Scrapes and scratches
I spent most of Saturday on the toilet.
No, don’t worry, there was no gastrointestinal distress – I was sat on the toilet in the captain’s cabin with a chisel, scraping away the horrible beige textured wallpaper that the previous owners seemed to love. The same paper covers the toilet, shower, and kitchenette area in the captain’s cabin. It makes sense in the shower since it repels water pretty well, but elsewhere it’s just nasty and constantly grimey, so off it’s coming!
Unfortunately scraping off the vinyl (backed by a thin layer of styrofoam, charming) was really hard, slow work due to the glue, and it didn’t reveal anything particularly beautiful underneath that wall. And with the waterproof vinyl plus the thickness, I seriously doubt any wallpaper stripping equipment would’ve helped at all…
We also went and got LPG refills on Saturday morning, meaning that 2 19kg cannisters (£30 each) lasted us 8 months, which isn’t too bad considering that’s ALL our cooking (and we like to run that massive industrial oven an awful lot) power during that time. The delivery schedule from our preferred shop (Johnny’s DIY on Deptford High Street) was a bit thrown off for the bank holiday, but we convinced our lovely neighbour to take us down instead. And James found a few more bits of the deck that needed grinding, and then we topped off the day with an impromptu barbecue with our neighbours. Not too shabby!
Ceiling the deal
Last Sunday we got to attack someone else’s boat with a crowbar for a change! Our friend Phil bought a lovely boat (which we’d actually seen before Hendrik when we were boat shopping) 18 months ago, but due to a series of horrors with various boatyards, is just now getting her stripped out to build his dream accommodation inside.
The captain’s cabin wasn’t nearly as lovingly preseverd over the years as Hendrik’s, though, so he invited us to come over and take any wood and fixtures we might like before the real demolition crews came aboard. So we booked a Streetcar van and drove out to the current yard with crowbars and masks and several hours later, drove away with the better part of his captain’s cabin’s ceiling.
In his boat, these panels were covering the wider beams (which are alternating light and dark woods in Hendrik), so it was just a matter of prying up the narrow edging boards and then carefully popping the thin sheets off. Luckily, the colour of these match Hendrik’s wall panels exactly, so we can use this to cover up the few places where the previous owners ripped out a cabinet and just used cheap plywood to fill the gaps. And since this is so thin, it means we should be able to just tack it on top of the existing plywood and not have to worry about rebuilding anything…
We’ve had a few more wooden improvements over the last week, but more on those later…
Back in action
It must be the hint of Spring in the air, because we got more accomplished this weekend than we have in the last 6 months combined.
Saturday began early with a bit of art terrorism for James and some giant fender maintenance for Melissa, and then followed a massive quarterly shop at Costco to stock up for the charity dinners. We also made a whirlwind shop through B&Q (for some mains electrical bits to enhance the captain’s cabin) and Ikea (for some baskets for the captain’s cabin bedroom’s new shelf and a stepstool). We were no sooner back home for an hour before we were called in to help push-start a neighbour’s car (success!) and we finished up the various household duties (recycling, rubbish, cleaning, the loads of laundry – the usual) before collapsing into bed.
Sunday began with another early start, where we collectively accomplished the following:
- tied up the errant live electrical cables in the hold so we could then pry up the rest of the floor to patch the (yet again) leaking water tank
- cleaned out the filter on our water pump (better the debris be in there than in our glasses!)
- stained and assembled our new stepladder, intended for access to the wheelhouse from the captain’s cabin entranceway
- cleaned out the captain’s cabin fridge, because it was beginning to reek
- tidied the half-height storage area under the wheelhouse, and moved the patio furniture to the calorifier cabinet instead
- assembled the boxes for the captain’s cabin bedroom and transferred our smalls inside, and removed the rolling drawers to the other side
- removed the ugly motion sensor in the captain’s cabin saloon
- attempted to create a new coax extension to place the TV aerial in the wheelhouse (unfinished)
- cooked an excellent meal and Melissa also sewed up a new shirt
We’ve really only got the galley steps as the last big task still on our list so hopefully we’ll have a pretty relaxing few weekends ahead of us!
