We had another working weekend on the boat this last weekend and we were tackling two pretty big projects:

1) Replacing the gas cooker
2) Replacing the fridge.

We had found a very good LPG cooker on line which has flame failure devices on all burners and an electric ignition driven from a battery. Its an Electrolux and has four burners with a tiny little “simmer” one and a rather large burner and two nice sized ones. Its not a “boat” cooker but it meets ALL the requirements of the BSS and we did find that the “Official” recommendations for the ventilation for fitting it in a house/flat are less stringent than the BSS for fitting it in a boat. For example they assume that if you don’t have a lot of fixed ventilation then you’ll simply open a window. Whereas the BSS just assumes that you are so stupid that you’ll suffocate to death before opening the window!

The fridge is an under counter fitted style one which we got hold of second hand. Its made by Whirlpool and is supposedly an A rated fridge.We’d taken the fridge up previous to do some tests and we were happy that it would work so we were going to fit it.

The proposed plan of action was:

1) Remove old gas fridge
2) Remove front of cupboard round old fridge space
3) Put new fridge into space and fix it in place
4) Remove old gas cooker
5) Move boat off mooring to unload old cooker and fridge and to load new cooker. We have to move the boat because the jetty isn’t as long as the boat and due to a design mistake when the boat was being fitted out you can’t get large objects through a dog leg round the bathroom. So anything big has to go in and out through the front door, so we needed to move the boat.
6) Install new cooker
7) Replace T in gas line where the fridge was tapped off it with a through connector.

It sounds simple but it all went wrong at stage 2 as the gas line to the old fridge went through a wooden partition that we needed to remove to put the new fridge in. So we had to turn the gas off and remove the gas line to the fridge. It was at this point that we found that the through connector was shorter than the T piece which meant we would have to move the whole gas line from the cooker backwards.

So we started doing work in parallel. I worked on the fridge and Nick removed all the clips that hold the gas line in place so we could move it back. We checked the new cooker and found that we would need a fitting that we didn’t have so we drove down to Norbury junction and picked up the fitting and grabbed a coffee as it was going to be quite a while before we could have another warm drink on the boat.

The new cooker has two gas feeds, one at either side of the cooker and in the instructions it recommends that the flexi pipe to the cooker does not cross the back of it. This was actually good news as it meant we could move the gas line backwards, giving us the spare we needed to take out the T junction and it also moved the stop valve and the bubble test point into a much more accessible position.

So now with both the old appliances disconnected we moved the boat over onto the public moorings on the other side of the canal and Nick walked along the path to the town centre (marked as Disabled friendly and thus ideal for running a sack trolley, with a cooker on it, along) and I went back to the mooring, collected the car and drove back to meet him.

We brought the new cooker to the boat and then took the old cooker and fridge to the car and then I drove the car back to the moorings.

We now had everything ready to go and apart from having to cut some of the old work surface away behind the cooker slot as the new cooker is deeper than the old one, everything went pretty well, apart from a few gas leaks but we sorted those out pretty quickly.

There is still some tidying up work to be done, in that we need new splash backs round the cooker and the fridge needs some trim putting round it but those are things we can do in the evenings if we want.

New Mains powered fridge

New Cooker in place

Its going to take a little getting used to the new cooker and the flame failure devices but it boils a kettle really quickly on the big burner and we’re going to have to play a bit with the fridge as it had semi frozen the sausages by Sunday morning.

We’re going to have to spend a bit of time playing with the fridge and how we use it. Its going to be running off the inverter which is not a problem during the day when the engine is running but its how much power it will take in the evenings when the engine is off that is the big concern. We’re going to get a thermometer with an alarm on it so we can monitor how quickly the fridge warms up when the power is off, and if we need to buy a second battery for the domestic power then we have to buy one, its not a problem as we have space for a second one.

On Sunday we did a general tidy up and then found the bilge pump had died so we’ve had to drop in a temporary replacement.

So things are progressing

Well that was a quite enjoyable and pleasant weekend. I picked Nick up just before 7pm on Friday and we loaded the new fridge into the back of the car and headed off to the boat. The roads were strangely quiet and we got to the boat at about 8:20. We plugged in the power line and I battled with the central heating but eventually got it lit and we headed off to the pub for a couple of beers and to discuss the plan of action for Saturday morning.

Saturday we got up, got the engine started and went up to the winding hole by Betton Mill and turned and pulled onto the water point. Whilst Nick got the water hose out I wandered over to the boat yard and arranged a pump out and a new gas cylinder. Then I wandered back to the car and drove it to the bridge and we unloaded the fridge. I then took the car back to the marina and walked back and we got the fridge into the boat, and yes we did measure it first to make sure it would not only fit through the front door but that it would also fit in the kitchen

We turned the boat again and got it pumped out, and being the first pump-out of the season it was a bit rank. Then we turned the boat again and headed back to the moorings where Neil turned up just as we manoeuvred the boat back into the mooring. We had a coffee and we powered the fridge up and then Jon turned up and we headed out to the pub. We had a very relaxing time and we did quite a few pubs, including two we had never done before before heading for a curry at The Jaipur. Then a few couple more beers and a couple of games of pool and back to the boat. When we got back to the boat the inverter was beeping at us and the lights were a bit dim but the fridge was still cold. We powered up the battery charger and put the fridge onto the land line. The whole idea of doing what we did was to see how long the batteries could support the fridge but we need to do some more tests to see how long it lasts when the fridge is already cold. I do have to say however that the chiller blocks from the cool box were still frozen solid on Sunday morning so it had obviously worked quite well. Nick and I now have some ideas on what we need to do for the fridge to make running it easy and we are also going to pick up an external fridge thermometer so we can see just how cold it is getting/staying when its running on batteries.

The next job is to get on the boat and remove the gas fridge and its piping and ft the new fridge into the old place. The new fridge is quite a lot bigger than the old one which is not a bad thing because we did sometimes find that things got a little tight in there at times.