Bargebuilder

You may find that the cheaper made fridge freezers with the freezer part on top only have one compressor and one evaporator that is in the freezer part. The freezer thermostat should keep that compartment somewhere near to -18⁰c, and the freezer supplies cold air to the larder section via a vent in its base. The thermostat in the bottom larder section, if it has one, operates a damper in the vent that controls how much cold air is allowed to escape from the freezer to the larder section below. If Shoreline use such a system it doesn't surprise me. I had a Shoreline 12v fridge for four years; first the thermostat packed up, then the whole thing went the same way. Mine, at least, was vastly overpriced rubbish and I wouldn't ever have another one.

This is what Allcoat looked like a couple of years after application.

I'd be surprised if that was necessary and anyway, you'd struggle to get a good seal against water with such an uneven surface. If, when you are ready to start work, you give the prepared surface a few drying sunny days to dry out before painting, the paint should stick well. Zinsser Allcoat is water based after all.

Mine was an Lec, but the insulation was visibly three times the thickness of their refrigerator in the same range. Ours only came on when the door was opened and very, very occasionally in between. Before I did the conversion, we had a Shoreline 12v larder fridge that used to be clicking on and off all the time. It was greedy enough that there were times in the winter when we were forced to turn it off for a time to conserve battery power. It was ridiculously expensive, and it packed up after just 4 years! The converted freezer has been in operation now for 7 years and is still going strong.

If you are off-grid and winter solar output struggles to cope with demand, you could do what I did and convert a super insulated 240v freezer into a extremely low power consumption refrigerator. Freezers, especially A+++ ones, have massively more insulation than do even well insulated refrigerators and it's easy to convert them. Buy a 12v thermostat with a remote sensor and position the sensor inside the freezer. Set the thermostat to +4⁰c and connect its switch wire to a 12v relay. Take the 12v relay feed to an inverter dedicated to the converted freezer and plug it in. Doing it this way, there is no quiescent current draw from the inverter to worry about, because it's only on when it's needed. The inverter can be modified sine wave, but will need to be rated at over 800w to cope with the freezer's inrush current. A freezer running at fridge temperatures is super efficient and unless you open the door, will stay cold for hours on end without the inverter powering up and consuming any 12v; great for dull, overcast winter weeks. The cost of a mains freezer plus an inverter, thermostat and relay is still a fraction of the cost of a less efficient 12v fridge.

For anyone looking, don't be put off of half tide mud berths. A friend of mine lives on his 60' X 14" widebeam 'fatty narrowboat' and has done so for some 12 years with no problems at all. His boat sits on the stickiest, glupiest Essex mud you can imagine, the sort that will steal your Welly boots if you attempt to walk through it. His boat settles into this mud and sits there for 8 hours out of every 12, then, when the water returns, accompanied occasionally by a intriguing sucking noise, the boat gently rises over the following couple of hours several feet with the rising tide; it is never held down by suction. Yes, you do need to change your anodes to zinc and if subsequent dry docking or craning is going to be difficult, the expense of coating the hull with a two pack glass flake epoxy will pay dividends over future years. One advantage with a soft bed of mud, is that glass flake epoxy won't get scratched off as it might when cruising the cut. I know of two coastal barges coated with the product which, after 15 years show no signs of degradation. Mud berths are often cheap, sometimes very, although possibly not in the West Country. The surroundings and wildlife can be fantastic, so I'd suggest well worth considering.

Some years ago I had a grp cruiser with decks that looked very similar to those of the OP, with flaking layers of paint accumulated over many years of previous ownerships. I carefully removed 98% of the old coating with a polycarbide disc on a cordless angle grinder. These discs can be aggressive, so a light touch is needed, but the process is actually quite quick. After much research, I repainted the deck with Zinsser Allcoat, a water based paint that is often used on uPVC. It rolls or brushes on very quickly and easily with a matt or silk finish as desired and sticks phenomenally well to plastics. After three years there has been no cracking or flaking and the colour is pretty much as rich as it was on the day I applied the paint. Yes, once painted grp will need to be refreshed with another coat every few years, but I have been very impressed with the Zinsser product and expect it to last for 5 years or more.