Insulation Consternation
My earlier mention of the different types of insulation on offer sparked a rather enlightening email debate between a few friends. It started with my friend Brian offering to help me get my head around exactly how vapour barriers work and the various ways you can place it in the Grand Sandwich of hull, walls, and insulation. Brian’s got an Architecural Engineering degree (albeit not directly in the study of boat insulation, he was very quick to add!) so he was able to give me some fuzzy principles explained in nice drawings that my brain could understand.
His comments went something like this:
I’m skeptical of the insulating paint, honestly; it may certainly help reduce some losses associated with radiative heat transfer, but so will white paint. (Black body radiation and all.) Your biggest concerns – like the rest of us living in structures surrounded by fluids – are conductive and convective heat losses. A more conventional foam-type insulation, like the Celotex or Thinsulate, seems like
what you want – especially as that metal hull is a thermal superhighway between the indoors and out.
I then countered that we’re mostly concerned about water vapour from cooking, breathing, heating, etc condensing onto the cold hull and causing mould on the insulation – not a small concern judging from the amount of blacked rockwool we’ve pulled out of the hotel room walls thus far (and those aren’t even the exterior walls yet!).
He was then able to draw me some diagrams to help me visualise how the vapour barrier would actually work.
A vapor barrier essentially restricts water vapor from
moving beyond it and condensing in a colder place. Here’s a simplified diagram, I think:
Case 1:
DRYWALL — <<< — INSULATION — EXTERIOR
Moisture moves from left to right. It can get into the drywall, but can also escape, because the drywall’s the same temperature as the interior air and unrestricted from letting moisture back out. (If the room’s greenhouse-humid, well, that’s another problem.) The vapor barrier only lets water vapor move from right to left, so any that’s in the insulation can escape, but can’t build up. Assuming there isn’t any working its way in from the exterior, your wall’s interior stays dry – especially as the temperature gradient rises through the insulation, so the vapor barrier surface will be less cold, and less prone to condensation, than the bare hull. (Or vapor barrier directly on hull.)
Case 2:
DRYWALL — INSULATION — <<< — EXTERIOR
Moisture still moves from left to right. Now it can get into the insulation from both sides, and vapor is bound to condense on the cold side. Given the structure of insulation, it’s nigh impossible to get that moisture back out – after all, it has to evaporate and slowly diffuse out without more condensing. Thus, you’re
looking at microbial growth problems.
I’ve taken this and drawn a more colourful diagram of how our exterior insulation would be set up:
I was feeling pretty clever, so I passed this over to our friend Steve, whose Luxemotor we just visited last weekend. He then raised a whole new round of questions about insulation I’d never even thought about, and frankly, I had no clue how to answer.
At this point I brought out the big guns – I emailed my brother, Steve, who also has an engineering degree, has just completed single-handedly building a massive extension onto his house, and works for the US Navy as a civilian engineer. So he had a bit more recent, practical knowledge and was able to sanity test what Brian had said and fill in a few of boat-owner-Steve’s questions.
The vapor barrier is generally simply a sheet of ordinary plastic, and doubles both as a vapor barrier and a draft barrier. Condensation happens when warm air cools below the dew point, and condensation forms. Rule of thumb is to put the vapor barrier on the warm side. I say “rule of thumb” because the hot and cold side change between summer and winter most places, and half the year, the vapor barrier will be on the wrong side. This is generally OK. What you do not ever ever want to do is put vapor barriers on BOTH sides- one side must be left to breathe. Otherwise any amount of water seeping in will just sit and fester, and water always seems to find a way in.
Ok this all makes sense to me. Boat-owner Steve then took what brother-Steve said and actually improved a bit on it, I think. He pointed out that the celotex actually has its own vapour barrier in the foil facing, and to simplify building you could affix the celotex to the back of your interior wall panels, but do it offset a bit to get a tongue and groove effect, preventing any draughts where the wall panels join.
