Dry Dock Day 2

This morning we  had a lie in till about 10am, The weather forecast predicted rain in the afternoon, nick went over the hull again with the wire brush attached to the angle grinder to get the rust off that had formed after the morning rain, then i let him get on with the blacking, after yesterdays jet washing i have ended up with a stiff neck from bending, As he got half way round the hull the heavens opened so he took a short break till it stopped, the weather changed and the sun came out so i went out to paint the sides. hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow.

The boys having a cuppa

Blacking in the rain

Dry Dock Day One

Well it was an early morning for us today as we were heading into dry dock, i walked up and asked steve what time he wanted us in and he said in about 20 minutes, This was at 8.30am, 8.30am!! i don't do mornings as you all know but it had to be done, so here we are in the dock for 7 days.
first job was to karcher the growth off the side which i have to say wasn't as bad as i expected it to be seeing as it  was 3 years since it was last done, nick followed me around with the wire brush attached to a angle grinder to get the bits off that i missed.

In the dock

Space for Islonian

Steve closing the lock

Emptying the water out

Not too bad

I will update daily

Down the trent

Being a better day today than it was yesterday we decided to travel down the trent onto the erewash ready for tomorrow when we go into dry dock for the week,it was nice and warm coming down the canal, a different story on the trent tho as it was quite windy.

looking back up the trent

Islonian in front

Islonian turning into erewash

scout club ferry

Turning into the erewash

Getting a move on

So we have sat around for a couple of weeks waiting for the good ship Islonian to join us, we met up yesterday and spent the night moored just outside weston on trent, today see's us moving towards sharlow for the night, tomorrow we head down to sawley ready to be in dry dock on saturday, it's been a beautiful day today so whilst we were traveling i did some washing and hung it out after we moored, it was dry in an hour, bring on summer.

Secondary Double Glazing

We get so much condensation on the bathroom windows with it being next to the kitchen that i have decided to fit secondary double glazing, i have tried the film and tape stuff you can get from B&Q for around £5 but to use it we had to remove the hopper stays which meant we couldn't open the hopper if it was a nice day.
So to start i had to remove all the sticky tape from the window frames and replace the stays then sand the wooden frames and varnish them, i bought 30 metres of magnetic tape and some sheets of 2mm clear acrylic, we have 11 windows and a Houdini hatch to cover, first job was to cut the acrylic to size then attach the adhesive magnetic tape to the wooden frame. The tape come's in A polarity and B polarity so that they attract each other, so A polarity go's on the window frame and B polarity  go's on the acrylic, it can go either way round it don't really matter but that's how i did it, to make sure they both matched up i put B polarity on top of A polarity on the window frame then offered up the acrylic so it was a perfect match. Now i am able to remove the acrylic if it's a nice day and have the windows open, all i need to do now is find somewhere to store them when not in use but i think they could go in one of the top box's in summer out of the way.
I tried to take befoe and after pic's but they were way too dark so i left the film on so you can see.

Bathroom Window

Houdini

Washing on solar power alone

As many of you know we have a large solar array, so today being a all sunny day i decided to put the solar to the test, i know the sun is still a little low in the sky for a few more weeks yet so we have the panels tilted at 45 degree's.
For those of you who don't know what our setup is here is a rundown of what we have, 950Watt of solar comprising of 5 x 190Watt panel's split between 2 tracer controllers, 3 x 190w panels fed into a 45a tracer and 2 x 190w panels fed into a 40a tracer, both set's are wired parallel..
Victron 3000 Multiplus invertor and 6 x US 2200 12v deep cycle Batteries.
The washer is a Candy Grand O Plus 8kg load
Here are the reading before,during and after the wash.

Before washer was on.

Heating the water

Spinning

Wash Finished

1 Hour after wash completed, sun going down.

So for those that don't believe solar alone can run a washing machine here is the proof that it can.
This was a wash at 40 degree's on a 45 minute was cycle.The water temperature in the calorifier was roughly 10 degree's
my next test will be on a 60 degree wash on a 2 hour cycle, of course i shall have to wait till we have another long sunny day but i am confident it will work, and it's not even summer yet.

The Gas Conversion Result

so after a week waiting for the kit to come we finally got it fitted after using the petrol we had left,
when we ran the generator on petrol a 20 litre jerry can ( approx £25 ) would last us around 24hrs that could be anything from running 2hrs a day to 4hrs a day, so depending on how much the solar topped the batteries up depended on how long we ran the generator, so in simple terms if we ran the generator for 4hrs a day the petrol would last us 6 days.
The gas conversion kit cost £159.
The bottle of calor gas ( 13kg ) costs £25.49p we hooked it up which took about an hour having decided where the kit was to be fitted, so the gas lasted 26 hours and 30 minutes which is 2 hours and 30 minutes more than the petrol, i am a little disappointed at the result as i expected it to last longer, the upside to that is we don't have to carry a jerry can to the garage anymore, so even tho it wasn't as we expected at least we can get gas from any marina.