Maintenance Spring Continues

It seems that every time we have come to the boat this spring, something has required attention.  When we arrived this past Saturday, yet another maintenance item reared its head.  When I turned on the power to the fresh water pressure pump, we were greeted with the sound of... nothing.  No water pressure.

A little bit of diagnostics disclosed that the pump was ok, but the pressure switch was not.  

Since it is nearly impossible to remove the pressure switch assembly with the pump installed without dropping important bits into the bilge, it had to come out.  Now that sounds somewhat trivial, but it is not.  Advanced Class IV boat yoga is required to get a screwdriver on the mounting screws, and the water connections are even worse.

Once removed, I disassembled the pump head and pressure switch assembly.  Delving into the switch assembly, I discovered that the micro switch which actually controls the power feed to the pump had failed mechanically.

The micro switch, shown with a thumbdrive for scale

Since we had a spare pump head aboard, I "simply" installed it and reinstalled the pump, thinking that I'd look at getting another micro switch and repairing the old pump head to keep as a spare.

Ha!

The brand new pump head would not move water.  I presume this was due to the internal flapper valves having taken a set.  It took me 3 more install/removals of the pump to confirm that the new head was not going to work.  I really dislike when new stuff fails to work out of the box.

So for the fourth time I removed the pump, and reinstalled the old pump head but with the pressure switch from the new head.

It worked.  But the pump shuts off almost immediately, telling me that I reassembled the pressure switch incorrectly (I think I know what's wrong).  

So, I took an Ibuprofin and ordered a couple new micro switches via Amazon.  I will rebuild the old pressure switch next weekend. And then I will have to employ the advanced boat yoga one more time (hopefully...) to reinstall the rebuilt pressure switch assembly.  

Then all I will have remaining is to recalibrate the pressure switch so that the pump delivers the desired pressure.  That will only require Class III boat yoga.

Hopefully.

Maintenance Spring Continues

Valves, Oh My!

Eolian's two valves which select which water tank the domestic supply is drawn from have been getting more and more difficult to turn over the years.  This spring, I decided that enough was enough...  before I broke something.  They were bronze valves, and were as old as the boat.

Here's the plumbing tree.  Water supply from the two tanks is at the top left and right.  Feed to the pressure pump is from the strainer at the very bottom.  The small pipe leading off to the left is the supply from the water maker, and the capped off grey pipe is the supply to the fresh water foot pump in the galley sink.

Before

 

 

So, in a fit of activity, I disassembled the valve tree and replaced the old valves with PVC/Teflon ball valves - they are only a little longer than the old ones and there is plenty of room for them.  Also, they open and close like a dream because the seats are Teflon.

And while I was at it, I added a valve in the galley foot pump supply and reconnected it.  (I capped this off back in 1997 because the foot pump flapper valves slowly leaked air back into the system, making the freshwater supply pump constantly cavitate.)  Now we can have the use of the foot pump by simply opening a valve.

After

 

 

Finally as a side note, I do not leave both tanks connected together because by keeping them separate, in the event of a leak the worst case scenario is that I would only lose half of my fresh water.  (I keep both diesel tanks separate for the same reason.)

Valves, Oh My!

No-no Will Be Corrected

 You probably can't tell from the photo, but that is a no-no.

You see, thru-hulls are threaded NPS (National Pipethread,Straight), so that seacocks can be threaded onto them tight against the hull, regardless of the hull thickness.  Normal pipe fittings are NPT (National Pipethread, Tapered) so the connection will bind up solidly when things are tightened up.

In the picture, you see a bronze NPT ball valve threaded onto a NPS thru hull.  This is not good, since the connection between the straight and tapered threads will only be one or two turns.  It could leak (it's not, thankfully) and it is mechanically very weak, meaning a small side thrust could disengage the threads.

This problem exists here because, tho there are 1/2" thru hulls, there are no 1/2" seacocks made - the smallest is 3/4".  So here, a normal 1/2" bronze NPT ball valve  was screwed on to the 1/2" thru hull to make up the connection.  A definite no-no.

I have thought about this off and on for years.  And recently a cosmic ray passed thru my brain and gave me the solution...

I have in my shop at home a set of pipe threading dies.  I could easily re-thread the top of the thru hull to be NPT using one of these...

So: next haul-out when the fitting is out of the water, I will bring the 1/2" NPT die to the boat and re-thread the end of the fitting to NPT, and reassemble properly.  

Problem solved!

No-no Will Be Corrected

Water Heater Safety

Do you have a water heater on your boat?

Here’s a fact that you probably know, but which has direct bearing on the question:

Virtually everything gets bigger when heated

And of course this includes the water in your water heater.  Why is this an issue?  Well, because on a boat, the water heater is in a closed system.  There is nowhere for the expanding water to go because the check valves in your water pressure pump do not allow backflow to the water tank.

