Got Me Under Pressure

My last entry mentioned something about the water pump calling it quits.  Unbelievable!  I mean, that week was enough to instill mortal fear in the hearts of fabled heroes.  What more could go wrong?  I discovered it doesn't pay to ask that question.

Our pump parts were delivered promptly on Wednesday afternoon, 12/22.  Thursday morning was spent with my cousin Phil Ward and his family who were visiting from Costa Rica.  Phil works with Intel and is down there for two years teaching the locals how to make microchips from banana leaves.  OK, that's just a guess.  Anyway, we had a real nice visit over breakfast at the Double T Diner in Annapolis.  Sure was nice to see those guys.  After we got back to the boat I grabbed my pump parts and got to work.

The upper plate on the case had cracked all the way across in front of the piston support.  This created two problems.  Underneath the plate is the diaphragm and uneven pressure from the crack was creating a water leak.  The other problem was that the pump piston is mounted to this plate and it's motion was now way out of whack, wobbling all over the place and seriously reducing system pressure.  The replacement parts gave me a new plate and piston assembly.

The pump on our boat is located on the starboard side underneath the settee.  After removing pressure from the system I had to disconnect the two water lines from the pump.  The one coming from the tank had a continuous slow flow so I jammed it in behind the water manifold to hold it upright above tank level and stop the flow.  The other hose only drained out a small amount of water and wasn't a problem.  With the breaker turned off I removed the power connection for the motor.  Four screws hold down the pump and with those out I could work on it at the table in the Main Salon.

Disassembly was pretty straightforward, removing the belt and motor and then removing four screws holding down the plate.  When I pulled up the plate  I discovered the real cause of the problem.  The diaphragm is sandwiched between the broken plate on top and a valve plate underneath.  The valve plate has two screws holding all this together and one of the screws had snapped off.  These screws are the self tapping type and the replacement top plate comes with un-threaded holes. I would bet a hundred dollars that the screw was broken when it was installed and whoever put it in just closed it up and hoped for the best.  The reason I say this is because after I got it all back together Cheri took a shower and mentioned that the water pressure was better than it had ever been.  That pump hasn't put out good pressure since it was last assembled.  I hate Mickey Mouse repair jobs.  "Hey Pluto, that should be good enough to hold it for a while".  Grrrr.

It only took a few hours to repair the pump and I still had plenty of time to set up our new flat screen.  We got a Samsung 37" LED screen with a Polk Audio sound bar and wireless subwoofer.  We wanted to mount it on the wall at the end of our bunk in the forward stateroom.  The wall is 1" thick plywood with a teak veneer on both sides.  The screen only weighs 23 pounds so there shouldn't be any problem with support.  The wall mount is made by Sanus Visionmount and holds the screen very close to the wall, within 0.6".  The screen itself is only 1" thick so the whole setup is pretty unobtrusive.  I used #14 x 0.75" panhead screws to get plenty of grab.

The mount hangs the screen on a lip along the top of the bracket and then uses two clips at the bottom to hold it in place.  These clips pop in place with strings and springs and plastic brackets and I picture it all becoming a real problem at some time in the future.  If any of that broke it would be very difficult to remove the screen to repair it.  We need something better than that.  Incorporating the lip at the top of the bracket into my own design, I plan to add my own brackets at the bottom using teak blocks and mount two lever-clamps to hold the screen in place.  The blocks will be mounted at the sides and will prevent the screen from moving around.  That oughta do it!

I don't know if you can tell from the previous blog entries but life here on La Vida Dulce has been pretty hectic lately.  I'm not kidding!  It seems like every spare moment of our lives has been spent installing stuff or repairing something or doing this and that to make room for living aboard.  Enough!  Once we got the heater going and the power restored and the water pressure back we decided to take it easy for a while.  We spent our first Christmas aboard with just the two of us.  And Bella.  We sat around and watched movies, drank Bloody Mary's and downed some pretty good vino too.  We took Bella out for a really nice walk around the marina and just kinda hung out for a coupla days.  Man that felt good.  Now we're rejuvenated and ready to take on the next disaster.

