A sincere request to all boat owners & would be DIY'ers

[Timbo]

Please, please...if you are going to do a job on a boat, do it properly...with the correct materials, tools and fixings. Please try to take into account that at some point in time some poor prat will have to attempt to dismantle your bodge job.

 

I've spent a full day removing staples, nails, sticky pads and gobbets of 'No more Nails' from just two doors. One of which had a layer of ply that was lifting and had been reattached using no less than 200 rusted and corroded staples from an office stapler and smeared on the inner surface of the lifted ply with No More Nails so that it stood proud.  The other a solid piece of mahogany with a mirror (now broken) that had been attached with every inappropriate adhesive and fastener known to man.

 

I am not an expert at any form of DIY but over the last couple of months working on Royal Tudor I've realised that it is far more cost effective in both time and money if a job is done correctly in the first place and it costs nothing to ask someone the correct method to be used. What's more, people are very willing to supply the information...thank God because I would have been stuffed without the help of the boating community at large but particularly that of Doug, Matt and Jon at Wayford.

 

Thankfully both doors are now ready to be sanded and finished. A slit with a scalpel and then reattaching with epoxy (£1 from the pound shop of course), a good coat of wood treatment and the ply door is as good as new and only took twenty minutes to fix, excluding time time to dry thoroughly compared with the hours to 'unbodge' . Some filler and scarfing a new piece into the corner and the mahogany door is almost as good as new...hopefully. The new mirror will be fixed correctly using mirror screws so that the mirror can be removed when necessary.  

[BroadScot]

Hi Tim,

 

With your connections in the filming trade, perhaps you should do a DIY programme about your boat, with all the pitfalls and achievements?

 

 Iain.

[JawsOrca]

lol, here here... also please do not use ronseal on the any timber work.. its a pain to remove! Do not replace your transom with chipboard either.. it just doesn't work!

[BroadScot]

Oh please, don't get me started on botched up workmanship! I was called out Christmas morning to a house whose cooker circuit and sockets had stopped working. A well known DIY company had installed the new kitchen a few weeks before. On close inspection the 4 twin sockets had been spurred off the Double Pole Cooker switch, so of course being Christmas morning it was everything on full power. It had melted the silver switch connections on the D/Pole switch to a crisp, the circuit breaker had not tripped either, so there you go a botched up job by "tradesmen" who say they do the complete Kitchen installation!! Aye, right, I think not! So Tim gives very good advice IMHO.

 

Iain

[unclemike]

sounds like stepdaughters iain, if you used the shower when cooker was on trip went, shower was wired direct to rear of cooker, had to rip landing floor up to run cable back to dist board

[BroadScot]

Yes Mike, have seen that botch up also, if people only realised the dangers. 10kw showers wired with 2.5mm T&E cable

 

Iain.

[JennyMorgan]

Well meaning, self professed 'experts' are probably a boat's worst enemy. I know of one well known Broads houseboat that fell victim to a house-builder who went ahead doing things as only a house-builder would but a boatbuilder most definitely would not, poor old girl.  I also know of a large motor yacht that suffered the same fate, the next owner is spending a small fortune righting the wrongs that befell her whilst owned by such an 'expert'. 

[Guest]

The variation in  skills and workmanship is huge.

 

Despite the enormous improvements in tools and availability of "how to" knowledge, the quality of so many  projects seems to be deteriorating. 

 

It's not always the DIYer at blame either. There are now so many "rogue traders" around, as highlighted by numerous TV programs.

[Polly]

Phill got a painter to do our house who had knocked on the door...not a thing I ever would do. I was incandescent to tell the truth, Dad was a painter and I could see this was a bodge. Many complaints and mutterings disturbed the harmony at home as the job lurched on. Finally and as he was on the rear dormer, I came home to find bits of car tyre on the drive. What the heck did he want with these? Months later as the roof leaked, we found out. He had managed to damage the roof and 'fixed' it with bits of car tyre tacked on.

