Frozen showers
Hello! Happy Sunday :)
So I ordered a bunch of gas fittings, and one of them the bulkhead fitting... I deliberated awhile on how best to pass a gas line through a bulkhead, as I found various opinions — join the pipe on either side with a compression fitting, run the pipe straight through with a cable gland, yada yada. But the idea of cutting a pipe to go through a bulkhead seemed ridiculous — the fewer joints the better! — and I found vindication in guidance from the BSS:
Many builders supply new boats with the bulkhead fitting drilled through as this can allow a length of jointless pipe from inside the gas locker to beside the appliance or ‘tee’ joint. The olives can be still used and provide an effective seal. Whether the fitting is drilled or not usually cannot be identified by visual assessment and both types are compliant.
Right!! The fitting itself should be gas-tight in case there's a leak in the lockers, but otherwise I want gas to go through a joint-less pipe.
Anyway I returned to the boat after a nightmare travel day on Tuesday (but my niece learned to say "uncle" which made up for it), after freezing weather, to find an icicle on the bathroom tap. Then I noticed the shower mixer handle on the floor... it had frozen, over-pressured and blown off. Welp, I tried to gracefully remove the spindle but fucked it, so I ordered a whole new bar.
Lucky for me there's no hot water, so I could twist it to hot and it wouldn't leak. Unfortunately I can no longer have 11° cold showers (boo hoo), but it means the rest of the taps work fine. And luckily it wasn't a pipe that burst! Many silver linings, and it taught me that in freezing weather I should also open a tap, not just shut the water off...
On Wednesday all the fittings arrived and turns out I ordered the wrong conduit — 13mm outside diameter it was; I needed inside (I also finally ordered a gas regulator). And when I say the fittings arrived I mean the fittings that I thought I needed — I keep getting better ideas for how to connect gas lines with fewer joints (it's a fun optimisation problem of number go down), but it feels like there are so many options without much guidance, and this is one area I don't want to fuck up. Tapered threads but that's for PTFE, dowty washers, metal-only seals, copper olives, jointing compounds...
Then on Saturday I got busy in the engine bay to remove the old gas line, and the path is now clear. Some conduit, fittings and sunshine, and it's ready for the new one.
And I still love the orange. 😍
In other news I'm moving to London at the end of the month, so boat updates will be every last Sunday from then on. I'm excited for mains-everything and moving all my shit off so work and boat-work stay separate; finishing it this year is still #1, then I can move on to other quests.
Until next Sunday!
- Nick