Why do I keep saying these things?.  It's now 12/29, one week later.  I got home from work last night and Cheri was saying something about a wet spot on the carpet.  Bella, you bad dog!  When I took a closer look it wasn't Bella's fault after all.  Water had dripped out of the speaker that's built into the side of the starboard side settee.  Hmm, that seems odd.  That's the same place our newly repaired water pump is located but the speaker is like 2' above the pump.  I'm feeling a bit trepidatious at this point.  My logical conscious mind tells me that the pump is probably shooting water onto the back of the speaker.  My horror movie based, illogical subconscious mind pictures a two hundred gallon aquarium beneath that cushion.  As Cheri pulls up the cushion I'm tempted to grab her out of the way in case some shark comes leaping outa there.  When I look in the compartment I see some water here and there but nothing terrible.  No sharks either.  The obvious cause of the problem here is that the small plate on top of the diaphragm is broken in two and water squirts out around the shaft of the piston each time it moves.  OK.  No big deal.  It's not the same part (#6 in the exploded view) that I just replaced.  That would be just humiliating.  This is the small disk (part # 8), one of two, that sandwiches the diaphragm, probably to give it better shape when pumping.  My question is, how did this happen?  Probably was damaged when the upper plate broke and I just didn't notice it.  Or maybe I screwed up on the reassembly.  As I take the pump apart for the second time I look everything over carefully.  No other apparent damage.  The matching plate underneath the diaphragm is in good condition.  I rotate the pump through a full cycle to see if anything might come in contact with it but there's plenty of room.  I don't get it.

I also don't get to complete this repair right away.  The part I need is the only part that's not included in the kit I just bought.  That figures.  I go on-line and order a replacement (and a spare).  Delivery will be 01/03/2011.  Here we go again.  Cheri and I discuss our options and decide to call West Marine in the morning and get a replacement pump.  We'll still repair this one but keep it as a back-up for the next time this thing quits.  Having water on-board is a high priority.  With a back-up pump we can swap the bad one out in a few minutes and make the repair at our leisure.  OK, there, I've convinced myself.  That's what we're gonna do.

Winter Pics at Herrington Harbour North

It Happens in Three's

Last week (12/15) I took off Wednesday and Thursday from work because I needed more time to get the heater installed.  Up until then I had only been using the weekends to work on it and progress was pretty slow.  During the week I get up at 0400 to start my day and don't usually get home until 1900.  We then have dinner, relax for an hour and hit the sack by 2130.  With this kinda schedule nothing else gets done Monday through Thursday so weekends are reserved for everything else, including chores and projects.

So, Wednesday morning I wake up in the middle of the night for some unknown reason and realize that it's pretty cold in our room.  I take a look at the thermostat and it says it's 56 degrees and the system is on but no heat is coming out.  Not good.  I jump outa bed and tear apart the settee in the Main Salon to get to the reverse cycle system hidden underneath it.  When I pull open the panel to the compartment I find a block of ice where the heat exchanger is supposed to be.  This is what I feared would happen.  The water temperature had finally gotten down to that magic point where everything just freezes up.  I knew it could happen, just didn't expect it so soon.  It's been unusually cold this month, way below normal, and it's finally caught up with me.  I tried cleaning the water and air filters hoping that might help but it had no affect.  This system was beyond hope of operation for this season.

So now I have a real problem.  We have a couple of electric space heaters but there's no way they're gonna keep this boat livable.  I gotta get this diesel heater going right away.  Cheri took Bella over to the Perfect Pet Resort (check it out) to hang out in comfort for a few days while we worked in the cold.  Our dog gets better treatment than we give ourselves.  We gotta rethink that one.

