Absolutely loving the house. Victoria was a bit nervous about being isolated and she wanted a security system and cameras. Turned out to be easy to add both. I was particulary surprised with how well the camera system works. You can hook up a Tapo camera, like this one, with it’s own little solar panel, and even in the shade it will keep itself 100% powered (this is a Greek sun though, your mileage may vary), it has on-board detection (vehicles, animal, person, general motion) and will alert you for any of these. We ended up putting 7 around the house which is too many but we have a great 360 degree view of what is going on around the house from anywhere.
Other house news is the local bakery is world class, everyone is extremely welcoming, and it takes a lot of diesel to heat a house. I really hate burning diesel so I’m quite committed to getting a lot of solar and a big heat pump to heat the house for next winter.
We successfully harvested a bunch of olive oil from our trees…I think we got 80 litres which is not much for how many trees we have but they were not maintained so we should get more in the future. The olive oil is wonderful.
But this blog is about Spruzzo not the house. I had to go visit Spruzzo because I had a task, which was replacing the black-water valve on the front toilet, and I needed to do it without Victoria on the boat.
This is why Victoria couldn’t be on the boat:
I had my tools spread from the middle of the boat (on the table), inside the bathroom (you can’t see) and also in the front cabin which is Victoria’s space. This would have driven Victoria crazy. I did the work over 4 days so it is much easier for me to leave everything out.
This is considered a non-trivial job in the Amel boating community, but there are an excellent published set of instructions….but it was still daunting. The valve is hidden behind the toilet. You can reach it normall to close it (no poo in the harbour) but working on it would be extremely difficult. First I had to remove the toilet which sounded scary (what if it breaks? what if I can’t put it back?) and then the valve itself that I was removing was actually glassed into the boat…..the bottom of the valve was itself set in fiberglass! So I was going to have to grind out the metal from the boat before I could start removing it.
So I started with the toilet. Day 1. Has 4 bolts in the base with hexagonal holes. I started with the front one that had the easiest access…..and I could not budge it at all. I tried heating it. Didn’t help. I tried putting ‘bolt release fluid’ on all the bolts, waited a few hours, didn’t help. Tried the next morning. Still no luck. Went to the hardware store and got a 1m long metal pipe. Put it over the tool for leverage. I would guess I’m putting 100lb of force on the bar at the end…..the bolt finally started to move but it was very ‘stuck’ the entire way out. The second bolt I used the same technique….and the bolt sheared off half way down! it was a 6 or 7mm diameter steel bolt! Anyway when I was wondering how to proceed I noticed that there were tiny little bolts on the underside of the toilet……and these turned out to be *very* easy to remove…..so the base of the toilet was still there but the bowl was off and I now had good access.
Now I had to use a dremel to sand away the fiberglass from the base of the valve….and this turned out to be not too hard. I probably removed about 120 degrees or so of material because I couldn’t get the tool around one side, and I couldn’t access the back because it was against the side of the boat. I got a wire and wrapped 80 grit sandpaper around it and ground away at the material I couldn’t access. This seemed to work pretty well based on the amount of cancer-causing fiberglass dust I was creating (I kind of had a mask on for this 😉
Anyway after this I got my pipe wrench with my 1m leverage extender and I was able to move the valve! Woot!!!! Very happy! I knew as soon as I could move it it would eventually come out. I turned it a few times and then it was stuck because of the hose attached to the top of the valve…..it was really attached. I fought with this hose for probably an hour….it would not come off. Eventually I did what I should have done first, which was use a heat gun to soften up this hose. I did that for about 5 minutes and the hose came right off.
After the upper hose was loose it was relatively easy to finish unscrewing the valve and pulling it off the old hose. It was not smelly at all as I had treated the system with bleach in the fall.
Attaching the new valve was relatively easy. Here is a picture of the new piece:
The part at the bottom is an attachment for the hose, it goes up. I lubricate it with lithium grease so it goes in nicely. The top part screws onto the attachment (still glassed into the boat) and needed pipe sealant. I stuck it on the hose, screwed it in, put sikaflex around the base where it was glassed in before, re-attached the bonding wires (there are 2 in the original photo…this bonds the valve to a sacrificial anode on the boat so the metal doesn’t corrode), re-attached the toilet and I’m done! Very happy!!! I had to remove about 1″ from the metal handle so the handle would turn but that was not a big deal.
I mentioned before this took 4 days. Day 1 was discovering the toilet bolts didn’t move. Day 2 was fighting more with the bolts, discovering the small ones and removing the toilet. Day 3 was removing the old valve, Day 4 was putting in the new valve.
You may wonder why I don’t just get someone else to do this work. There are a few reasons. One is someone would probably charge me 400 or 500 euros for this work C$660 to C$800). It is not fun to do, it is in a small space, and if you know how to do stuff like this you would work on much bigger boats with better access and be happier. And two, if you do it yourself you know it is done properly, and you also learn more about your boat. If you are going to live on your boat you should know how to fix it yourself. Honestly a great way to be forced to learn basic electronics, engines, plumbing and pumps.
After I was done I noticed I was covered in bruises from fighting first with the toilet and later with removing the valve. You are applying a lot of force in a small space and there are lots of things to bump into around you and I got a ton of bruises. I’m muscling things that need more finesse. Eventualy I will learn 😉
The toilet now works so well it sounds like a rocket taking off when you flush it. Almost scary! I may do the back toilet as well since I now know how to do this and it will take me 1/4 of the time.
Life lessons: 1) should have inspected how to remove the toilet before assuming I had to remove the entire unit 2) don’t be lazy and get the heat gun before fighting with a hose.
I also want to mention that I was a little concerned that I would not enjoy the boat as much after being in the house. The entire inside of the boat is smaller than our living room! These boats are cozy by design….you need to have something solid nearby to hold on to when you are in a boat and it is being tossed around. I’ve walked into modern huge boats (slightly longer than ours) and they are sooooo wide inside….but I wonder what you can hang on to if you are walking around? You would get thrown side to side and get hurt! But they look good!
Anyway I loved being back on the boat. There is something about actually being on the water. Even though the first 2 nights I was back it was windy and bumpy and noisy for sleeping it was still great. I am looking forward to sailing in a few weeks!
Adventures on Spruzzo 