The pressure that expanding water can build is tremendous - two to four atmospheres per degree centigrade.  With a 100 degree temperature rise, this is easily enough to rupture the water heater tank if it is not released in some way.  In your onboard plumbing system, there are only three ways that pressure is relieved:

• The pressure relief valve on the water heater opens (never remove or defeat this!)
• The entire plumbing system swells/expands to accommodate the additional volume
• Something breaks
  

In a seemingly unrelated fact, most boats with pressurized water systems also have a "surge" tank (aka "pulse dampening" tank, etc) to smooth out the water pump running cycle.  The idea here is that this tank, with its enclosed air bladder, will fill with water when the pump runs, compressing the bladder.  When the pump reaches its shutoff pressure, the air bladder in the tank will force water out into the system when a valve is opened, eliminating the need for the pump to run, for awhile.

How this bears on water heater safety is this:  that surge tank also acts as an expansion tank.  As the water heater heats up its water, the expansion is accommodated by compressing the air bladder in the surge tank a little more.  Problem solved.

More and more municipalities are installing "backflow preventers" (aka check valves) on water lines entering houses, in an abundance of caution to prevent water that has been in household plumbing from re-entering the city’s supply.  This has made all water systems in these municipalities into closed systems, with nowhere for the expansion in the water heater to go.  Because of this, the market has ginned up, and there are now available a host of water heater expansion tanks.  Even the smallest of these (2 gallons) is more than adequate to serve as an expansion tank, flow smoother and rapid pump cycling preventer tank on any boat.  And they cost far, far less than the tiny pump cycle tanks sold at marine stores.  They should fit just about anywhere, with dimensions approximately 8" dia by 12" tall.

Installation is a snap:  Put a tee in your pump output water line, the closer to the pump the better.  And then hook up the side arm of the tee to the tank.  Some tank manufacturers give instruction about how the tank should be oriented for mounting, but I cannot see how this matters.  Perhaps someone out there will explain to me why this is important.

If you have a water heater but no expansion tank/pump cycle tank, you should install one.  It could save your fresh water plumbing.

Water Heater Safety

Draining

Yeah, I mentioned this last time.

Eolian has two large lazarettes under her aft deck:

The lids for these drop into gutters molded into the deck.  I'm sure that as soon as they washed this boat that first time in the factory, they discovered that water overflowed the gutters and into the lazarettes.

So, they cut in a drain.  And just in case, they also installed a drain in the lazarettes too.  And all was well in Whoville.

For a while.

But sadly, when it rains, all manner of crap finds its way to the drains.  Yes, they block right at the top, and I periodically clear them.  More insidiously, they also block down below...  And when they do that, the lazarette fills with water.  And it doesn't drain thru the factory-installed drain... because the blockage is below that, at least it was last time.  In fact, when this happens, the water that goes down the gutter drain backs up thru the lazarette drain, actually making things worse!

And, as it turns out, the lazarette is not quite water tight.  That water slowly leaks down. Onto the foot of our mattress.  At my feet.  This is no bueño.

Thankfully this only happens when it rains.

Each of the drains has a 1/2" hose that led to this fitting tower, 

The fitting tower

which was screwed onto a thru hull located probably 18" above the waterline.  And as usual, in a near-inaccessible location, beneath my berth.

When I passed a piece of heavy wire down the drain in an attempt to clear the blockage, I was unable to make it turn the corner at the elbow.  Blockage one; me zero.

OK, time for a change in design.

I removed the fittings from the thru hull (remember: nearly inaccessible...).  Then I installed a hose barb wye fitting, with the two arms accepting the two drain hoses (still inaccessible...).  Finally, I installed a hose from the tail of the wye, curving it direct to the thru hull (inaccessible...).    To prevent a kink, I heated that hose with a heat gun and bent it into a sweeping 90° angle.  Being a wye, I should be able to pass a piece of wire thru it from either drain fitting without a hangup.

Because I was exhausted on completing this work, I failed to take any pictures - sorry. 

Opening a beer was higher on my priority list.

Draining

Damn Fish

We had visitors coming to the boat on Sunday.  So of course our galley sink stopped up almost entirely on Saturday.  Yeah, I tried the plunger, but if anything it made things worse.  Since we had had experience with fish swimming up our plumbing before, I suspected that this might be the case again...

So yesterday morning I tackled it - we can't go on washing dishes in the forward head sink forever...

My first thought was that the easiest approach would be to disconnect the hose from the sink plumbing under the sink.  This would allow me to isolate the problem to either the hose or the nearly inaccessible thru hull/seacock, or to the drain plumbing under the sink, where the diameter goes from 1-1/2" to 1" hose.  (One of my mechanic's rules is to always try the easiest or cheapest solution first.)

