Cleaning boats in the winter is not a nice job. With no power and no running water it's a slog, plus the uninhabited boats are really cold. One of the boats I clean only has port holes so it's really dark inside especially in the winter.
It took me an hour today to clean two venetian blinds on a boat, by the time I'd finished my hands were clawed with the cold.
By the time I'd done the rest of the boat I was frozen through, my lovely CHS had a hot cup of tea waiting for me when I got in.
Mind you I had the easy job, CHS was getting the boat ready for a big job next week. We are having the engine replaced!
We will be engineless for a whole month and it's going to cost eleventy billion squid.
We knew we were likely to need to have it replaced when we bought the boat, but it ticked all the other boxes so we bought it and have been saving ever since so we have the money to get the job done. We know people who have been searching for their perfect boat for years and years, we just wanted to move on and start living aboard.
There is nothing actually wrong with the engine that we know about but it isn't designed for narrow boat use, we cannot find anyone to service it and we have no service history for it. Our concern is that if it goes wrong we will be stuck, unable to move and unable to find anyone to repair it.
My tenant has just phoned, the bath isn't draining, what next? I've phoned the plumber, it will depend on what he finds whether or not I pay the bill.
Scrimping and saving, ranting and raving. Past retirement age.
13 comments:
I've been on a canal holiday in March - the first to use the boat after winter it was the coldest I've ever been - put us off live aboard ideas. Can you take some hot water with you to warm up your hands?
Or maybe you could take some of those little pouches that contain gel and you click the metal coin to heat them up. A relative of mine was a piano tuner and used these in cold churches to keep the circulation going in his hands! Sometimes Lidl have them very cheap. Or a hot water bottle? Eilidh x
Just reading this is making me shiver. Hope your plumbing problem isn’t too expensive. It will be annoying if it is just a plunger job and your tenants could have done it themselves.
If they have long hair and washing it in the bath can clog the drain up, bleach down the plug hole works a treat.
The bath isn't draining? Has your tenant never heard of Caustic Soda. Or SinknPlughole unblocker?! I'm looking forward to hearing what the cause of the blockage turns out to be.
Oh Hester I feel your pain both with the cold and with the tenant. When my hubby was down the house recently checking out a leak, the tenant asked him to take a look at a radiator that wasn't getting hot. Hubby asked if the system had been bled recently? The tenant said he forgot that radiators needed bleeding. We haven't heard anymore!
I'm not best pleased because I suggested using a drain unblocker and the tenant claimed to have tried that already. So I phoned the plumber, he phoned the tenant and suggested a drain unblocker and she agreed to try it!
I do take a bucket of hot water with me when I'm cleaning an unoccupied boat but it doesn't stay hot for long unfortunately.
Oh dear Hester...you do get in some capers x
I think you need to get rid of that tenant. Hope you got a deposit from them, seems like they've cost you a fortune already.
I used to clean Army quarters, some of which had been empty forever, were cold, damp & often had no hot water. I used to put a hot waterbottle across my back, thermal tights and vest. worked a treat, although not much good for cold hands.
I wear men's thermal long johns and founder r layers on top.
It's impossible for a bath plug to stop draining on its own, the usual cause is hair, the bottle of cleaning stuff costs about £6, simple to use, works every time and lasts for a lot of cleans.
I think you need to try and find a tenant who has at least half a functioning brain.
A pair of those thin cotton gloves inside of a pair of marigolds would probably help with the cold paws.
If you had a head torch, it would make the dark boats easier to 'navigate'.
Thanks for all your comments.
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