[ranworthbreeze]

A friend of mine having their bathroom converted to a wet room everything went wrong with all the trades, all the floor and tiling had to be redone, the qualified electrician left the job as finished, he had been concentrating and had fitted a 6 amp breaker to the shower and a 45 amp breaker on the lighting, which came to light when the plumber tested the shower.

 

No tradesman tends to like other peoples work, we all have come across some very poor examples.

 

BT coming in today at home to change over to fibre, I must try and keep my hands in my pockets and leave them to it.

 

Regards

Alan

[BrundallNavy]

Don't ever repair the bottom of a wooden boat with pine from B and Q ( other outlets are available) and bathroom sealant, it just doesn't work. If you want to see the results come and see me, I should know.

Doug.

[Mowjo]

Doug! many years ago when we were at Wayford, long before Jon got there, we had a guy called Colin that replaced all the rotten planking using old Pallets, he even used proper scarf joints in fact did everthing right apart from the pallet wood, the boat looked a beauty after it had all been painted and went on for many more years, perhaps he knew something we don't about pallets, come to think of it! you never see a rotten pallet!

when I bought Blue mist 30 years back it had a lot of osmosis, I dug it all out and had hole in the gel coat the size of dustbin lids, not knowing any better even though everyone told me "you can't do that" I filled them all using car body filler, it was the pink polyester type, that boat is still going today under a different name and the filler I put on is still there with no problems, I learnt a long time ago that just because some has the lable Marine on it, dosn't always mean it's better, it just means it's twice the price,,,

 

Frank,,,

[grendel]

I have a power shower somewhere at home waiting for me to install it, unfortunately I am the other way round, as if a job is worth doing its worth overdoing - that and handy access to 25mm single phase and 3 phase cable, that are usually used to connect a house to the mains and goodness only knows what size cable will be run between a new breaker and the shower unit, all I can say is that it will be capable of carrying the current.

Grendel

[Guest]

I have a power shower somewhere at home waiting for me to install it, unfortunately I am the other way round, as if a job is worth doing its worth overdoing - that and handy access to 25mm single phase and 3 phase cable, that are usually used to connect a house to the mains and goodness only knows what size cable will be run between a new breaker and the shower unit, all I can say is that it will be capable of carrying the current.

Grendel

 

I'm a bit of an "overdoer" myself, but don't go too big with the cables, you may find that the screw terminations inside the shower unit are too small to take the diameter of the core.

 

Some of them have rather tortuous cable entry points too, which could be a real struggle with the bending radius of 25 mm² cable.

[riyadhcrew]

Grendel,

 

Using a cable that is too big is better than using a cable that is too small, but I hope the terminals are big enough to take 25mm.

[Viking23]

I was working on a washing machine once in our utility room, I switched it off at the wall, and I always checked the terminals with an electric neon screw driver as a precaution before touching anything.

The neutral was live!!

The previous home owner had wired in a spur for the washing machine and crossed over the live and neutral.

I then spent the rest of the day removing all the sockets, and tightened and checked all the connections.

[BroadScot]

10mm T&E for 9.5kw or 10kw Showers even then, not a lot of space in the 50amp switches either Ceiling Pull Switch or Wall mounted Plate Switch D/Pole

 

10mm T& E carrys more than enough current carrying capacity for those showers. Just make sure ALL terminals are really tight!!!

 

 

Iain

[BroadScot]

This is a very handy piece of kit to test polarity on sockets.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Martindale-CP501-Socket-Tester/dp/B003OHDFSA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1413980789&sr=8-5&keywords=martindale

 

Iain

[grendel]

ah don't talk to me about bending radii, some of the worst cables I have to work with (do the cable route drawings for) have 1.2m minimum bending radii, and if you think bending a 25mm cable is bad, you ought to try the 300 sq mm high voltage stuff, it has what is laughingly called a bending radius, though it can take a team of 4 just to even get it starting to bend.

Grendel

[Baitrunner]

I had to rewire a house many years ago and it involved a lot of cutting in of new sockets.

 

Although a lot of the original wiring was put in the u shaped metal trunking you couldn't pull it out as the over spill of mortar in the brick work was pinching most of the cables. So lots more cutting in.

