The weather has allowed me to have tidy up in the garden. I have pruned the trees and cleaned up the deadwood up as well as digging over the beds and removing a lot of the nettles. i have left some for the butterflies etc. One thing that was strange was a sort of nest that I found on the floor between some plants that had died off. It looked like a rodents nest but I have never seen a mouse make a thing like this. Can anybody identify it from a poor photo?
The 'nest' with a small entrance hole facing west with a dome of grass and leaves.
On Monday Helen brought me over to Dewsbury. The car was jammed with stuff to take, so much so that I began to wonder where we would put it. Helen wasn't staying so after dropping me and the stuff off she headed back home. My first job was to make a cup of tea, but after that I set to fixing up the 'double glazing' on the front doors. It went well and fits well. It felt less cold straight away. I hope that it will cut down the condensation too. I then got down to laying some carpet that we had bought. It was carpet runner style stuff. I thought it may be a little light but having laid it it doesn't seem to creep. The rest of the day seemed to be taken with trying to sort out the heating! For some reason the Hurricane was working fine in the water heating but did not work on the central heating mode.
On the way for my dinner at Weatherspoon's I called of at Screwfix and B&Q for bits and pieces. I got a new room thermostat as I thought it may be that causing the problem. The next day I fitted the new thermostat but it didn't make any difference. The Hurricane didn't receive a signal. Out with the manual, but it didn't take me long to find that it hadn't been wired up as per the plan! I am not an electrician but as it is only 12V I thought I would have a go. Despite opening everything up I couldn't see anything obvious amiss. I gave Calcutt a ring to see if they could point me to something obvious. They suggested that I short out across some terminals. If it flashed up that showed the Hurricane was working okay. I did and it did so it was then cable chasing. That all stopped when I touched two wires together and the lot went. The charger went off and the shore power went off too. It seems that one of the wires must be 230V so I stopped straight away. I thought I had blown the Victron up but after a while I found one of the breakers open so everything was okay.
At the top is the galvanic isolation kit. On the right in the silver is the 'brain' of the Hurricane heater. The white book is the consumer unit where everything seems to come in. I have a feeling that this is where the trouble is. The blue unit below that is the Victron Multiplus Compact inverter/charger, and below that is the solar panel control unit. This place is normally full of coats and tools and is a little awkward to get into at the best of times.
As an antidote to 'difficult' things I thought I would take on a simple task and fill up with water. It seemed for ever but just as I had decided that we had enough it was full. I then thought I would fix up the window for the side hatch. Not easy to do on your own, and so it turned out I managed to drop the sheet in the cut and it took me another hour to get it out again. Spare carpet was cut to fit in the bottom of lockers and wardrobes. Next it was the TV. Helen had put her foot down regarding having one onboard this year. We had bought one especially and now I had to make it work. Previously we had taken one from home and I had never managed to get it working. I got some new coaxial and ran it through the window to an aerial sat on a bucket on the rough and roughly pointing the way of those on the houses. When I tuned it in lo and behold there we were. I then tried it through the system fitted through the boat to the forward aerial point, and again it worked! I then tried it with a little flat aerial that is from an Audi car and again it worked. Hopefully that means that I wont need a mast and a big high gain aerial. At last something was working okay.
I still need to run the internal coaxial from the aerial point to the TV but hopefully Helen will be able to catch the 'Bake Off' without using all my data on the internet.
Today it was checking the batteries. I had run out of de-ionised water last time at the boat so checked all the cells and found that they really weren't too bad. I think I am not getting the best wear out of my batteries with this set up as one battery is doing all the work and not sharing the road. I have decided to have the take over from the positive from the opposite end to the negative and so had to measure the length of cable I would need. My original plan was to rip out the wooden facing of the locker as it was mostly rotten but with the delay of the heating I was going to run out of time.
My battery set up with the take off from the services side is from the second left battery. I think it should come from the right hand end battery so that the load on the batteries is more even. The starter battery is the one on the left.
I then spent some time boxing off all the electrics ready to leave the boat when Helen come for me in the morning. All in all I have accomplished a lot but there is still more to do before we set off at the end of the month.
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