Brother-Steve was able to give a bit of insight into what the big boys do with their boats, though much more research will have to be done on our part to determine whether we can afford it without a Defense Contract at our disposal…
US Navy ships simply apply the insulation straight to the bulkhead like in the link below. Usually 1” or 2” glass bat, faced with some sort of fireproof cloth. After it’s painted, it’s pretty vapor impermeable on both sides, but navy doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with it… Honestly, I’d just do it the navy way. Tried and true, right?
So we’re still not settled on exactly which type of insulation we’ll be using (though the insulating paint is definitely out and I think we’re less keen on the sprayfoam now), at least we know which order we’ll have to do it in. We’ve got some bare hull in the floor of the Captain’s Cabin bedroom to test any of our ideas on, which will hopefully mean we get some of our mistakes out of the way before blowing the time and money on the grand hotel room hold.
Anyone have any experience with a certain type of marine insulation they’d like to share? This is very much the time for commenting (not after it’s bought and affixed and you tell us what a bad idea it was!
Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater
Saturday was quite the busy day – after a very late night seeing Eddie Izzard at a secret work-in-progress show, we got up early and painted the wheelhouse ceiling to protect against further mould and mildew. Keeping one window open a crack wasn’t quite enough to stave of condensation, though, and I had to brush some new growth off the ceiling beams before starting, but opening two windows seems to be doing the trick. I first coated the wooden beams and the portions of the wheel where the varnish had worn away over time with a new coat of outdoor clear varnish and then painted the B-I-N onto the white ceiling portions. I must remember to stir paint instead of just shaking it next time in order to avoid the first coat being thin and the last being the consistency of peanut butter.
We finished that in time to get to the West End for some birthday drinks, then finally went rather far upstream on the Thames to visit friends of ours who purchased their Luxemotor a few months ago. Theirs is of similar age (1931) and size (30m x 4.5m) to ours so it was really nice to see all the similarities and differences in layout. The captain’s cabin on theirs had the most similarities, right down to having the same design of door handle as Hendrik! It was also nice to share tips and techniques that only other boat owners would care about and to get out to see how a different mooring operates.
We picked up a grand tip in the use of Celotex insulation, but now we’re starting to have TOO many insulation choices for remodelling the hotel room space and we’re not quite sure which is best. Alongside the Celotex, there’s also Thinsulate (easy and mess-free to install, but doesn’t form a moisture barrier apparently), spray foam (which creates a chemical bond to the hull, stopping moisture, but is very messy and requires professional installation and all the conduits laid out in advance), and then there’s this Thermalite insulating paint which I just found out about which almost seems too good to be true (two coats of paint and it’s insulated with a moisture barrier). What we’d love to do is get samples of all four and try them out for ourselves, but I’m guessing it’s going to be difficult and expensive so we’ll have to rely on others’ recommendations, like most of our other boat supplies thus far.
Mouldy Oldy
We’ve learned and important (and thankfully, not too expensive) lesson – if you’ve got a wheelhouse above a heated living area with lots of plants aspirating resulting in lots of condensation on the 360 degree single-glazed windows, then you should probably open a window a crack to let the moisture out.
If you don’t, things get mouldy unbelievably quickly.
We just discovered the mouldy ceiling and beams at the weekend since we hadn’t been up there for a week or so, and after a consultation with my trusty DIY shop man, we spent last evening mould-busting. Luckily, since we caught it early, it was all just sitting on the surface of the wood and paint, so the woodwork could just be gently brushed, and the ceiling just needed a bit of sugar soap and elbow grease. In the second photo above you can see the mouldy streaks after our first pass with the soap and paper towel – a second swipe took it all off.
We’ve got to follow up on Saturday with a bit of revarnishing (as it was only the wood where the gloss had worn away that grew mouldy) and coating the ceiling in B-I-N to hopefully prevent anything further.
This will hopefully knock two tasks off our newest To Do list which is growing steadily longer despite our attempts to keep on top of everything… There simply aren’t enough weekend hours to get everything done, so I’m really looking forward to the summer daylight where we can actually get stuff done in the evenings after work again.
We haven't been relaxing
Or “What we’ve been up to since we last posted but not including anything diesel stove related because James is preparing to write a novel on that”. Anyway, sorry to be terribly quiet but we’ve been out doing things and have been awful about actually documenting them.
