Double Glazing

One of the benefits of being in a marina is that Roger has had time to catch up on all the little jobs he's been meaning to do for ages. Top of the list was to fit secondary double glazing and after lots of research he finally came up with a cheap(ish) and simple method which has worked brilliantly.

For those of you who don't live on boats, the main problem in winter is condensation on windows and their aluminium frames.

Every morning my first job would be to wipe up the puddles on the window cills before they could soak in and discolour the wood.

You can see in the large photo of our boat at the top of the blog that we have LOTS of BIG windows and the heat loss on very cold nights was quite considerable. In previous winters we've put silver insulating foil behind the venetian blinds at night and that worked really well but didn't stop the condensation or the heat loss during the day. Plus we had the nuisance of where to store 7 large pieces of insulation during the day.

Roger's system is made up of 3mm clear acrylic sheet face fixed around the window by double sided magnetic tape and as you can see it works brilliantly!

It was -3' this morning and there wasn't any condensation on the 6 windows we've done so far. We weren't sure whether to do the kitchen window or not as I like to have the top hopper open while I'm cooking, but as you can see in the photos above this window was dripping heavily this morning and that's made the decision for us. The magnetic tape makes it really easy to put up/take down the DG so I'll just take it down and put it on the bed while I'm cooking.

I said the job was cheap(ish) and in total it's cost us just under £150 for the 7 windows.  That included having the acrylic cut to size and delivered to Macclesfield.  If anyone wants more details feel free to email me.

Weed hatch

Roger hardly ever has to go down our weed hatch, but when he does he always wears these long arm pond gloves.

Unfortunately the seams leak, so while they protect against cuts he still gets a bit wet.  Normally this isn't too much of a problem, but when we were on the BCN we spoke to a guy who'd got something on his prop and went down the weed hatch to clear it without wearing gloves.  Later in the day he developed chemical burns on his arm from the pollution in the water. That got me thinking how I could make sure it didn't happen to Roger, so I tried coating the seams in the gloves with Storm Seam Repair glue which I'd had in stock in case our waterproofs ever got ripped. He hadn't used the gloves again until we got onto the Grand Union the other day and I'm now happy to tell you the glue worked.

If you're interested, you can buy it in outdoor/camping shops or on Amazon HERE

Having used this glue on the gloves, I also think it'll work well if we ever need to repair the cratch cover.

A great week

The Llangollen is getting quite busy in the run up to Easter. There are loads of hire boats going up and down, mostly well driven, however we were rammed by a day boat earlier today.

Last weekend was spent socialising with a group of lovely boaters who had come out of Chirk Marina for an extended weekend jaunt and we made a valiant effort to drink the Poachers Pocket dry. This was followed by a leisurely couple of days cruising back down New Marton locks to fill up with water and a half mile walk down Frankton locks to the refuse skip to dump the rubbish.

We arrived back at the Poachers Pocket this morning, closely followed by Charles and Dolores on "Felonious Mongoose" who we last met when they moored in Macclesfield Marina for a short while a couple of years ago.  They invited us on board for a coffee and we had a good chat, catching up and sharing experiences.

Chico's still having his training sessions with Karen of Beastly Thoughts and it finally looks like we're making progress. Walks are much less stressful although I think it'll be a long time (if ever) till he 's cured and can happily socialise with other dogs. While we were out walking this morning, we met a man with 4 dogs who took great pains to tell me that he was a dog trainer and I was doing it all wrong!  According to him I shouldn't use praise and treats but should yank him hard by the collar every time he barks at another dog and use other aversion/punishment methods. I think I'll stick with Karen's methods thank you!

The weather this week has been absolutely glorious and I've started planting up the troughs on the roof. So far I've filled 2 with violas and have tomatoes, courgettes and strawberries hardening off ready for planting on in a couple of weeks. The local mallards are very tame as they're regularly fed by people eating in the pub garden.  This one sat on the roof for ages watching me doing the planting. I just hope it doesn't fancy tender young plants along with its pub diet of crisps and chips.

One of our expensive SMD (LED) lamps has failed after only 12 months (should last around 30,000 hours) and when Roger took it down to check he found out it was the capacitor that's failed. You may recall that we had problems with failing capacitors in the TV back in January so he ordered the right size replacement and again has effected a repair.  The only draw-back is that the minimum order of these particular capacitors is 100 at a time but at under £3 including delivery and VAT it's not such a hardship.

If anyone needs any SMD's repairing we've got plenty of capacitors going spare, just get in touch.

As it's been such a leisurely week I've been doing quite a lot of crochet, working on my blanket and also making this Happy Flower wall hanging. It's another of Lucy's creations and the instructions are available here.

Queen's Head

Saturday
We continued our journey today and moored on the Queen's Head visitor moorings so that we can go to the pub for Sunday lunch tomorrow.  The weather's changed to sunshine and showers but this gave us a beautiful rainbow  this evening.

We had a bit of a problem today. The kitchen sink tap developed a leak about 1cm up the side of the pillar.  The metal must have had a flaw in it which has split into a hairline fracture and was dribbling onto the sinktop.
This gave Roger the chance to try something he'd bought a few months ago "just in case".  It's an epoxy repair putty specifically designed for this kind of repair and worked perfectly.

The patch doesn't look very pretty but should tide us over until the replacement tap we've ordered from ebay arrives.

If you'd like to add the putty to your tool box "just in case" it's available from hardware shops or from ebay and costs under £6.