Hi how you doing? Thank you very much for watching. Been a little bit of a break
since the last video but I have got a couple of good reasons. First one is I
was up on the Chesterfield obviously I couldn't carry on on that canal because
of the weeds. I see subsequently that Canal & River
Trust have sent weed boats up there and they should be clearing that by now. So I
left Chesterfield, or the canal came back down the Trent. I stayed a bit of time in
Nottingham. I stayed a good two weeks whilst it was really, really hot inside
at Weston on Trent. Very nice place to moor, very quiet. There's a water point there.
I could get my car quite close by so that was good and then whilst I was there a
viewer, who's a carpenter - 40 years plus experience, who lives down near the Ashby Canal,
he got in contact and said hey we could do a bit of 'you scratch my back /
I scratch yours scenario'. He needs to know some bits and pieces about
electrics and because he's thinking about getting a boat and in return he
wanted to do some carpentry work for me.
Now as you know, I need to do lots and lots of carpentry inside the boat so I
jumped at the chance. I gave him a call and I'm on my way-ish towards the Ashby
at the moment. You might recognise this view. Do you recognise it at all? This is
the Coventry Canal and this is where I moored up when it was really, really icy
and snowy and I got stuck. The boat got stuck around about here actually. Again,
I've got my car quite close by so that's really good. The other thing I've
actually been doing inside - shock horror! I have actually been doing some things
inside. I've been starting to board it out. Now as you know I put battens,
vertical battens down above the gunnels, down the length of both sides of the
boat. They were at 40cm centres and originally I was going to use some
MDF sheets but that soaked up lots of water, so I got rid of those and then I
thought well, it'd be really nice if it was actually real oak. Lots of people
have oak faced ply. In one or two boats I've been into, you touch the walls and
the wall sort of flex. I didn't really want that because with me falling about
on the boat and Molly jumping around that's just a recipe for disaster. So I
thought of something much, much stronger.
So I went to a DIY yard here in Britain called B&Q and I looked at their
wooden flooring. Now, you might think why on earth you put in flooring on a wall!
Well actually, it's really strong. It's about 14 - 16mm thick versus
5 - 9 which is a sheet of ply typical on a wall and the other benefit
is, what I've decided to get is manufactured floor boards. What that
means is they're not completely solid oak. Some of them you've got to be
careful of because there's MDF underneath and then that's the whole MDF
scenario but the ones I've chosen, it looks like ply underneath to be fair
but with a much, much thicker top layer, look really nice,
they've got nice edging on which makes them sort of show up a little bit more
on the wall. It's not just like floorboards where they're all butted
together. And the other big bonus is they've got
tongue and grooves on all four sides of the wood. Because my battens are 40
centimetre centres I now no longer need to end on a batten. So I can just carry
on going and I can do whole lengths of the boat. What I've done is I've start at
the top, I've screwed the top ones in and then I've just carried on going down and
they all click into each other and the next one down makes the top one much
more rigid and every tongue, a bit like the secret nailing I did for the
boards below the gunnel, I have screwed it in every tongue. I've screwed it on to
the batten so it's very, very strong, very tough. But before I did any of that, I
wanted a little bit more insulation so I've got battens down the walls and
because I've got lots of foam on the ceiling, instead of cutting more foam off,
because obviously more foam taken off, means less insulation.
I have added battens on the ceiling as well. They're 5cm thick battens. I've
done one down, bit where the ceiling and the wall meet, little bit off and
then another one at a set distance down the middle of the boat. To get the centre
line I measured at one end, measured at the other end and did a string line down
the centre. I marked it with a pencil and then it was about nine and a half
centimetres either side was the edge of my next battens. So I've got four, five
centimetre deep battens which has allowed me to get away with not really
cutting much foam back now, thank goodness. It's kept the thickness of
the insulation and it's added an air gap and that's quite
valuable, especially in a ceiling. But in my normal belt and braces, a viewer
contacted me on Facebook and said why don't you sort of do some vapour
barrier and there's this stuff that some aluminium foil lined that's got a really
high u value which is effectively an insulation value and I looked into it
and I bought two sheets of it, or two rolls. [Link in description]
They were 1.5 metres by 50 metres each roll. So there's more than enough and
they overlap quite nicely and you tape up all the joins with foil tape. They've
got like a crisscross pattern inside, a bit like tarpaulin
or a bit like a parachute. So it's very, very difficult to rip and the u-value
of them is 0.35 with 89 millimetres of gap. Now I've got 50, 51
millimetres of gap, so obviously I won't have as higher u-value but I've
stapled it up all the way down and sealed it and already
the nights, I'm waking up absolutely boiling, because there's not enough
windows open and that's just since I've been putting that up. So I've gone
from one gunnel up, across the roof and back down the other side with the
foil membrane and originally / Molly's walking herself, she's running back and
forth. I think it's because the grass is quite lush. It's nice on her toes but
anyway, I've decided to instead of having my cable run down the boat underneath
the gunnels, it's quite tricky under there and you've got to go round things
and everything. I've decided to go in a cable tray down the middle. Made a little
tray out of wood and I started laying some cables down there. Much, much easier
and that's effectively what I've been up to over the last couple of weeks. I've
done quite a lot of moving. I did have a week or so off because of the
boiling hot heat. It was unbearable at times but I have been
cracking on inside and it is looking much, much better. I've done from the
bulkhead behind the fire to the bow door. I've done from the shower, near enough to
the stern on the starboard side and I've even started fitting some switches and
things. I'll go into the electric side in a number of other videos. I've still got
quite a lot to do. I've been keeping my Patreon supporters regular updates with
regards to inside the boat. One person I would like to thank is Ed Potter. He
is a top-level patron and this episode is dedicated to him. Thank you very much
and I also like to say thanks to Robin and Patrick.
They've donated funds to the Patreon page and didn't want anything in return
so I just wanted to say thanks to you as well. Don't know when my next episode is
going to be. I'm really busy inside, now that I'm on the
Coventry Canal I want to get a lot of it done before I then move on to the Ashby
and then speak to this carpenter so I'm plowing on. I am getting stuff inside
and before you know it it'll be time to paint Alice. yes shock,
second shock horror! I've decided on my colours. I've virtually decided on the
actual paint and it'll be time to start painting but thanks very much for
watching and do hit that subscribe button. Next to the subscribe button
there's a little bell icon, if you hit that as well, that will ping up an alert,
most of the time anyway, when I release a new video. So because they're a little
bit sporadic at the moment, that would be quite useful for you. But until next time,
thank you very much for watching and I will, I'll see you soon.