First up was our Christmas activities. Our mooring has an advent tradition where each boat takes a different night in December to have a party and officially turn on their outdoor lights. So for nearly every night, we had a party to go to with hardly a stumble home! For ours we served Pimm’s Winterand homemade christmas cookies and everyone helped to make popcorn garlands and snowflakes cut from the thousands of white circular coffee filters leftover from the hotel.
Then after a delightful Christmas Day itself spent gorging ourselves on duck and playing our new Wii, we buckled down and resolved to clear the deck before New Year’s. So we rented a van and carted away the 5 diesel barrels and 7 LPG bottles off to the council’s recycling site.
Then we realised we had an empty van so we used the opportunity to go round B&Q to get a new radiator for the saloon (as the 30 year old current one exploded into geysers once hooked up to our bitchin’ new boiler), various bits from Ikea, and beer replenishing at Costco.
The Ikea purchases included a beautiful tin bathroom cabinet that must’ve been designed precisely for boats (strong magnetic catches and tall lips on every shelf!):
...a big shaggy black wool rug (which Bosco loves to lie on to become The Incredible Invisible Cat!) and a small bucket armchair more in keeping with the scale of the captain’s cabin:
Whilst visiting with our neighbour, we obtained a big plank of thick pine which was exactly the kind we were looking for to replace the galley steps, some of which had rotted away, making things very treacherous. So James went ahead and chiselled and unbolted the old stairs to reveal the metal framework underneath, and we cut the board to the right widths.
That’s as far as we got, though, but even just having the bare metal has made it much easier to use the stairs that having a few missing ones as before. The other project in mid-completion is a passageway between the captain’s cabin and the wheelhouse. We were able to punch through the bottom of a cabinet, but we’ll need some steps welded on before we can actually use it. It’ll be so nice to be able to use the wheelhouse without having to put on a coat or shoes and go out into the cold or rain!
Newest hotness
Our new diesel stove for the captain’s cabin arrived while we were over alongside the drydock last week, but we were finally able to bring it inside a few days ago when we got our regular access back. It’s a Kabola Old Dutch, and almost identical to the one that was back there before, only it’s a) not a rusting shell, and b) it actually works. It’s also about four times more fuel efficient and has a nice guard rail so our stews don’t slide off, but for all intents and purposes, it’s the same stove.
We were hoping this meant we could just reuse the old diesel line and flue from the old stove that are still in the fireplace, but on closer inspection it looks like the old diesel line leads to…. nowhere, and the old flue ends up in an enclosed space under the battery cupboard by the wheelhouse steps. So the previously owners clearly never used that stove at all, which fits into our knowledge of the kanotel being summer-only, and that old stove being reeeeeally old. We were going to rig up a temporary solution with a tiny diesel tank in another cupboard on deck to get the gravity feed, but it turns out that that would be nearly as much work as just making the permanent connection into our main diesel tank in the engine room. But because the engine room is under the captain’s cabin, we’ll need to buy a £100 fuel pump to counter gravity. And that flue is going to need either two elbow bends or a bit of flexible flue to be able to clear the battery cabinet and vent properly, which is going to be another project.
So even though we’ve got our beautiful new stove, there’s still a fair amount of work involved before we can stop suckling at the electric space heater teet and get the captain’s cabin really nice and cozy.
You may be asking yourself “Why don’t they just use the massive boiler that was just installed?”. Well, you, that’s a good question. The main reason is that our captain’s cabin is gorgeous and art deco with a lovely marble fireplace and original woodwork and stained glass, and radiators only come in two styles: neo-Victorian, and ultra-modern. Which will be fine for heating the main part of the boat, but would look hideous in the captain’s cabin fireplace. And even if we didn’t care about aesthetics (which we do), it’s be just as much work and expense to plumb in new radiators as it would to get the stove in, and this way we’ve got another layer of backup if something should fail.
A Hopper, Skip, and a Pump
(Or is it just in my dad’s world that “hopper” = toilet?)
