Slow progress 2

From the more-of-the-same department another weekend of minor accomplishments. The weather wasn't up to much, so it was inside jobs only. The river was running fast and for a few hours rose by about a foot, which made getting off or on tricky.

One job I was keen to do was to get some paint on the rear door, as this was just bare wood and a winter in the elements wasn't going to help it. The door was able to be painted inside which was good, I still need to paint the topcoat of maroon on the bottom section, but it doesn't look to bad as it is, at night.

We had a new bed arrive during the week, so I assembled it in time for Mary to get the flu. This meant that Mary spent most of the weekend skiving tucked up warm watching chick flicks.

I did manage to do some electrical stuff, I placed most of the main components on the board in the 'electric space' where the old ballast tank used to be.

Mary was impressed by the bauhaus-like layout, i didn;t tell her that it'll be the cabling up thats the tricky bit.

I also installed the first of my old ships lights that I collected last winter. I may well have purchased too many of these, but ebay can take them back if we don't needed.

Just need to get the permanent wiring to it now.

Slow progress

We seem to be in the era of fairly undramatic changes these days - no dry docks, no trips round the coast or up the Thames, just small steady improvements.

This last weekend I painted and insulated the main hatch in the living area, helping to reduce the amount of heat lost through the bare steel. Mary continued with finishing up the painting and the staining of more of the skirting board round the boat. We've now moved most of the building type materials into the workshop, with the aim of keeping the living area clean from now on.

I built a workbench/shelf to store some of this stuff and to have somewhere to work on things apart from the floor.

I also made and fitted a tray for the batteries that are now actually on the barge, rather than in the corner of our flat.

This weekend I'll start connecting some of the electrical bits up. Fun eh?

And so it goes on

We've spent the last few weekends working on Misterton, fitting a door, painting the last of the floor etc. It's so exciting that we forgot to take any pictures. So for something to look at, Malcolm Slater has some good photographs on his site of Misterton leaving Goole.

Mary has also written part 26 of her views here. A cynical observer might suggest that Mary had in fact written these some time ago, and that I'm simply drip feeding them into the website at a rate that doesn't overshadow my own fascinating writing. That would be a very cynical thing to think indeed. :)

Heat

With the onset of winter one of the main things on Mary's mind was how were we going to heat Misterton. It'd been on my mind too, but I was prepared to tough it out a while longer. However, the wisdom of my years made me realise I should do something sooner rather than later.

We've always intended to install a solid fuel stove, as well as a boiler system, and we had found a model that we quite liked. However, in doing some internet research, I found that there are some new British standards about to be created to do with the installation of solid fuel stoves into boats (there are currently no official standards. I contacted the Boat Safety Scheme head office and had a very useful chat with one of their advisors. He said that until the new standards are out, a common sense approach would be fine. He also made the comment that many people install a bigger stove than they need (which our choice probably was...).

With this in mind, and with the half term week approaching, I made a sideways leap and bought a small stove from canvas and cast. The reasoning behind this choice was this: the stove is designed to be used in tents so can be assembled and disassembled without too much trouble. It will also operate quite happily with a flue length of about 2m - most domestic solid fuel stoves need about 4m. And its cute, very cute.

It was installed temporarily at half term and proved quite a success, Mary loved it. However, the wall behind it was plywood, and as these models have no firebricks it did get quite warm, so we only had it on when we were there working.

I've since installed it a bit more permanently. First of all the plywood wall was replaced with cement board (the grey bit in the middle).

Then I fastened some copper sheet to the surface of this for looks and heat reflection. This was more work than I thought and involved drilling many small holes for the tiny nails I used. With the stove installed it looks quite good though, so it was worth it.

You can see from the bucket in the picture above how small the stove is, thats a standard 600x600mm paving slab used as a hearth. When its lit, it does put out the heat and with a door fitted it actually got quite snug in the main area of the boat. We're still experimenting with fuel, I need to find a coal that doesn't produce so much ash, as being small it gets full after a day. We also burnt some bits of wood from an old pallet, but this clogged up the spark arrestor in the chimney.

In addition to the stove, I also installed a smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector. Sensible to the last.

You can see that the flue doesn't stick up that much, that's 2m from the back of the stove.

I know the deck fitting doesn't quite fit. I should also know by now that nothing is ever as straightforward as I'd like. :)

Half Term

Another one. Yes, we spent another week or so working on Misterton, progress is being made, even if sometimes we're too close to the wood to see the trees.

We were visited by my sister, brother in law Steve and nephews William and Tom one day. I soon had William and Tom on ballast shifting duty. They managed 1.5 tons between them, and Tom was the only casualty with a lacerated finger. Steve and I basked in the glow of watching a new generation doing thankless manual labour.

I spent a lot of the week preparing the front cabin for the two 900 litre water tanks. Steve and I took turns at painting the inside with the solvent rich light grey anti-corrosive paint. Even with the hatch unbolted, we could only manage ten minutes at a time before the fumes overcame us.

The tanks were secured with rachet straps. After filling them the front of the boat came down a bit and the stern came up, so I'll need to put the last of the steel ballast back there (instead of the middle as planned).

 Mary meanwhile was painting, lots of painting. We had some help on friday from Guy, who did a great job of painting our bedroom.

The results look great, we should finish off the bulk of the inside painting this weekend.

 

I even managed to watch some local traffic going by, to Mary's amusment. Not quite the same as the big barges in Yorkshire, but interesting all the same (to me alone I must admit.....)

 

 Part 25 by Mary here too.