Well.  Since we all know that Murphy was a marine architect, you can guess that the "easy" approach was not so easy after all.  In fact, because of an intervening shelf that the plumbing passed thru, I destroyed almost everything in the plumber's nightmare above in getting the hose off. 

And no, the problem was not there.

Well, the hose was off, so I got out our sewer snake (don't all boats have a sewer snake?).  It easily ran down the hose all the way to the elbow on the thru hull. 

No joy.

Thankfully, Sebo's Hardware is just two blocks from the head of the dock, so I think you can imagine me, squatted down in the plumbing section, piecing together various fittings on the floor to try to make up a similar nightmare.  Sebo's is a very complete hardware - I was able to remake the plumbing and even replace the 2" sink strainer for only $28.

So where are we?

The sink plumbing is back together, shiny and new.  Sadly, it still doesn't drain. 

For now at least, we have decided to continue the use of the fwd head sink as the wash basin.  We have a haul-out scheduled for this spring - tackling the thru hull from the outside with a plunger (or worse, disassembling it) would be a lot easier with the boat on the hard than trying to use a plunger on it from the outside now, wearing a wet suit.

And who knows - maybe it will heal.  if it is a fish that is in there, maybe he leave on his own.  Or decompose.

Damn Fish

Exhausted

Remember, a few posts ago when I went Uh oh...?

Well, the time finally came up.  I wedged myself into a small, wedge-shaped compartment right next to the refrigeration compressor (Turn it off!  And more importantly, remember to turn it back on...).

As my body slowly became more compliant with the wedge-shaped space, I had to, slowly, with only a couple of inches freedom of movement, saw out a section of the exhaust hose.

Why just a section?  Well, this stuff is about as flexible as a 3" diameter tree branch.  There is no way that I would be able to bend it enough to get one end off of its pipe while the other end is connected - it's only 18" long.  So I chose to cut out a section from the center, which would give me enough freedom of movement to deal with the two remaining ends.

Ugly, isn't it?

So, over the course of a few hours, I was able to make the two necessary saw cuts thru the heavy, multiple-wire reinforced rubber.  What came out, after I re-inflated my body to its normal shape, was pretty ugly.

Looking at the cut end that passed thru the external salt deposit (I cut it there on purpose), you can see that the thin outer layer of rubber is loose from the bulk of the hose.  And closer examination shows that that bulk rubber at that location is actually completely cooked - hard as a rock and fractured, barely hanging together.

How did this happen?  The exhaust gases are water cooled.  Well, this is the top of the hose, near the water lift muffler.  Nearly the worst possible location if the water flow was weak (by the time it got here, it would probably be just running along the bottom of the hose).  And there have been some occasions over the years where raw water flow thru the engine was reduced.  I think this is the eventual consequence, come back to haunt me a lot later.

This is the tool that I used to cut the hose.  It is a handle especially designed to take Sawz-all blades.  I have a metal cutting blade chucked in it for this job.  It is really the only tool that I could have used to make these cuts, given the space constraints.

For the removal of the two end pieces of hose, I pressed a Dremel tool into service, using a tiny cut-off wheel.  It sliced thru the rubber and the wires with ease.  I had originally been worried about cutting too deep, marring the sealing surface of the pipes, but that was unnecessary.  Those wires are so hard and springy that as each was severed, it opened up the cut more.  It was not necessary to cut the rubber beneath the wires - their tension tore it.

Now all I have to do is bend a piece of new hose enough to get it in the space, and over the pipes at each end.  Sounds easy right?  A story for another time...

Exhausted

Corrosion, Corrosion

For a boat on salt water, corrosion is an omnipresent demon.

Even inside.  This is the spout on our galley sink which is piped to a saltwater foot pump. And to the cooling water discharge from our 12V refrigeration system, meaning that it has saltwater flowing out of it whenever the refrigeration compressor is running, as a telltail. Look closely at the inside of the right-hand bend... yup, the aluminum has corroded thru. I don't understand this... aluminum is supposed to be reasonably proof against saltwater.  The pipe is clamped to the sink in a plastic fixture, and is connected below the sink via vinyl tubing...  ruling out galvanic corrosion.  The entire refrigeration system is 12V, so stray 110V current cannot be an issue.  The compressor is powered by an external motor thru a V-belt. 

But.

The motor and compressor are mounted on the same metal plate, and there are some pressure switches to control the motor mounted on the compressor.

Is that enough to cause stray current corrosion, tho there is no direct connection between the refrigeration unit and the aluminum tubing except via the saltwater itself?

Or is the corrosion simply the result of flowing saltwater washing away the protective oxide layer on the inside of the aluminum tubing?  I am very interested in what the net.wisdom has to say about this...