The first thing I did was cut holes in the bulkheads for the return air duct.  I hadn't really planned this part out until now so I kept it easy and ran it to a high spot on the aft bulkhead of the aft cabin.  This will draw the air back through the boat and hopefully help to heat this section of the room at the same time.  It's also the easiest way to run the duct.  I had originally wanted to run it under the reefer in the galley because it would have helped to evenly distribute the heat to the other side of the boat.  This option would have required way too much effort and I just didn't have the time for that now.  Easy is good.  So I got the return duct hooked up and while I was in the cockpit locker I also ran the combustion supply and exhaust lines and wrapped the last with braided fiberglass mat as an insulator.  The exhaust line can get smokin' hot so it's a good idea to protect everything around it from melting down.  Once I got this done Cheri and I ran the fuel line.  The kit comes with a coil of copper tubing to be used for this but I found it to be about 10' short so we went out and bought a 50' roll.  Should be enough, eh?  We ran it under the cabin sole from the fuel tank, past the engine, out through the generator compartment under the cockpit and into the locker.  Here it connects to the fuel pump and then runs up to the heater.  The fuel pump needs to be mounted at an upward angle between 15 and 35 degrees to keep air pockets from forming which would kill the fuel pressure.  We used a special fitting at the top of the fuel tank and ran the riser tube down through that, cutting off the bottom at a 45 degree angle so it sits about 2" off the bottom.  That'll help to keep tank grunge out of the line.

With the fuel taken care of it was time to run the power and control lines.  The kit comes with a nice bundle of wire that's connected at one end to the heater through a pre-assembled multi-pin connector.  From there it branches off into three bundles; fuel pump, power and ground, and a 6 wire bundle to be connected to the thermostat/control.  All of these required adding connectors of one type or another.  The fuel pump and power went fine.  By the time I started in on the thermostat line it was 2000 (8pm) and I was getting pretty tired.  This line uses a six pin connector that requires adding pins to #18 wire and inserting them into a two piece connector.  Once the pins are in they have these little prongs that pop out on either side to hold it in place.  The first pin I put in went fine until the wire pulled out and I had to get the pin back out to redo it.  Couldn't get the pin out.  Drove me completely nuts.  Cheri tried and it drove her nuts too.  Just as we heard the boys coming down the dock with the straight jackets I chopped off the pins, cut off the connector from the control box, and soldered the connections to complete the circuits.  Enough is enough.  If I ever have to unplug this thing I'll add the proper connector then.

With this completed I hooked up the power and we fired it up for the first time.  We heard the heater wind up, sounding like a turbine engine.  Pretty neat!  We verified the fuel pump was running by the click, click, click sound it made.  We felt air coming outa the vent in the Main Salon but it never got warm.  After a few minutes the heater shut itself off and all was quiet.  We sat there for a minute or two, all bundled up in our winter coats and hats, long johns, two shirts, pants, doubled-up socks and gloves.  Hmmm.  I started it up again and it went through the same cycle, then quit.  I knew in my heart that it was just trying to pull fuel through the line and wouldn't run until it had pressure but here it was, 2330 (1130pm) and we had everything riding on this baby.  We both said a prayer and tried it again.  Success!  Two minutes before midnight we had heat, twenty hours after beginning this marathon.

The following day we woke up to a warm and cozy boat.  We decided to take some time off and finish the heater the following day.  I still needed to tidy up the wiring and secure all the ductwork so the job isn't quite finished yet.  Around noon we were headed out the companionway when I glanced over at the Nav Station and saw that the batteries weren't being charged.  Huh?  As I looked into it I found there was no voltage on our #1 shore line connection.  I went out to the cockpit and saw that the little indicator light on the power cable was lit, showing that voltage was present.  When I unplugged it I found the white neutral connection was fried on both the cable and the socket.  I then remembered having to reset the breaker yesterday morning while we were running the fuel line.  I think the boat had been rocking with the wind and the plug had worked itself loose causing the connection to arc.  Bummer.  I spent the rest of the afternoon and about $200 making this repair.  Grrrrr, what else could go wrong?

