Men at work... Allegedly

As i type Tony is being assisted by a Kev a fellow professional engineer in putting back together our unit! I just had to write this as they do it. You see there is a reason for them both rushing do finish it..... The pub.
So far they have lost screws, and managed to put one of the doors on the wrong way! Just now a collective shout of "Knobs" was heard i can only imagine they are fitting them to the doors? or could be insulting each other??? who knows?
Jon took our unit last week, shaved 2 inches off the depth and sanded it down and polished it..... OH MY its fantastic we cannot thank him enough, i really mean that. The boat after 4 months of living aboard is now finished on the inside at least! Although Tony is threatening to cut down the ikea sofa bed to make it more comfy! (Over my cold and lifeless body, if he does any type of cutting in the boat again!)

Men at work!

In Place

Change the Loo... Blokes stuff...

OK, so I gave up with the pump-out loo... annoyed me that we had a system (that wouldn't work) and had to change it BUT, given the arguments for and against:

For Pump-out:
Tank / loo already installed.
Requires emptying every 4 - 5 weeks (when operating properly)
Cost / time / effort to change (already there!)

Against Pump out:
It wouldn't pump out properly (empty)
Cost of pumping out
Restricted sites to pump out
History of efficiency of operation (bad)
Julie had had enough of it!

For Cassette:
Ease / sites to empty
Simplicity of operation / installation
No cost to empty
Julie wanted it!

Against Cassette:
Removal of existing system
Repetition of emptying

Given the above - and a bit of arm-bending, the cassette option seemed to be the only way forward and, although it entailed the removal of the loo and tank that was built-in, to be fair its a better system for our future plans (cruising the cut)...

It took about an hour to remove the loo and the window, dismantle the bed over the tank and cut a hole in the top to extend the inspection hatch enough to fit the pipe to remove the 3/4 full cack in it. It took a further hour to pump out and swill / clean the tank to empty (4 tokens later!!). Then a total of 15 cutting disks, 4 hours work and a lot of dust and scraping cack later; the top front and one side of the tank were out and the remainder cleaned and blackened to seal it... rebuilt the bed and cleaned the rest of the boat (at this point Julie came back (from walking the dogs for 3 hours to stay out of the way) to finish off - best she wasn't there for the mucky bits really) - 8 hours graft... Day 2 entailed cutting and boxing-out the rest of the under-bed cavity after filling the tray of the tank with the ballast blocks that were under the kitchen units to counter-balance the tank that was now 70% gone... another 4 hours work then more cleaning (sawdust this time!)... I fitted the cassette loo (Thetford C200CS) in a couple of hours (including cutting a hole in the bathroom wall to facilitate cassette replenishment, the water and 12V supply were there from the Tecma macerator and only had to be 'adjusted' slightly)...

All in all a reasonably simple (if shitty) job but having the peace of mind that the loo can't overfill, won't cost anything but effort every 3-4 days to empty, will pay for itself in 4-5 months and we have another 1cu m to use as storage space PLUS less power and water consumption, a job worth the aggro of doing - I know, 'in heinsight' should've done it when the initial refurb was in operation and the boat was a proper building site... Oh well - the joys of liveaboards!! Hee!

Bog Blog

I promise this will be the last blog about a loo ever!

New loo arrived at the weekend and its the first chance we have had to fit it, well i say we i mean Tony as I'm going no where near the thing!

The boat is currently like a bomb site! not just because he is taking out the old loo, but the side board that holds the TV etc has gone to our friends to see if he can sand her down to get rid of the in grained coal dust and take 2 inches off the back of it so we can cross our legs! (as its located in front of the couch) All well and good designing something, but until you actually live with it you can never tell. So hopefully at the weekend we will have it back and be able to use it more effectively. This by the way was not without some drama! it always seem to happen when Tony steps off the boat, we had put it by the tiler awaitng collection from our friends, as yesterday was a very windy day, somehow i heard this thud, looked out and saw it floating in the canal 5 mins after Tony had gone to work! It was at least minus 2 yesterday, picture the scene, me dragging the nearly 6 foot wooden unit weighing about 40kg out of the cut! Well i lie i only got half of it out, managed to sit on it, with hands going blue shouting help! (Why would i be shouting help?) anyway about 2 mins later someone walked along the jetty and helped me load it onto the roof!

So we need to make a few adjustments to the bathroom door to get the cassette out but its in!

Gotta goto work now!