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In 1977 we hired our first narrowboat from Anglo Welsh at Market Harborough.From that moment our destiny was set. In 2006 we finally purchased our own brand new 57' narrowboat which we named 'Free Spirit'. Our aim is to travel the length and breadth of all the navigable rivers and canals of the UK. This will be our story as it unfolds.

Monday 16 January 2012

New Topbox cover

Another really lovely cold day. -4 and more ice forming on top of yesterdays freeze. If it continues like this we might be iced in for weeks as we were last January. Walking Jade along the towpath I noticed that some interesting patterns had formed on the frozen canal. I think its some sort of muddy liquid on top of the ice causing the strange shapes. Hopefully its not some sort of pollutant!
  On getting back to the boat I was horrified to see this staining all over the roof.

It quickly occurred to me that this must be tar from the chimney. At the moment we are burning loads of wood. Some is the rotten edging from around the garden at the bungalow. I'm pretty sure that this is the culprit although we do have some staining on a daily basis but never quite like this. I wonder if anyone reading this will have any ideas of how we can stop this from spreading along the roof. The chimney is double lined so I honestly thought it would stop the problem. Obviously not!! As Ian had already left for Kegworth to top up our diesel cans ( still at 85p a Ltr ) I decided to get rid of the stuff rather then leave it for Ian to see on his return. Luckily the roof had a thick layer of ice over it and this in turn protected the paintwork so it was relatively easy to wipe it off.

 As I hadn't much planned for today I thought it would be a good opportunity to replace one of the top boxes cover with 2 mtrs of waterproof material purchased from Long Eaton market last Saturday.

It must be nearly 4 years ago when I made this cover and it has served us well all this time but as it was looking decidedly sorry for itself, it had to go.So while we were sitting here on our mooring plugged into the shore line,I thought now was as good a time as any to get out the sewng machine.

Concentrating hard!!!

Just needs the eyelets to finish.
Another job out of the way! Not sure what I will do tomorrow. Ian always finds things to do but as I cant fish because of the frozen canal I'm struggling to find something to keep me occupied. 

4 comments:

Bruce in Sanity said...

What we did was fill the gap between the two bits of the chimney with expending foam; don't put too much in, and pop the chimney on the collar before the foam sets, so that it moulds itself to the collar.

Most foams seem to work, though I think you can get high temp ones if you are worried.

HTH

Bruce

Ian and Irene Jameison said...

Thanks Bruce,
Ian wants to know if the chimney will still be able to be removed. We have another tall chimney for when we are static so we need to change them as needed.

Irene

Bruce in Sanity said...

Oh yes, we have two chimneys as well. If you don't make a big deal of cleaning the collar before doing it, the foam doesn't stick to it, and you can easily take the chimney off and do the other one.

Since we did both ours, we've had no further trouble with goo leaking onto the roof.

Cheers

Bruce

Ian and Irene Jameison said...

Thanks again. This is one we will definately try. Now we just need to get the foam!

Irene

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