Lots of swearing (now theres a surprise)

On Friday Paul went to the electrical wholesalers and bought all the items that he required to make a switch panel to control all the low voltage equipment ie digi box, ariel amplifier, fresh air fans and the CCTV camera. Whereas they were all supplied from the consumer unit and it is no good having something that takes .5 of an amp covered by a 16 amp RCD and the only way to switch them off was through the consumer box. This is a no no because it damages the sensitivity of the RCD's. This is to save power when they are not in use instead of leaving them on standby. He had priced up a switching panel at the boatyard and one with a couple of switches was around £45 but wasn't what he wanted anyway. and Paul being Paul decided he would make his own. This was accomplished for the princely sum of £21. and there are 6 illuminated switches.


With the rewire due to be done he wanted everything in place. He also wanted to re-place the TV ariel cable away from the jumble of wires under the lighting boards. Trunking has been put in under the gunnel to accommodate the ariel cable and the new upgraded speaker cables.
Saturday morning Paul was up bright an early to begin the mammoth task ahead. First job was the switch panel, he cut a piece of acrylic sheet to size then cut the mounting holes for the switches, he also decided to move the Travel Pack on/off switch in to the same panel for easier access. The panel was then sprayed satin black when dry screwed in place. Then it was down with the lighting boards in the bedroom and all I could hear was a lot of tutting and "I don't believe it". The consumer box was exposed but Paul has had the lid off before so knew what to expect, he then proceeded to sort out the redundant wiring and make good some connections for safety as most of this will be removed and re-installed.



The mains cables to the consumer unit were frayed in the terminals which could have caused major arcing.













These are some of the frayed terminals. Note the cut brown wire and the loose green and brown wire one of many. Where they go nobody knows.

There was also an amount of strip connectors used to double up on supply cables this is totally out of order. It was now time to get the new ariel coax across the headlining of the boat which Paul thought would be reasonably easy, but you know what thought did. After a lot of sticking fingers in holes and much probing this became a bigger problem than first thought, yes you have guessed it another bodge up. Paul was following the same route as the "builder" and we found yes I mean we as I was now helping with the cable pushing and pulling. It transpires that the cables are trapped between fixing timbers and there is no route through, however Paul found that one of the cross beams was not cut the same as the others and he was able to use it as a trunking to support the coax. The coax and speaker wires were then run along the gunnel trunking and out of curiosity Paul connected the ariel cable to see if there was any difference in the signal strength and there is an improvement of about 25% at least we have got something right as digital goes live on Wednesday.
It was then back to the panel and various connections were made wires were re-routed redundant ones removed and final connections made. We now have a nice new panel where everything can be switched separately and with pretty green lights.
The next phase of this saga will be carried out over the next few weeks some of which will be done while we are in the marina having the alterations done.
Today our worst nightmare became reality. Paul was tidying up some cables in the bedroom when I heard a shout of "whoa" I looked up and saw a day boat heading straight for us at speed, I called out to Paul who rushed up the steps just as we were hit broadside by the day boat. The collision caused us to keel over quite some way hence Paul fell down the steps backwards hurting his hand in the process (ahhhhhhhh). Day boat reversed up and moored up and give the people their due they were concerned. Paul had by this time looked at the damage and found the gunnel paintwork back to bare metal and where the day boat had ridden up over the gunnel it has damaged our sign writing. The people came and apologised I kept a low profile as I was expecting him to go ape shit and be abusive but he wasn't he was too busy nursing is hand. He spoke to them suggesting perhaps they should have been going slower and paid more attention to what they were doing. Still its done now and we are going to attempt to Tcut out the damage to the sign writing and the gunnel can be painted YET again. After all what else have we got to do with our time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!