 

Then I found a new socket had been added - the industrious bodger (AKA my ex father in law) had cut baked bean cans in half, wedged them over the new cable and plastered over them! 

 

When I removed the kitchen I used about 5 different types of screwdriver to undo the screws as he had obviously used anything he could find from various sizes of flat and cross head screws to fit it.

 

And then.... took the carpet up in the lounge and as we were moving door openings about had to lift up some of the gripper rods. Only to find the gas pipe in the concrete floor was just on the surface and the gripper rod nails had gone through it in several places. Gas man round to re-run all my gas pipes rather than dig up the floor.

 

Needless to say I think it was a much property once I had finished. 

[Timbo]

Uncle Albert's last house was a pearler! Originally built in 1635 it had been converted to a one up two down in 1850. Then in 1940 the owner decided to convert the house yet again into a bungalow...however he used what was available during war time. Walls seemed to have strange angles where they joined other walls. Later we found this was due to the fact that the old boy had used concrete fence posts with an angle at the top he had half inched from RAF Finningley as lintels. The posts were discovered when the builder making alterations hit the lintel with a sledge hammer. The result very Loony Tunes as the hammer head stayed still and the builder vibrated.

 

Of course Uncle Albert in his own inimitable fashion bodged his way around the house. The kitchen was made from reclaimed timber from pallets. Not well made. No sooner would he finish plastering a ceiling than he would decide to climb up into the loft after a few beers...and then promptly fall through it. Varnished built in cupboards would be scraped down with pieces of broken glass to lighten them...and then to make mahogany look modern & made of pine...Uncle Albert would draw knot holes on them in marker pen. The ditch protecting the single brick house from rainwater running off the field behind us was excavated by Uncle Albert until he got three feet below the foundations. He refused to have a radiator put in the bathroom and painted the bathroom walls in gloss paint...water would freeze on the walls in winter, and if you spent too long sat on the loo sheets of ice would peel away from the wall and slice down your back. I still have a scar on my shoulder from this happening to me. Uncle Albert also placed a boiler on an internal wall in the kitchen. Not only that, the corner of the boiler was positioned so that it was 5'9"  exactly from the floor and projected into the room midway between the pantry and the living room door. The result...every time I got hungry I would walk into the corner of the boiler...as I'm 6'2" it would hit me square between the eyes and knock me senseless.

 

I have to say that Mum was a little more practical...although Uncle Albert did once pass her the end of a wire and asked her to 'suck this and see if it's live'. I'd just walked into the room as she was lifting the wire to her cake hole and managed to stop her. Uncle Albert swears it wasn't live but you can never tell.

 

So now you know why Jon and Doug check on me on a regular basis when I'm working on the boat. With a heritage like that they have come to realise that if I'm waving at them from the boat...I've nailed my other hand to the deck.

[ranworthbreeze]

Hi Tim,

Great post yet again, the Uncle Albert stories are becoming the making of legends. There is a time however that you seem to be turning into Uncle Albert, the waving paragraph was a pearler.

 

Not recommended reading whilst having lunch, my monitor needed a clean anyway.

 

Regards

Alan

[BroadScot]

The tuna n sweetcorn sticks well Alan lol Egg n cress is ok though.

 

 

Iain.

[Viking23]

This is a very handy piece of kit to test polarity on sockets.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Martindale-CP501-Socket-Tester/dp/B003OHDFSA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1413980789&sr=8-5&keywords=martindale

 

Iain

Good call, thanks Iain, I now have a couple of these, or similar, I keep one on the boat and always check it for polarity and earth continuity when hooking up to shore power.

The second one is in my electrical toolbox, quicker to test a socket than any multimeter.

[BroadScot]

Hi Viking,

 

I still have my original one from 19 canteen. A handy tool for my trade, much better than the old test lamp. One of the SSEB staff, as it was then, gave me his spare one. Personally, I think every house should have one.

 

Its still in the now retired toolbox, just incase.

 

Iain.