Regardless, this is the second spout that I have installed there, and they have gotten ridiculously expensive.  I am not planning to buy a third one.

Two pieces of 7/16" stainless tubing

Instead, I bought some thin-gauge 316 stainless tubing from Online Metals.  Now, if you've ever attempted to bend tubing, and especially thin-gauge tubing, you know that it requires special tooling to prevent kinking.  The tooling constrains the tube so that it can't collapse and kink while it is being distorted.  I looked up what a tubing bender for 7/16" tubing costs on the Interwebs, and Oh. My. Gosh.

OK, a Plan B is needed.

It is also possible to prevent collapse/kinking if the tubing is filled solidly with something incompressible.  Apparently some people have used ice (fill with water; freeze), but I was concerned that I'd never get the tubing bent before the ice started to melt.  This is where Wood's metal comes in.

This is Wood's metal - it is a eutectic alloy of 50% bismuth, 26.7% lead, 13.3% tin, and 10% cadmium by weight.  It melts at 158°F

I just happened to have some. 

Wood's metal foundry

For a foundry, I purpose-bought a can of tomato paste (69¢), and froze the tomato paste, retaining the can - just the right size.  I put it in a pan with some water and brought the water to a boil - 212°F, or about 50° of superheat.  I then poured the molten metal into the tubing (I had previously blocked one end of the tubing by pushing it into a wine cork - we seem to have plenty of these).  I then immediately plunged the filled tubing into a container of cold water - I had read that quenching creates a fine crystal structure in the Wood's metal, making it more ductile (read: easier to bend).

OK, now to bend.  I created a bending jig and lag-bolted it to a 4x4 in our shed:

Homemade bending jig

Yup, it bent just fine - no kinking, no collapse.

Recovering the Wood's metal

All that remained was to reheat the bent tubing in another boiling water bath to remelt the Wood's metal and pour it out.

And since our galley sink has two of these spouts (one for salt water and one for fresh water, foot-pumped from the tanks), I made another spout.  Gotta be symmetrical, don't you know.

Done
(Clever camera angle conceals dirty dishes in the sink)

A little boat yoga, and the galley sink looks better than it ever has!

Corrosion, Corrosion

When Stainless Isn't

That's our right-hand sink drain. The side of the sink that the tell-tale for the refrigeration pump discharges into, discharges salt water into that is.  And that is not just staining...  it is rust.

Simplistically, stainless steel is an alloy of iron, chromium, nickel and carbon.  There are over 150 alloys called "stainless steel", each optimized for a particular set of properties.  The alloys typically found on a boat are SAE 304 (AKA "18-8", 18-20% chromium and 8-10.5% nickel), and 316 (AKA "surgical stainless", 16-18% chromium, 10-14% nickel and 2-3% molybdenum).  Between these two, 304 is the stronger and 316 is the more corrosion resistant.

But when you are buying plumbing fittings, you are not typically provided any choice of alloy (or even, usually, an alloy description).  The single exception to this is the sink, where sometimes an alloy description may be given.  All stainless alloys are somewhat attracted to a magnet, but 316 is attracted a lot less than 304.  But you would really have to have samples of both to be able to make a valid comparison.  To confuse matters more, the amount of cold work that the piece of metal has received will affect its magnetic properties - a lot.  And finally, we don't have any loose magnets aboard Eolian, for obvious reasons, so magnetic testing of the new drain fittings is not going to happen. 

It is clear that whatever the alloys of the sink and the drain fittings, the drain fittings have the least corrosion resistance.  Still, I installed those drain fittings over 15 years ago, when I replaced the original severely corroded chrome-plated brass ones.

So I guess I am good for another 15 years now.

I hope.

When Stainless Isn't

Atomic lace

While I was busy chasing the fish thru our head intake plumbing, I noticed that a fitting on the next seacock over was seeping.  So, since I had the proper sized nut driver in my hand, I put a half turn on the appropriate hose clamp.  *SNAP*   This fitting broke clean off!   I hurriedly closed the seacock.

Thank you, PO

This is (or was...) a brass fitting.  It has de-zincified.

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc (not to be confused with bronze, an alloy of copper and tin).  Now, we put zincs on our props and/or shafts to protect the bronze props, right?  Well, with brass, there is zinc right there, internally!  And just like with your prop, in salt water the zinc dissolves to protect the copper.  But when it is a solid piece of metal what does this mean?

It means just exactly what you'd imagine...  This piece of used-to-be-brass is now copper, but with 30% void space - it is atomic lace.  Of course it has no strength.

