Category: The Captain’s Log

Well I have just got back from winterising the boat. The day before snow hit Stone.

So now we should be safe.

Well, when I got to the boat this spring, 2023. the webasto had packed up. And my min/max thermometer said that temperature had dropped a couple of degrees below zero. Inside the boat! Luckily I had drained all the tanks so there was little damage.

I thought it might be the fuel pump and took it over to Kings Lock. They said it would probably be fine and tested it. It was. They recommended I check the fuses, they are prone to going high resistance, allowing the unit to start up but then fail on low voltage. I checked all the fuses and voltages and they were fine, but still no start. And I still had no idea what parts to order.

We than went out for a month to visit the new section of the Montgomery.

When we got back, the crew suggested I should just order a complete new unit. This I did. It arrived a month or so ago.

So this month I spent a week on Chestnut doing stuff.

First I replaced the Webasto heater with a new unit from Mellor online. I will now send than the old unit for repair and that will give me a standby.

Then I sorted out the Fridge fan.

Finally I replaced the Domestic Control Panel. See the separate page on that.

Well, it’s November the 24th and here I sit , at home, having not gone near the boat for months.

Normally I winterise the boat in October. Even when we occasionally went out in October, I would winterise the boat before leaving it.

So far, due to global warming, we have not had the usual below zero frosty mornings, so I live in hope of it still being afloat when I finally get to it! I exaggerate of course, the boat will not sink, but if a pipe bursts and both water tanks empty onto the floor/bilges, we will have some serious repair costs.

So, what are the chances of a disaster?

First I leave a frost stat connected to the Webasto, so anything below 5॰C should start up the Webasto fired Central Heating and keep the temperature above freezing.

Second, all of the plumbing uses plastic piping, and I am assured that, even if full of water, the pipe will expand enough to cope with freezing.

The same is NOT true, of course, for the Brass tank fittings or the tanks themselves. And the cold tank is under the well-deck at the front where it can’t be warmed by the central heating.

So if we get a deep frost, the Cold tank risks rupturing. It is stainless steel so won’t cope with ice expansion – except for a few millimetres at the bottom once it is drained.

The rest will be OK, so long as the Central Heating works. But in the past the thermostat has failed, the webasto itself has failed, and one time the fuel in the tank got so low it went below the take-off point of the webasto fuel line.

And if the Webasto fails the Hot tank will rupture.

I was told, when we first had the boat, to just drain it all down and leave it to freeze over winter, but that didn’t work either. The winter certainly went well below freezing, and both tanks were fine with just a little water in the bottom, and so were all the pipes and taps. But the feed to the Thetford toilet went via a non-return valve so the pipe section between the valve and toilet never drained, and one of the brass couplings cracked. The valve is a requirement of the water regulations, to prevent soiled water returning to the drinking water feed pipe, but I only found that out after an extensive leak detection and repair session. Nowadays I drain it as part of winterising.

We planned for a couple of weeks away in early July, but realised, when we got to the boat, that the Shoreline fridge was still playing up. It was iced up at the back of the fridge and the motor hardly stopped running. These, I understand, are indications that there is insufficient fluid in the system. Apparently it slowly leaks away over the years, and the fridge is 10 years old.

So, two possibilities, one, get the fridge re-gassed – just like the air-conditioning in a car, or two, buy a new fridge. A 10- year old fridge won’t have the same gas in it as a modern one – manufacturers can’t use the same materials nowadays – so re-gassing may not be quite as simple as it sounded, and a 10 year-old fridge may not be worth re-gassing anyway as all the other components like the compressor will be wearing out. Also, try as I might I couldn’t find anyone that could re-gas it anyway.

So buy a new one.

I arranged to pick up a new Shoreline FF115 from Midland Chandlers at Mercia Marina in Willington above Burton-on-Trent. They even agreed to take away the old one – a major benefit on a narrowboat.

We duly arrived on the Wednesday and they said we were lucky as they only had two in stock and they sold the second one an hour after they wrote my name on the first.

They brought the new fridge to the boat and left me to install it. Before I did that I thought that I would a) leave it for an hour to let the refrigerant settle, and b) connect it to 12volt on a temporary piece of wire just to check the motor ran.

I did both, but the motor wouldn’t run. The fridge sat there with the alarm LED flashing twice, which the manual says indicates “too many start attempts or Fan over current”. Given the fan wasn’t connected, too many start attempts.

I went back to Midland Chandlers and told them. They were suspicious of my temporary wire and brought down a leisure battery to test the fridge. Connected the battery – same error code.

Luckily, that very morning they had taken delivery of a new one. So they brought that down and took away the first one.

Once again I connected it to my lash up and we got the same error code!

At this point I figured there was very little chance Shoreline had produced two bad units, so what was going on? I read the manual. It says, ” The electronic is protected against too many start attempts. If more than 10 starts occur in an unusual short time, the unit will blink with error code 2 and prevent further starts for 60secs. After 60 sec normal operation will be resumed.

I began to wonder if the electronics was clever enough to memorise the error code before I unplugged it, and start the 60 seconds over again after the Midland Chandler’ guy had connected the leisure battery – we only connected it to the battery for long enough to see the error code – maybe 20 seconds. Though we tried it a few times, each time we disconnected it after we saw the error code.

So I shuffled the old fridge out of its place, disconnected it and shuffled the new fridge near enough to use the original cabling. Connected the new fridge and switched it on. On came the error display. So I left it for a minute, and the motor started up!

So it looks like the new Shoreline electronic unit measures the voltage at its connection while the motor starts and if it drops below 9.6 volts it stops the motor. Actually, the manual says it does this under “Battery Protection”. Of course once the motor stops the voltage goes up and the motor tries to start again. If it does this 10 times in a short period it stops trying and reports error code 2.

Conclusion: if I had tried the correct thickness of wire to start with all would have been well, or if we had left the leisure battery connected long enough to time-out the error code, it would also have worked. You live and learn.

We now have a new fridge.

Just to complete this story, the new fridge is about 10mm shorter than the old one. The new one, it turns out, has smaller wheels than the old one. The new fridge won’t fit on the wooden plinth I built for the old one that provides enough clearance under the fridge for the external bilge fan. Something for another day.

For over a year now I have been designing a new battery monitor. I say new, but in fact the only monitor Chestnut has is a voltmeter.

So I have designed current shunts to fit in the main battery cabling and digital voltage monitors for both batteries. They all connect into a display unit with an Arduino computer module that will make sense of the inputs.

But I wanted two extra things:

1. A computer output so that I can check on the unit while away from the boat.
2. A simple “at-a-glance” display of the state of the battery

I will begin fitting the units onto the boat in the near future and then put all the designs and construction on this website for others to follow – Assuming it works.

I anticipate that even after the physical units are installed it will take some time afterwards to fine-tune the arduino software so that the whole thing works reliably.

Well, I have been running this web site for a few days now and it seems to be improving all the while.

Well, this was long time coming. I have been meaning to put up a web site like this for years, and never quite got around to it. But here I am in the middle of the virus lock down with plenty of time to finally do it.