Dramatic revolution afloat

Three key lessons this week: Take NOTHING for granted in your life. Be patient – good things are worth waiting for. Technology can be marvellous in many ways!

Loyal blog, Instagram or Facebook followers will be familiar with stories of hand washing on towpaths alongside water taps, hunting down laundrettes and lugging bags of washing along towpaths to streets and car parks over our time afloat. Steve’s mother and our eldest daughter (or more correctly their washing machines) have also become used to our laundry-laden visits!

Last year we began working on a solution to washing our dirty linen in public… or rather Steve was working on one, and injuring himself in the process as happens when working in confined spaces.

But everything has paid off and finally – it has arrived. This is a week that has totally revolutionised boatlife for us. No more laundrette hunting across Great Britain – a unique but time consuming experience. Thanks to Steve’s efforts replumbing, rewiring, carpentry to construct space for a washing machine in what was the wardrobe, and thanks to the efforts of our younger daughter and partner – look what our 50ft home now boasts!

Thanks to social media and knowledgeable contributors on Canal World Forum it also now works without clouds of smoke – more on that in a moment.

Fitting a washing machine in a bricks and mortar home is pretty straight forward compared to doing the same thing on a boat. You can’t just slot it in and connect it to power and water so it works… you need to get the power and the water in and out to make it work. You also need to balance your boat – so we had to get the floor up and remove 84 kg of ballast from underneath it.

We run 12 volt from batteries on board because we aren’t connected permanently to a fixed mooring with shoreline mains power. Washing machines (along with many other pieces of household equipment we all take for granted) function on mains power – 230 volts. To turn the power from the batteries into power which can run a washing machine we needed an inverter. Enter a Victron Phoenix 12/3000 plus all the relevant cables, fuses, and a residual current device (18kg in weight). Space had to be made for that to fit on board, and it had to be connected into the system…

We needed water in and out – the out demanded making a hole in the side of the boat – always alarming! The in required plumbing a cold water fill and also connected up the pressure release valve from the water tank which used to drain into the bilge for us to mop out but now drains straight out of the new drain.

And then having found the machine we wanted – a Hoover H500 (65kg weight) with a 1600 spin and a cold wash and most important of all a 52cm depth… we then had the issue of how to get it delivered to a boat! It was a military operation. Enter AO.com and Blackwater Meadow Marina at Ellesmere. The latter agreed we could use their address for delivery so we moored outside the marina ready and waiting for the moment of arrival.

Whilst AO were approaching so was the family muscle, making their way from Leicestershire, and Steve was removing doors, plus all the gubbins which usually clutters the back of the boat so it’s handy when we’re travelling. By 12 noon the deck was clear, the scene set and the delivery van appeared. AO say they’ll deliver your washing machine to where it needs to fit!

We were the first time these two had ever delivered to a boat – they were very excited and probably still talking about it now!

Machine on the back deck we then had to get all the packaging off in order to fit it through the doors and down the steps that descend and turn in the process. This was achieved by daughter and partner with straps round the machine. My job was keeping the dog out of the way and Steve was directing operations! It is such a tight space that there’s no room for spectators!

Finally the machine was manouevered into place at the foot of the bed into base of the old wardrobe. It was connected up…

…and with huge excitement and total glee I added the washing and started it going on a cold wash…only for clouds of smoke to emerge from the engine bay. The electrical monitoring app on Steve’s phone showed that the alternator that generates the 12 volts into the batteries was working so hard it was smoking! Everything off… and a trip out for lunch to reward the workers and pause to rethink.

Back at the boat we tried a rinse and spin which worked fine so the issue was clearly the washing part of the programme. Steve turned to the social media to see if other boaters had experienced something similar and what solutions they could suggest. Within moments 20 replies had arrived. Advice varied from installing a thermostatic valve connecting up the hot water tank, refurbing the alternator (which is probably 20+ years old) so it’s clean, disposing of the boatdog (dog dander lying on things that get hot tends to smoke) and pouring a kettle of hot water into the washing machine as the cold water’s going in as the cold water from our tank may be too cold for the machine’s cold wash…

The latter worked brilliantly and suddenly washing is not something to be planned, to take half a day to arrange. This morning the washing did itself as we cruised in the sunshine to arrive at a mooring spot where I put up the washing line and had superbly spun washing to hang out.

Life as we know it has been changed afloat this week by technology and a team effort. We are now self-sufficient in laundry terms. Half days taken up with laundry are a thing of the past! Let’s hope the wonder at the revolution continues to delight us for years to come.

It should repay us within the year for the machine and the inverter in laundrette costs, but having the inverter also means we can now power other things like the battery charger for the cordless drill, the soldering iron and I guess maybe a vacuum cleaner??? Maybe that’s the solution to the dog dander! Where will this revolution stop?!