Brass has no place in boat plumbing (except perhaps in the fresh water lines at the galley sink).  But sadly, most marine chandeliers not only stock brass fittings, but they also locate their brass and bronze fittings right next to each other, or worse, intermixed with each other.  And since brass and bronze are similar in appearance, this arrangement infers that they are interchangeable.  NOT SO!  In fact, I will make the case that marine chandeliers should not stock brass plumbing fittings at all.  Just like with non-stranded electrical wire, if a boater needs a brass fitting, he should be forced to go to a conventional hardware store so that it becomes explicitly obvious that he is getting something not suitable for marine service.

Atomic lace

Cold weather's a comin'

Here's something that you probably don't think about when you're living ashore...  The weather forecast has some decidedly cold (by Seattle standards, anyway) weather coming next week.  Below freezing.  So cold that water turns into... a solid!

And our water tanks are very low.  Murphy says that we will run out of water aboard when the water hose on the dock is frozen solid.  And when I am taking a shower.  Murphy is such an SOB.

So this afternoor, while it is still warm (54°) outside, I filled our tanks.  We now have 300+ gallons of water aboard, where Murphy can't get at it.

Crap - I can't believe I just said that.  Now our water pump will probably fail.

Cold weather's a comin'

Brushed again

Have any brushed stainless on your boat? On Eolian, our stove is brushed stainless.  This finish is produced in the factory by sanding the metal surface.  

The thing is, stainless is hard, but not so hard that use, and more importantly cleaning attempts, can scratch it, ruining that beautiful, uniform appearance.

On our stove, between the two burners you see here, a typical dishwashing sponge with a scratchy side was used to remove some baked on food.  Sadly, it left a clearly visible remnant of the effort:  an area where the scratches ran up-and-down rather than side-to-side.

Since the finish is originally created by sanding, I thought it might be repaired in the same fashion.  But what grit should I use?  Originally I tried 400, but it was too fine, producing an almost polished finish.  So I backed down to 320:  perfect.  I know the photography doesn't really show it, but the cleaning 'fingerprint' is gone, completely.

NOTE:  When sanding, you must be careful to always move the sand paper in the same direction that the original "brushing" went.

Of course, if the scratches are deeper than the ones that 320 grit makes, then it will take a long time to sand down past them.

I did the actual sanding with a 3M sanding sponge that I now have dedicated to the purpose, but I suppose that any sandpaper would work.

(BTW, I used the sanding sponge to renew a stainless head sink too.  It worked just as well there.  In this case, the brushing was circular, around the inside of the sink, rather than linear.)

Brushed again

Renewal = removal?

Looking back, sometimes it seems that our time on Eolian has been dominated by deinstalling things and hauling them off the boat, some large, some small, and some almost trivial.  Here's what I remember so far, over the 15 years that we have now been responsible for her care:

• I think the first think to go back in 1997 was a rusty  suspended metal three-basket set.  It was ugly beyond belief.
• Remove a whole host of corroded brass doodads that celebrated dolphins. 
• Remove another host of straw fabrications, presumably procured in Mexico and attached to various places with generous quantities of silicone
• Removed an ancient battery charger, and eventually the batteries that it ruined.
• Removed (and refurbished) the insulation of the refrigerator
• Removed and plugged the refrigerator opening that had been cut into the countertop, apparently by a drunken logger with a chainsaw that needed sharpening
• Removed (and replaced) the refrigerator door
• Removed (and replaced) the original stove/oven.  This was at least 20% by weight congealed grease
• Removed a 110V crash pump - a large 110V centrifugal pump.  In a situation that needed it, it was likely that the time spent getting it to prime would have allowed the water to rise up and drown the generator.  
• Removed (and replaced) 3 bronze head thru-hulls and associated leaking bronze tapered plug valves
• Removed (and replaced) the original bilge pump, installed when there was nothing else in the hull, apparently.  Spelunking skills were required.
• Removed a corroded and non-functional antenna tuner
• Removed an unbelievable quantity of "mystery wire" - wires that went nowhere and caused no end of difficulty in troubleshooting electrical problems.  At today's copper prices, I wish that I had saved it for recycling - I'd be rich.
• Removed (and replaced) the old bowsprit
• Removed (and replaced) the old inner forestay pad eye
• Removed  (and replaced) the old Benmar autopilot
• Removed the leaking fuel daytank
• Removed (and replaced) the refrigerator cooling water circulating pump
• Removed (and replaced) the holding tank
• Removed (and replaced) the bilge pump controls
• Removed (and replaced) the forward electrical distribution panel
• Removed two non-functional diesel filters
• Removed (and replaced) the stern lite
• Removed (and replaced) the masthead lite
• Removed (and replaced) the old microwave
• Removed (and replaced) the water heater
• Removed (and replaced) the corroded section at the foot of the mainmast
• Removed (and replaced) all the running rigging
• Removed (and replaced) the old cockpit canvas/bimini/dodger/side curtains
• Removed (and replaced) the old Groco heads
• Removed (and replaced) all the head plumbing
• Removed (and replaced) the exhaust elbow
• Removed (and replaced) the exhaust manifold
• Removed (and replaced) the alternator
• Removed (and replaced) all the original instrumentation (except windspeed/direction)
• Removed (and replaced) the original inverter
• Removed (and replaced) all the interior cushions and upholstery
• Removed (and rebuilt) all the cockpit cushions
• Removed (and replaced) the large fixed cabin windows
• Removed (and replaced) four of the eight opening ports
• Removed the original 110V space heaters
• Removed (and replaced) the original TV
• Removed (and replaced) the original VHF
• Removed the LORAN set (replaced with GPS)
• Removed the remains of the original airconditioning equipment
• Removed a non-functional oil change pump
• Removed (and replaced) the mizzenboom gooseneck fitting
• Removed all the original wood-grain formica
• Removed (and replaced) all the engine rubber hosing
• Removed (and replaced) the original fuel level senders
• Removed (and replaced) the original fresh water pressure pump
• Removed (and replaced) the original anchor wash-down pump

