Automatic for the people (and cat)!
Not only do we have a warm saloon, but now we have an automatic and thermostat controlled warm saloon!
We always had a thermostat controller from when Nikolaj installed the boiler, but the electrical cable was only long enough to reach a few feet into the galley, where it’s WAY too cold to act as a regulator for the saloon (really, it’s cold enough for our olive oil to congeal down there). We were just turning the radiator on manually when we went over to the saloon, but it takes a while to warm up so it wasn’t really ideal.
So James got a long length of electrical cable from Maplin, disconnected the old cable in the engine room, had a bit of a think about life and death, and asked me to get the multimeter. Having decided that the box was indeed live, we unplugged the mains, tested it again (to make sure it wasn’t also inverted), then James hooked up our new cable into the box, then fed it through the engine room wall where I pulled it through from the galley and ran it up the stairs to the saloon wall. James then connected the new cable to the thermostat (he’s definitely the wire-handy one in this relationship!), we hung it on the wall, and plugs the mains back in…
…and hurrah! We now have a saloon radiator that comes on in the morning and again in the evening, keeping the temperature about 5 degrees (regardless of time) and shuts off if it reaches 15 degrees (we optimistically set it for 20 degrees then realised it never actually reaches that, what with the huge, single glazed windows, and 15 was comfortable enough). It’s such a luxury to eat breakfast without seeing my breath!
Tana, 19 December 2008, 20:53:
Yea! Heat!
Brad Hwang, 17 January 2009, 12:07:
Hi guys, I’m an artist living on a barge in Berlin. Thanks for your blog; nice to see what’s going on in the international living-on-a-boat community. We’ve got our own small neighborhood here in the Tiergarten canal in Berlin. If you check out my website, there’s a link to a New York Times article about our boat. Keep up the fine work; and keep in touch if Hendrik allows you!
VallyP, 13 February 2009, 19:02:
Thanks for your message on my blog Melissa. I can see you’ve been very busy since I was last here, but lots of progress too. Well done! Your new neighbours will be on the other side of the river at the moorings that have just been built. Our Danish friend Lise together will Martin and Charley were prime movers in getting the new places established, so I hope you’ll see them when they arrive. Last sms was from Brugge in Belgium, so I expect they are in Nieuwpoort today. Now I must hop over to Berlin and see Brad’s site for sure. Hope you are all well, VallyP from Rotterdam.