I had to ask, didn't I?  Somewhere in the midst of repairing the fried wiring the heater shut off.  ???  I turned it back on and it seemed to work OK.  It shut off once more later that evening and once again reset OK.  The next day we actually made it out to finish our Christmas shopping and while we were out I called Bryan at Annapolis Cruisair to ask about the heater shutting off.  He said the factory preset is for 10 hours on the heater but that it could be re-programmed for continuous running.  He sent us an e-mail with the code we needed to do this.  When we got back to the boat that evening it was 54 degrees inside.  Yikes!  I installed the new code and it's been working fine ever since.  That was just a glitch though, doesn't count as a real problem.

OK, so that does it, right?  Not quite.  That evening the water pressure pump started running on it's own, non-stop.  I pictured our freshly filled 250 gallon water tank being pumped into some unseen compartment and I began tearing the boat apart.  The first place I looked was the pump itself and found it shaking like crazy and spitting water all over the place.  I killed the breaker and the water leak stopped so the crises wasn't such a crises.  When I looked at the pump up close I found that the housing had cracked and the motor driven piston no longer had any support, making it wobble all over the place.  Every time it tried to pump, water would squirt out the cracked housing.  No big deal.  I can fix this.  The next day I went over to West Marine to find that they didn't carry the part I needed but could order one for me.  It would take three weeks for delivery.  Not good.  I couldn't see Cheri putting up with having to hike to the marina showers for the next three weeks.  The salesman told me I could replace the whole pump and they did have those in stock, only cost me $480 too.  No thanks.  I went home and searched on-line, found a supplier (Pump Agents.com) who had my part in stock and could have it to me by Wednesday, 3 days.  OK, that's do-able.  We'll have water pressure back in time for Christmas Eve.

Just so ya know life isn't all work and no play we went out last night (12/19) and bought ourselves a Christmas present.  It's a 37" LED flatscreen that's only 1"deep.  It's the widest screen we could fit on the boat and it's going at the foot of our bunk (we're gonna be able to watch movies in real comfort now!  I'll be guaranteed to fall asleep every time).  We also got a mount that's made to fit the screen right up against the wall which is perfect because I still hafta squeeze by to get into bed.  We also got a cool-man audio system for it.  The screen has four HDMI inputs so we'll be able to hook up the awesome movie system (click here and scroll to the bottom) my cousin Steve gave us as well as the Mac-mini (click here for more on that) and still have room for more.

As you can see, I'm now up to my ears in unfinished projects.  We got hit with a few problems (a few?) but managed to keep from crying.  We're warm and comfy and can smile when we look out the port and see people walking across Tracey's Creek.  Huh?  It's been so cold for the last month that the ice is now 4" thick all around us.  We got that heater going just in the nick of time.

Cheri and I send our wishes for a merry Christmas and that the new year brings you good health and plenty of joy.

Plan C, Revision 32

This past weekend (12/11) my main goal was to finish the duct work for the D5 installation.  I had previously run all the ducts for the heated supply air through each compartment on the port side of the boat.  I only needed to run the return air duct and for this I needed to have the heater itself mounted.  In this picture the heater duct is black.  The gray duct is for the Cruisair reverse cycle A/C and heat that was installed last Winter.

The heater comes with a nice heavy duty mounting bracket with all the mounting holes punched through and ready to go.  It's even painted.  I planned to mount this bracket to a plywood shelf that would be attached to the inside of the hull on the port side, aft in the cockpit locker.  I chose this location because it provided the most clear distance around for running the ducts with the least amount of restriction.  I would attach the shelf to the fiberglass hull using 3M 5200 adhesive and add fiberglass mat with a 4" overlap for strength.  This was the plan.

