When is a heater not a heater? – when it packs up and
refuses to work despite being given a good slap J
And that is exactly what happened less than an hour after I
posted my last blog on Thursday evening saying that the “slap treatment” was still
working. I obviously spoke too soon...
After a few attempts at persuading it to restart, we had to
accept that there was no point in waiting until Monday to take the heater out
and take it to the agent in Carlisle, as planned. It might as well come out straight away.
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Phil disconnects the heater to take it for servicing |
First thing yesterday, we lifted the carpet in the main
cabin and the panel of flooring covering the engine room and Phil went down to
attempt disconnecting the heater himself to save us having to pay an engineer
to do it.
Dex was fascinated by all the activity and offered his
assistance, but was told that he was not needed on this occasion, nor was I so
I took him for a walk to get him out of the way.
On our return, we found the heater out of the engine room
with Phil sitting proudly beside it. Apparently, although he had been working
in a very tight space, he had managed to undo all the leads and pipes and was
feeling very pleased with himself.
We immediately drove it to the Eberspacher agents at
Carlisle so they could get on with the service asap on Monday.
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The heater removed and ready to go |
They promised to make it a priority as we live on board and
would be without heat in the middle of winter. We were told they would make a
start on it on Monday and it would take “a few days” unless they needed to
order any parts – no time estimate could be put on this scenario so we are
keeping everything crossed that they will have any parts that are required.
Happy that we had done all we could, we stopped for lunch before
setting off home from Carlisle. However, while eating we received a phone call
asking if we had left the control unit for the heater in the car.
The answer was that it was still fitted in the engine room
on the boat, which was 28 miles away in Maryport. So much for saving time by
taking the heater to Carlisle yesterday and saving money by doing it ourselves.
We can only presume that an engineer would have realised that the agent would
need the control unit to run the diagnostic tests.
On returning to Maryport, we took the floor up again and
Phil unclipped the control unit. We set off to Carlisle with it again this
morning.
The company doesn’t open at weekends, but one of the employees
kindly agreed to meet us to take the unit so they would have it ready for an
early start on Monday.
The only problem now is that we have no proper heating on
board. Except that it doesn’t seem to be proving much of a problem.
So far, we’ve been lucky that the weather has been particularly
mild for the time of year. Since Thursday morning when there was ice on the surface of the water in the marina. It thawed quite rapidly during the day and has since stayed at around 6-9C so not too cold at all.
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Water pouring through the marina gate pushing the thin ice into a pile on Thursday morning |
We had a small convector heater that
we have had for years and never used. We almost got rid of it before we moved
onto the boat, but fortunately brought it with us “just in case” and a friend
lent us an oil-filled electric radiator.
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Phil helps a friend run up a sail |
We had both on very low heat settings overnight last night.
Since we got back from Carlisle today, the convector heater
has not been used and the oil-filled radiator is on low. The temperature on
the boat at the moment is 20C so it doesn’t look as though we are going to
freeze just yet.
We are however expecting to use a bit more electricity until
we get our diesel heater back. Just hoping the temperature doesn’t drop too
much in the meantime or it could get expensive...
On Thursday afternoon, before we discovered our heating disaster, Phil helped a friend run up one of the sails
on his yacht and I have a feeling he is now suffering from sail envy J