Woo boy.  I'm pretty sure that there's more, but the list is depressing enough as it is.  And there are investments that don't show up properly in the list, like a new bow lite, or a new inverter/charger.  Many of the removals above constituted their own projects which are documented elsewhere on this blog (you can search either by keyword or by label, over there on the right).

It seems that our waterline should have moved down...

Renewal = removal?

Things that go Brrrrrrr in the nite

Last Tuesday nite I was rudely awakened by the sound of our freshwater pump running.  That's rare, but not completely unheard of.  For example, if it just so happened that the last use of water took the system pressure down to 0.001 psi above the pressure switch setting, it wouldn't take much leak-back thru the pump to cause the switch to trip and the pump to run.  So, I sort of noted it and fell back asleep.

And then it happened again.

Well, OK, this was not normal.  Just as I was groggily contemplating this, the bilge pump ran.  Even half asleep, I knew we had a fresh water leak.  I hopped (that's a euphemism) out of bed and shut down the fresh water pump and the water heater (don't want it to be on if it is empty...).  Then I went back to bed.

But not back to sleep.  My damn brain would not get out of problem-solving mode.  So when the alarm went off, I leaped out of bed (that's another euphemism), got a flashlight, and went looking.

The first compartment I opened (under the setee, where the water heater is) was
drenched.  Got it in one.

I had to go to work on Wednesday morning, so only triage was in order.  I got the things out of the compartment and put the dehumidifier in there to dry it out (have I mentioned how nice it is to have a dehumidifier on board?).  Thankfully, the espresso maker already had enough water in it for the morning's coffee.

Wednesday nite I crawled into the compartment with a flashlight.  After asking Jane to briefly turn on the pump, the location of the leak was obvious, but the cause was not.  That may seem obtuse, but it is accurate.  The water was coming out of the fitting above, right from where the hose met the body of the fitting.

First guess?  Loose hose clamp.  Tightened it.  Nope - same leak.

Second guess?  Split hose or pinhole in the hose.  Pulled the hose, cut off an inch, and reattached.  Nope.

Third guess?  Fitting broken/cracked.  Pulled the hose and then the fitting.  Looked carefully at the joint between the hose barb section and the body of the fitting - looked good.  Put it all back together... and the leak was in a slightly different location.  (That's a hint...)

Then I bumped the hose while there was still some pressure in the system - *big* gusher, obviously coming from the fitting.  Took it all apart again, and got the fitting out into the light where I could scrutinize it.

In the picture above, I carefully posed the fitting in contrasting light to highlight the failure.  In normal light, it is not at all obvious; with a flashlight and wedged into the compartment under the settee, it is invisible.  But see the light-colored discoloration?  That is actually a crack - the entire hose barb section is about to split off.

Thankfully, my plumbing box had enough spare fittings that I was able to put the system back together again.  But I had to use another nylon fitting.  Since the last nylon fitting failed, in cold water service, with just the weight of a foot of 1/2" hose pulling on it, I consider the repair to be a temporary fix, only until I can get a brass equivalent fitting to install.

Lesson learned:  Beware nylon fittings - they will keep you up at nite!

Things that go Brrrrrrr in the nite

Back to the future!

After six hours, and a trip to West Marine to buy yet another handful of plumbing fittings, we now have a working seawater circulation pump on Eolian, and our heat pump is once again pumping heat.  The original pump was a Cal Pump, and the new one is a Teel pump, manufactured by Dayton, a major, MAJOR pump manufacturer (model # 1P808A, recorded here so that I have it written down somewhere).