Before committing myself to plywood I made a cardboard mock-up shelf held together with duct tape.  The location I had chosen doesn't have a straight flat surface in sight and I want to have a close fit for good adhesion.  It's also important to have the heater sitting level once it's installed.  Using cardboard I could make all the necessary adjustments with a box knife.  With my mock-up held in place I marked corrections, cut, marked, cut and marked some more, until I felt I had it really close to perfection.  This sounds like a pretty easy chore until you mix in the fact that you're inside a cockpit locker with a floor that slants at 45 degrees and it's so confined that the only way to turn around is by standing up with your hands over your head and exhaling while you turn.  Oh yeah, did I mention that it's 24 degrees out today?  Now that I've set the stage, let's continue with the story.  I trim up my mock-up shelf to perfection, then take it out to the dock where I trace the parts out onto my plywood and cut them out.  Before I screw and glue everything together I decide to stick it together with some duct tape and take one more check, just to make sure I got it right.  I climb back into the locker and hold my shelf up in place with one hand and place my level on with the other.  I watch in amazement as the level slides off the side and crashes to the floor of the locker before slipping into the bilge.  Hmmm, not quite level.  What happened to my perfect measurements?  As I'm climbing out of the locker the shelf collapses in on itself and falls apart.  I take this as an omen and sit down in the cold to rethink what I'm doing.  Grrrrrrrr.

Cold air is really good for concentration and clear, level headed thought.  It's also good for uncontrollable shivering.  I was just reaching this point when I realized that attaching the shelf to the inside of the hull probably isn't the best way to go.  The heater weighs about 25 pounds.  Take that out in some choppy seas and we'd probably be looking at a hole in the side of the boat and a $3000 anchor rattling around in the bilge.  So, in that same cockpit locker is a bulkhead made of 1" plywood that separates it from the aft cabin.  I decided to turn the heater 90 degrees and mount it on the bulkhead.  Now, instead of facing fore and aft it'll be facing port to starboard.  It'll be super strong there but there are several downsides to this location.  Sound will be transmitted through the plywood so I'll hafta put in a sound barrier, probably rubber bushings or something.  The real problem is that now the heater is mounted perpendicular to the run of ducting which will add a restriction.  I'm still within the #10 limit of the heater so it'll be OK but the return side will also have a bend in it and that might put it over.  I feel like I've reached one of those "no-win" situations.  I'm going to put it together and see what I get.  If there's any problems I'll rework the ducts to open them up some.

Right now I've gotta get this thing going.  On Friday we woke up to find the creek completely frozen over.  Monday, 12/13, when I jumped off the boat to go to work I found the dock was covered with ice and then, just to make a point, it started to snow.  So far we're doing OK.  The heater project is moving forward.  Cheri spent the weekend with some of that plastic foam insulation that's backed with aluminum.  This stuff is about 1/4" thick and I didn't think it would do any good at all.  She cut panels of it for all the ports and hatches and covered the exposed side of the hull in the forward stateroom.  She covered that and the mast with some quilted material which gave it a real nice look.  After the first day with this stuff in place the boat stayed very toasty down below and we don't have to run the reverse cycle heat as often.  The cabin sole is now warmer too, probably because all that heat is being forced down into the bilge.  We opened up some of the storage compartments under the floor and found them to be not warm but definitely not freezing cold either.  So now the boat is really comfortable and hopefully that'll hold us until the diesel heater is finished.  I can always count on Cheri to come up with the best solution.  The real wall we're up against here is the water temperature.  It's been dropping like a rock since the end of October.  Just last night I sat down and re-read the manual for the Cruisair reverse cycle system.  It says in there that if the water temperature gets too cold we stand a chance of the heat exchanger freezing up and causing damage.  That might be kinda disappointing.

Just as a side note:  While I was re-reading the Cruisair manual I discovered that the little booger is totally programmable.  Ever since we moved aboard we've been fighting this hurricane type noise when the thing is running.  It's so loud we've been turning the system off in the Main Salon when we watched a movie.  We've been turning the system off in our stateroom at night because it was keeping us awake....with the fan on low!  So now I find out I can re-program the fan speed.  I dropped it from 38 (factory setting) to 25 and also programmed it for intermittent running.  Now when it runs you can barely hear it and when it gets the room to the set temperature it shuts off and waits until it drops below the preset before turning back on again.  This is wonderful!  There's all kindsa stuff you can do with this system.  I think I'm gonna sit down tonight and re-re-read that book again!

The Heat Is On

A while back we visited the Annapolis Boat Show with the mission of finding a heater for the boat that would get us through the winter.  We talked to Bryan Marshall from Annapolis Cruisair (Cruisair website) and settled on an Espar Airtronic D5 kit.  The D5 is a diesel burning forced air heater the size of a shoebox.  It consumes about 1/10th gallon per hour and produces up to 18,000 BTU.  This little baby will be hooked up to our 150 gallon fuel tank, which should be more than enough to get us through the winter.