One major accomplishment James failed to relate in the last update is that our new toilets are now fitted and operational! We had a wide variety of marine toilets to choose from (all with equally amusing names), but to be fair I can’t actually recall which ones we settled on. In any case, they work beautifully and we can now flush toilet paper instead of binning it (ewww!) and they actually do flush, unlike my mom’s horrible experience with the pump-type toilets on our Greek sailing holiday a few years back.
In fact, the toilet control panel we bought is complex enough even with just two buttons to surely mystify guests. We thought that the two buttons would be Big Flush/Little Flush like on European toilets, but when they arrived, we were confused to find the buttons labelled “Before Use” and “After Use”. Hitting the “Before Use” button before #2s fills the bowl so you don’t have the German shelf toilet issues, and the “After Use” button just flushes as you’d expect. Only about 10-15 seconds after flushing, it sends another blast down the pipes which gives you a hearty jolt if you happen to be slow at doing up your fly. Bwahahah!
In skip (translate: dumpster) news: we’re finished! Hurrah! The deck is clear again apart from the plumbing equipment Nikolaj’s still using to finish up the heating, plus the few bits of kit we’re planning on eBaying. So hopefully the skip itself will even be off our deck in a few days’ time…
In pump news: we’re slowly getting used to the eccentricities of our water system and becoming pitch-perfect at detecting the different noises various pumps make. The geyser problem is being averted by filling little and often (once a week or so) until we can get a robust patch, and our water pressure is good in all areas of the boat.
Our new diesel stove for the Captain’s Cabin has been ordered and should arrive in a week or two (now being an extremely popular time of year to buy heaters!). This is replacing the extremely knackered diesel stove that’s already back there, nestled in the marble and tiled fireplace, and is the same dimensions and shape as the one it’s replacing (only it works, and has eons better fuel efficiency!). We could’ve hooked up a radiator from the big system Nikolaj’s installing, but no one makes any that look nice enough to place in a fireplace, so we figured we might as well get something nice enough to keep back there even after the sprucing up. And in the case of its eventual renting, we can keep tabs on how much fuel the lodger uses as it’s on a separate system.
And finally, some photos of the “dancefloor” from our party. The only rooms remaining are the first single rooms by the saloon, and as you walk from the saloon to the front of the boat, rooms 2 and 3 on the left, preserved for the winter as James’s wardrobe and my sewing room, respectively. They, too, will go at some point, but we’ve got to take the rest of the hold down to the bare metal before that point…
(both views are looking towards the front of the boat)
It feels huge down there, which is really exciting as we walk out where the walls for our lounge, bedrooms, and en suites will be!
Please welcome our new crew member...
Last Friday, somewhat reluctantly, our new morale officer, chief vermin catcher and inspector of impossibly small spaces came aboard. It took a while to persuade him to accept the King’s Shilling, and I have the bite and scratch marks to prove it. Please welcome Bosco!
His favourite game is Hide And Seek And If At All Possible Do It While James Is Late For Work. His favourite place is inside the box through which the steering chains pass on their way to paw-trappingly tempting pulleys. His favourite food is anything as long as there’s lots of it. His favourite way to scare James to death is to try and climb up the flue for the diesel heater. He’s slowly getting used to people – tonight he came out from behind the washing machine without even being bribed with cat treats – but when he does get a bit of attention he absolutely loves it.
He’ll be living exclusively in the Captain’s Cabin with us for a few more weeks while we get him snipped and chipped, and then we’ll unleash him on the moorings. Our erstwhile nighttime visitor (who I recently discovered is called Bosun) doesn’t know what’s coming to him.
Meanwhile, today was a busy one. We cleared off the last skipload of rubbish from the deck – our third – and then spent half an hour taking all the fittings from the old copper piping that’s been torn out during the renovations. Copper’s worth a fortune these days so we’ll be carting it all down to the scrap metal merchant. We redid our ropes, pulled the old diesel stove out of the Captain’s Cabin and added a wireless access point in the wheelhouse so we might be cold in here but we can still check our email. Melissa made applesauce and a lovely crumble.
We’re still collating pirate party photos and we promise to post some soon! If you have any you haven’t sent us, please do send them over – we were too busy being excellent hosts to take any!