Floor Laying

Earlier in the week I did some finishing work on the sliding hatch.  More on that later.

Over the last few days I have started fitting the flooring.  We have chosen laminate flooring as it is very durable, attractive, stable, and easy to replace in time.  Modern Laminate is IMO better than real wood in appearance.  The one we have chosen for the lounge is a thicker than normal.  Its 12mm not the normal 6-8mm and a good textured surface with enough grip for our aged dog.  I have used a 5mm HD foam underlay for a bit of extra insulation, it also has a foil layer supposedly to reflect heat back up.

Before

After

This is a far as I go for the time being.  The rest will be laid once the boat is afloat.  I need access under the floor to add ballast to trim the boat.

Of course in the kitchen nothing other than Sicilian Slate could be used.  OK, its expensive but boy does it look good especially now its oiled.

Before

After

Other jobs done are some work in the bedroom on the ceiling and making the steps to the bow doors, and dressing the stern entrace to the boat.

You will notice all the wires. I'm redoing this as I wern't happy with the appearence.

In fact I have a lot of small jobs on the go, but noting complete enough to be blog worthy ATM.

More Plumbing

I think I have finished the plumbing.  I can't see anything else that needs doing, but I'm sure something will crop up, but in anticipation of this I am going to clear away the plumbing stuff.

So hopefully this is the last plumbing job.  Because the washing machine is cold fill only is seems a bit daft using the boats electricity supply to heat water when we will probably only use the washing machine as we are on the move or when when we have a tank full of hot water heated by the engine.  As the calorifier will make hot water from either the engine or the Mikuni it will heat up to about 80°C which for general wash cycles is way too hot. So to ensure the temperature of the water going in doesn't exceed 40°C which is the most common wash cycle I have installed a TMV (thermostatic mixer valve).  This mixes hot and cold to produce and maintain the set temperature exactly like a good shower mixer does.

This one has the advantage that the hot can be turned off so the rinse cycle is done with cold water.

Then other thing installed is an expansion vessel.  There are 2 reasons.  First to reduce the water pump cycling when the tap is on a low flow setting and the other to accommodate the expansion and contraction of the water in the calorifier as the water heats up or cools down.

2L expansion vessel

Finally today I cut and edged the back panel for the kitchen units.  This is easily removable for service access.

Before

After

Little Bit Of A Setback

I've had a little bit of a setback of late, I've been watching it hoping it would go away, but as its getting colder its getting worse.

So what is it?

The laminate flooring I used to line the ceiling is distorting. I suppose as the boat gets a tiny bit shorter.  Essentially is compressing and was beginning to ripple midships.  Other option is that the laminate is expanding with the damper weather.

Normally when you lay this sort of flooring it's know as a floating floor because its not fixed anywhere and a 10mm gap is supposed to be left all around the edge of any room its laid in to allow for expansion etc.

Compounding this also is:- 1. I have had to glue it to the roof batons to keep it in place. 2. on the port side I did the whole boat in one continuous length of about 12.5m.  Its only this part that's distorted.

The planned repair is underway and involves removing the affected mid section and cutting in a expansion joint above the bedroom door separating the run.

So this is what its looking like.

I shall leave it a couple of days for it to normalise, I have cut some more of the glue to free up more movement.  Then it will be all put back up again and hopefully that will be the an end to the matter.

The More You Know The Less You Know

I was reading a forum item about water up the rudder stock tube.  This was something I had never considered or been told about although on very hard reverse on my NB I would get water up the tube.  I just put this down to poor design because of its age.  When the water came up it just ran off the self draining read deck, but on this boat it's going to go into the engine room bilge.......... Not good.

As I hadn't considered this I needed to work out how to retrospectively fix it.  Much head scratching and I came up with this idea.

I disassembled the rudder, ram and removed the stock.

I then slid a length of PVC pipe over it having first coated the shaft with silicone grease.

I reassemble the rudder and stock then filled the gap between the stock tube and the PVC tube with closed cell expanding foam.

Once cured I trimmed off the excess.

I think this will solve the problem.