So, we bit the bullet, laid down the big bucks and ordered a kit.  With the Boat Show discount we paid $2900 which is a good deal but still a major outlay for us.  Bryan was really helpful and let us split the payment over two paydays.  Annapolis Cruisair runs out of a small shop, boxes stacked up everywhere, everyone's friendly and laid back.  They called me the following week when my parts came in and, being anxious to get started on it, I jumped in the car and raced over.  Because this thing is so small I didn't really give any thought to the weeks worth of laundry, five bags of groceries, two suitcases and Bella's travel crate already in the back of the car.  Silly boy.  When I got there the office manager and her dog walked me around to their receiving dock, rolled up the door and pointed to this humongous box.  She helped me wedge it in through the back hatch of our Ford Escape, wished me luck on the install and ran off to find her dog.  I would later need a crowbar to get the box out of the car.

Back at the marina I unloaded the contents of the box into a cart and hauled it out to the boat.  The kit has just about everything you would need for an "average" installation.  Two sizes of flexible duct (90mm + 75mm), vents, reducers, clamps and other hardware, fuel line and pump, exhaust hose and more.

Before you do anything else you're supposed to sit down and plan out the system.  Because of the amount of heat generated the unit must have free flowing air.  Each restriction in the air duct accumulates and causes heat buildup at the heater which will automatically shut off at a predetermined temperature to prevent "component meltdown". To help with planning the system and reduce restrictions, Espar has assigned a numerical value to every component.  Ducts are specified by diameter and length and also by if they're in the primary or secondary system.  Primary is the main run and secondary would the part that goes out from a "Y" to a vent.  There's a rating for 90 degree bends and for different types of outlets or vent plates.  The heater itself is rated as a 10 and the combination of everything else must be less than that.  So, the first thing I did was to ignore the installation manual, skip the pre-planning-by-numbers and begin installing the ducts.  I got the main run of 90 mm ducts installed with a "Y" for each of my planned outlets, four in all with reducers and smaller ducts for each.  Then I sat down and calculated the number total for what I had.  Came out to 14.75.  Hmmm says I, could be a problem.  I read through the book, went on-line and read all of the Espar info there and discovered that the two sources didn't totally agree on the ratings.  I decided to go with the book because it favored my design by about a point.  I was still over 10 though.  I hadn't cut through anywhere for the vents yet so I modified my original plan a bit.  The vent locations I chose are in the aft cabin, Main Salon, forward cabin and the forward head.  If I use closeable vents and 75mm ducts on three of the lines then the ratings for everything from the "Y" to the vent can be ignored because most of the time these lines will probably be closed.  It says that right in the book.  The line in the Main Salon will be 90mm duct with an open grid vent that will always be open and provide enough flow to prevent the heater from overheating.  I plan to run a return line from the galley back to the heater to provide even circulation throughout the living area.  This'll also be 90mm duct with an open grid vent.  OK, so now when I calculate it all out I come up with 8.0.  Perfect!

So, here it is, first week of December and I still don't have the installation finished.  November didn't provide much free time to work on it because of holiday travel and family obligations.  At least that's my excuse.  Next weekend I hope to complete the air duct installation and maybe run the fuel line.  I still have to make a mount for the heater itself which will be located portside aft under the cockpit.  The mount will be made from plywood and glassed in to the inside of the hull.  Never done fiberglass before so that should be fun.  Also have to run lines for combustion air and exhaust and power control and thermostat from the Nav Station.  Let's see......about three more weeks 'till Christmas, still gotta do some shopping for that.  My four day work week just got canned for the next month so I'm down to a two day weekend.  The night's are now getting down into the 20's and the water temperature is in the 40's.  Our reverse cycle heater is still keeping us toasty but probably not for too much longer.  I'm startin' to feel the heat but it's not coming from the D5.