I disassembled the Cal pump, and found that the "impeller" was just 4 straight sheetmetal vanes.  I don't know the failure mode because I haven't completely disassembled it, but I assume it to be saltwater moving along the drive shaft past the shaft seal and back into the motor section causing corrosion.

And I have put away the space heaters.

Back to the future!

Project: Remove the daytank

I'm not sure when it was installed. It doesn't look like a factory job tho.  And yet, it is difficult to see how it could have been gotten in there without the removal of the floor timber.  And how would you do that?

We are talking about our daytank.  It is a 40 gallon steel tank, obviously  designed for some other purpose and adapted to serve here.  Unfortunately, the adaptation process was inadequate.  The tank leaks from an inaccessible fitting on the bottom - we've never used it.

So, out it will come.

But that is far easier said than done...  The first step was to un-plumb it from the fuel system - I got that done last Monday.  Next, the four 1/4" thick stainless straps  needed to be removed - I got all but one of the big lag bolts holding them down out - I need bigger tools for the last one.  The picture shows the tank - a kind of grey-green color; the tan square in the bottom of the image is the front part of the generator.

And finally, I started to cut away at the tank.  See, there is no way the 19" tall tank will fit thru that 18" tall space between the floor timber and the generator.  And even if the measurements were reversed, it still wouldn't fit because it would have to go thru on a diagonal, and there is no way that can happen.

Now there are some logistics involved here.  Cutting the tank is a noisy, difficult operation.  It is wedged in there with little clearance for multiple fuel plumbing runs, the exhaust plumbing for the generator, the cooling water for the generator and the heat pump, and finally, lots of heavy cables connecting the batteries.  (I am really going to appreciate the room we will recover when it is out.)  Getting the sawzall into a position where it can bear on the task without cutting something else is difficult.  All of this says that I should think about the logistics in order to make the fewest cuts possible.

I have decided to take off the top half of the tank.  This will make it possible to pass the remaining bottom half between the floor timber and the generator.  But I cannot do this in a single cut because I can't get at the outside of the tank with the sawzall - I must make the cuts from the *inside* of the tank.  The last thing I got accomplished on Monday was the removal of perhaps the first quarter or so of the tank top half - the picture shows this.

Next Monday:  lots more cutting...

Project: Remove the daytank

Refrigerator magnets

No, not the kind that stick on your refrigerator, holding up the kids drawings or the grocery list.

I am talking here about magnetic drive pumps for the refrigerator.  Wait, what?

Let me back up a step.  Your household refrigerator discharges the heat it pulls from its interior into the surrounding air.  If you are old enough, you'll remember the "coils" on the back of the refrigerator, but now virtually all refrigerators have those coils concealed in the base.  Nevertheless, they are there, busy heating air with the heat removed from your food.

Here on Eolian, the refrigerator is water-cooled.  Other than the hassle of dealing with circulating seawater, this makes a lot of sense - the seawater is 48° right now, so it serves wonderfully to carry away the heat.  But there is still that circulating seawater thing.

Originally, Eolian had a very small Johnson brand conventional centrifugal pump for the refrigerator.  But not long after I moved aboard, that pump failed the way most such pumps fail:  the seal gave out and seawater dribbled along the shaft into the pump motor interior, destroying it.  That seal is the weak link in a pump.

There is an alternative, however:  the magnetic drive pump.  In these pumps, the rotor (the thing that impels the water into motion) has an embedded magnet, and is totally sealed off from the motor.  The motor drive shaft has a magnet on its end, and drives the impeller thru magnetic coupling alone.  There is *no* possibility of leakage at the seal - because there is no seal.

When that original pump failed, I sought high and low for a magnetic drive replacement pump, starting of course with Johnson.  The best I could do tho was a Sureflo baitwell pump.  It was oversized for the service, but it was indeed magnetic drive.  I bought it and installed it... and was disappointed because, tho it served well as a pump, it was terribly noisy.

So when I was visiting with my nephew Mark, who is National Sales Manager for SPX (the parent company for Johnson pumps), I brought this subject up.  Well, it turns out that Johnson does make a magnetic drive pump suitable for this service, but that their catalog incorrectly lists it as suitable only for freshwater or ethylene glycol service.  Mark told me that these pumps are used extensively for circulating brine - much tougher service than seawater.  He then arranged for Johnson to ship me a suitable pump for a beta test in my system.

After opening up the bilge space under the floorboards, I removed the old Sureflo pump.  As you can see, the Johnson pump is considerably more compact. 

Next, some plumbing changes were required, and tho I thought I had everything on hand to do the job, Reality checked in and I was short of the correct-sized hose clamps, despite my on-hand collection.  So a quick walk up to West Marine (thankfully close to the marina) and I was set.

