water system. The first 20m of blue pipe will be here soon.

The portholes (the remaining 10) are off to be cleaned up.  Can't wait to see them when done.

Heating

Touched base with a heating engineer who happens to live on the marina.  He has just qualified (as I understand it) and has been trained to put LPG heating systems into boats.  Handy.  I had contacted Calor before but they were difficult and moaned a lot that they had not done boats before.

Will be setting up a meeting to go over the various ideas I have had.  Will keep you updated but handy to have someone who is both recommended and on site as it makes the whole process much simpler.

Portholes

The first time I have had 2 straight days on the ship for some time now.  Saturday started well with the opportunity to see the porthole we had sent for a clean up.  Good news is that it looks great even though it is only half done.  Bad news is that costs will go up due to the fact the main brass surround is cast and needs sand blasting to get the (VERY) thick paint off it. But when done it will look brill.

The only sad bit is that the top cover is steel.  So we will get that spray painted after sand blasting.  The second problem is that I think the portholes will look so amazing when done that I will need to get all of them restored.  Ouch.  There are around 20 to do on the main deck.   But once the refit is done I would never be able to go back and do them so I either do it now or never.

Completed the strip out of the fog horn units.  Hard going.  Lots of heavy transformers.  But job done and a complete tidy up of the ship.

It is now time to clear the rear deck/scrap yard.  That will be a weekend of breaking down materials to get them efficiently into a skip.

Fun ahead!

Water and yet more water

You must all be getting bored by now with my musings on water systems.  I was looking piping and connectors yesterday (MDPE blue piping) and wondered whether I would trust the water system fully to drink from the tap.  Hmmm.  There will always be some doubt in my mind.

Its ok to feed all bathroom taps etc from the tanks (filters and UV will make it nice and pure) but I am in two minds as to whether I will drive the kitchen tap direct from mains.  There are a few challenges here. The first is that the water system does not always have the required pressure and so kitchen tap may not always have water.  The second thought is that it means the boat is not quite self-sufficient.

Maybe a further drinking water purifier under the sink would make me feel better.  There are some good ones around.

The MDPE piping looks quite good.  You can buy it in continuous 50m lengths which means that I can run water around the boat without joints (no joints, less leaks).  So I may use quite a bit of the piping in the boat as I lay out longer water runs.

Then there is the issue of stagnation.  I have found some good tank cleaning products (for drinking water) that will sterilise the tank and the piping.  Simply dump in the fizzy tabs and leave it.  Flush through.  Job done.  If I do that regularly (every year) and follow advice which is to regularly drain an refill the tanks then I think I will be ok.

Finally, research shows that using copper piping for the sewage would be fine.  The reason it is not used these days is purely cost.  But if you have it then its fine.  Yea!

More tanks

Sunday was spent clearing the boat further and some cleaning.  May be boring but has to be done.  All UPS boxes are now dismantled and out of the wheel house.  Dave has fitted all the windows and its a different room with all the windows in.  Completely different.  The ship originally had a complete set in and without them is felt a little odd.

The pictures below now show the new windows in place.

Dave had also taken out the second bathroom door and welded a plate over.  Great job.

Now we have one big bathroom.  See the welded door on the left.  The centre dividing wall removed,  this room is now plenty big enough to put in a walk in shower and the rest of the normal bathroom furniture.  The shower going on the end as you look at the picture immediately below.

The view from the shower end.  The original issue was that the two original rooms were not individually big enough really to put in a shower in each and a sink.  

I did manage to do a survey of the tanks to make sure I could do what I needed.  Turns out there is a lot to work with in terms of piping.

There are two basic circuits connecting each tank.  One large pipe comes from the deck and runs around each tank as was used to fill each tank.  The second circuit pipe had a spur off it into each tank and a pipe that reached into each one to extract water.  This pipe then goes through to the engine room and the existing water pump.

This is good news as these pipes can be used and the more reuse the less additions I will need.

So the plan is

The first two tanks (at the rear of the ship) that will be fresh water will be disconnected from the two main circuit pipes (fill and empty pipe to give them crude names).   I will then use the existing tank draining valves at the bottom of the two tanks to connect to the water pump (s eventually as I will fit two).  There is a clear stand for the pump in the hull.  So that should be easy.  The only consideration may be the noise of the pump so I will need to look at that (test when I get the pump) as the tanks are below the cabins.

The other two tanks will reuse the piping in place.  The current exit pipe (currently used to feed the water pump in the engine room) will be used to pump out the grey water and macerated sewage.  This piping is in good condition and runs through to the engine room.  From here (taking out the old pump) I can put a three way valve.  This will let me direct the raw material out one side of the boat (the engine room has handy exit ports on both sides) or the other or direct it to a pipe that will have a coupling that will allow me to connect to a pump barge.  This will future proof the system.

The existing fresh water filler pipes will also remain.  These will only feed the sewage tanks and allow me to flush fresh water into the sewage tanks to clean the out.  That pipe is up in the rear deck. So it enables me to put in cleaning fluids etc without having to access the tanks directly.

Two challenges to look into.  The first is whether the copper piping will handle grey water in this way.  Sewage piping is normally plastic and there may be a reason for that.  Of this is the case then the piping will need to be replaced.

The second challenge is venting.  There will need to be a fresh air vent out to the sides of the boat to ensure that there are not airlocks and that the tanks can breathe.  I have been led to believe that build up of gases etc is not good and actually tanks smell less if they are able to breathe.  Getting an air pipe down there should not be a major problem.  There are two sounding pipes into those tanks which could be intercepted and fed out to fresh air.

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!

Water filters

The solution (one of them) has been located.

What I need is one of these

http://www.osmiowater.co.uk/reverse-osmosis-water-filter-purification-system/whole-house-water-filtration-systems/watts-whole-house-water-filtration-system.html

followed by one of these

http://www.osmiowater.co.uk/reverse-osmosis-water-filter-purification-system/whole-house-water-filtration-systems/pentek-uvbb-120-2-uv-whole-house-water-filter-system.html

That just leaves the pump.  I think I will need one of these

http://www.jabscoshop.com/aqua-major-pump-systems/aqm6-230-water-pressure-system-220240v.htm

The above thingy looks pretty much like the very old version of the one already in the ship.  So I may be onto something.  The pump would pull from the tanks and then push through the filters.

Finally, the sewage solution is likely to be one of these

https://www.drain-systems.co.uk/product/3133

or perhaps two (one for each tank).  But lets start with one for now.

All in all the whole set comes in around less than what I was looking at for a single water tank improvement.

The water system will be pushing through at mains pressure and good flow rate.

So that job is all but done.

Tanks 2

It looks like there may be easier ways to crack this nut.  The tanks themselves are not in bad condition. They would probably be ok but there is always the worry of dirty water issues.  With new piping in place what else could be done.

Well, it turns out that there is another solution.  Use the tanks as they are (check they do not leak) and then feed the tank output through a water treatment solution.  There seem to be a lot of these on the market using different mix and match technology.  A relatively simple filtration system to remove solids followed by an inline UV system to kill off any bags would do the job.  And at a fraction of the cost!

More to follow