The final installation - the pump is almost completely silent in operation - what a relief!  And because it is a magnetic drive pump, it should last as long as the motor.

Oh blessed silence!

Refrigerator magnets

Heat gun

Speaking of tools... We were speaking of tools weren't we?   Here is one which you should probably have on your boat:

Yep, a heat gun - kind of like a hair dryer on steroids.  This is a serious tool - the air it delivers is so hot that it will set wood on fire - like all serious tools, you should have a care when using it.

And like many tools, when it is needed, it may only be needed for a few seconds, but oh, what a difference those few seconds can make.

Here are some of the things ours has helped with:

• Formica removal (at the nav station) - heat the Formica enough to soften the contact cement holding it to the wood.
• Head hoses - coat the outside of the fitting and the inside of the head hose with silicone and then heat the hose (carefully, slowly) until it is pliable.   The hose then goes on the fittings *so* easily, and the hose clamps are much more effective at compressing the hose against the fitting.
• Heat a piece of 1" head hose enough to get it over a 1 1/4" fitting - this saved our bacon when an engine hose split under way.
• Heat large-bore shrink tubing for battery cables
• Soften varnish for removal.  Every so often the brightwork demands that you start over with bare wood.  There is a slip-on scraper that comes with the tool (it goes right over the air nozzle), but I prefer to use my own scraper.

You know you want one.

Heat gun

No skiing today

Today was going to be a ski day.

Not anymore.  Today I need to rod out the aft head lines.  And it is raining at the Stevens Pas ski area anyway.

So here's the drill:

First, empty the cabinet behind the head proper.  We put the stuff on the bed because it is convenient, and it is nearby.  Then remove the internal cabinet shelving (also goes onto the bed).

Next, remove the hoses on the Y valve, exposing a path into the lines.  Several years ago, I replaced almost all the hoses with hard 1.5" PVC plumbing pipe to forever get away from the "permeation" problem.  But there are still short lengths of hose at the ends of the pipe runs to make the various hookups.

And... get out the manual sewer snake and begin cranking and feeding the snake into the pipe.  The lime deposits that form as a reaction product between sea water and urine are not terribly hard (at least if you don't leave them in there for years, giving them a chance to recrystallize and consoladate), so this is not terribly difficult, just tedious.

And smelly.

No skiing today

Unscheduled Stoppages

"Unscheduled stoppages": That's what the Previous Owner termed them... When the engine stops, not because you command it to do so, but of its own volition (or perhaps lack of volition).

Diesel engines are remarkably reliable. Because there is no electrical system involved in the operation of the engine, it is purely a machine. It will run until:

• Something breaks
• It runs out of fuel

In fact, that's how you stop a diesel engine - you cut off its fuel. Therefore, if your engine stops on its own, unless broken greasy parts have suddenly appeared on the cabin sole, you should start your search for the problem with the fuel supply.

Eolian's original fuel system looked something like this (starting at the tanks):

1. Two steel canister filters, either one of which (or both) could be valved in line
2. A large Racor filter
3. The lift pump (on the engine)
4. The final polishing filter (on the engine)
5. The injection pump (on the engine)
6. Enough (unlabeled) valves to fit out a nuclear reactor

Not surprisingly, our very first unscheduled stoppage happened on our very first voyage. It was caused by operator error - I had some of the valves incorrectly set up, directing the fuel thru an auxiliary electric fuel pump (not mentioned above, since it wasn't supposed to be in the flow path), whose small internal passages blocked off with gunk in the unfiltered fuel.

We were to suffer many more, some in pretty precarious situations. Like the time we were just making the turn into the marina after a day of sailing. We were in the entrance to the Ship Canal. The locks had just opened and there was a host of boats heading out, bearing down on us. And we were drifting toward the rock-studded shoal on the south side of the Ship Canal entrance. We were fortunate in that we had just furled the sails - we just unfurled them, and Jane began tacking us back and forth across Puget Sound, while my son Adam and I chased bubbles thru the fuel system.

Eventually we resolved the problem, by taking these actions:

• Remove the steel canister filters. As it turned out, they were completely empty - there were no filter elements in them at all
• Install a second Racor 90 gallon/hr filter in parallel with the first. This is way more filter than our flow rate requires, but it's large size provides a large filtration area.
• Redo the fuel plumbing, eliminating a pile of valves
• Create a plumbing/valving diagram, and post it on the bottom of the floorboard, where it will be at eye level when operating any of the fuel valving
• Label the valves
• Repair the fuel gauge sending units in the fuel tanks
• Install a second Racor vacuum gauge in the panel adjacent to the companionway, where it is easily viewable.

We haven't had an unscheduled stoppage since these have been completed.

That loud pounding you are hearing is me, knocking on every piece of wood I can find...

Unscheduled Stoppages