If you can find a place where the copper of the red and black wires that go to the pump are exposed, touch the red and black of the multimeter to these and press the toilet's empty button, making sure the boats water supply is turned off first so you don't fill the bowl again. The pump should energise as part of the empty cycle and the multimeter should show a bit over 12v. If it doesn't, then it's the switch or the control box that's at fault. That's assuming that the breaker hasn't cut the power to the toilet. I believe the breaker should be rated at 40A, so you might like to check that it is. Check the output of the breaker to make sure you've got 12V there as well. You could use a 12v lightbulb and a couple of bits of wire instead of a multimeter. That groaning noise might be a blockage, or it might be a pump bearing. Given how important the pump is to life aboard, especially if you have visitors, I always kept a spare one for emergencies: we did live aboard though.

You've checked the circuit breaker or fuse is okay? Do you have a multi meter to check that power is getting to the evacuation pump? Turning off the water pump and running the tap to remove pressure will stop most of the flush water from making a mess when you detach the metal pipe, but have some rags ready. The big hoses will be secured to the pump with big jubilee clips I think and should come off quite easily. The pump should come out next for a good clean. There could be an obstruction, but I'm guessing that it's an electrical problem with the pump or its controls, hence why testing it before dismantling everything might be a wise thing to do. If you've got a 'Silence' this is what you can expect to see: https://www.thetford.com/part/tecma-silence-plus-rv/

I added two extra switches to our Tecma as an addition to the automatic switch panel that comes with the toilet, one to open the flush solenoid and the second to activate the evacuation motor. By doing this, we could give the loo a tiny flush and empty the bowl without going through the manufacturer's flush sequence, thus saving a lot of water. If economising on water usage is important to you, get whoever mends the toilet for you to do the same. It's a cheap modification, just the cost of a couple of switches.

At one side of the perimeter trim, you should find a recess into which you can insert a flat headed screwdriver and gently twist. Go on, give it a go: you'll save yourself a fortune over calling someone in, and the parts, if needed, won't be cheap. Do mend it rather than replace it, as they are probably the best macerator toilet available.

If there is no noise at all, a blockage isn't as likely as an electrical fault with the switch or a faulty pump. Behind the loo is really just a pump with a house going to it from the bowl waste outlet and another hose going from it towards your blackwater tank. You could clean out both hoses and the pump and the waste valves, but it's unlikely that the problem lies with a blockage.

It's also possible that the pump has had it, or the electrical connections have parted or become corroded. How old is the toilet? I'd expect the pump to last 6 or more years of liveaboard use as they are well made. You'll need to unscrew the ceramic bowl from the floor and pull the toilet away from the wall to work on it.

If the pump makes no noise at all, the problem might be the relay behind the switch panel. Remove the trim, undo the two screws, remove the switch panel and give the two black boxes at the back a sharp knock.

Does the pump motor spin but with no suck? Inside the toilet there is a bend in the rubber hose within which an air lock can form. If that happens, the pump blades spin in air rather than liquid and no suction is developed. Older models included a stub onto which an air bleed tube was fitted and this tiny tube can block. On more recent models, this bleed tube was part of the moulding and so less likely to get blocked. Whichever you've got, if the pump is spinning but not sucking, you may have this air lock. You can see the tiny tube that gets blocked here: https://highskyrvparts.com/rv-parts/sanitation/toilets-service-parts/thetford-toilet-discharge-hose-38190

I had a Tecma Silence for 8 years or so. They are extremely difficult to block if only human waste and cheap loo paper is flushed away. If you put a bucket full of clean water into the bowl and press flush, does it all get sucked away promptly?

If the OP's budget is sub 30k, it would be a miracle if the hull wasn't thinning. Of course, given initial two pack coatings, or possibly extremely regular and extremely well applied blacking including to the base plate, corrosion can be close to zero, but one scratch below the waterline just after painting and rust has three years to take hold. Localised thinning must be almost inevitable, especially to an unpainted base plate after 20 years afloat.

From one end to the udder...

That's nothing compared to Buttercup the cow who swam a mile through the Foulridge Tunnel and was rescued at the other end.

I've seen a grp sailing yacht with blisters the size of saucers, and that didn't delaminate or stop it's owner from continuing to enjoy sailing it for many more years. Surveyors used to be very cautious about osmosis but even they are, in general, a lot more pragmatic about it these days. It is, however, when present, often used to negotiate a discount, but the buyer rarely does anything about it once it's theirs.

We think our grp narrowbeam cruiser is perfect, even for extended cruising, but probably not in the winter. Steel narrow boats do have some advantages over grp, particularly if you intend to live aboard, because they are often better insulated and so easier to keep warm in the winter. However, the insulation is often very thin, usually maybe an inch of polyurethane foam or a similar thickness of polystyrene, and nothing at all below 'floor' level. Grp cruisers often have little or no insulation, but being in general smaller than narrow boats, there is much less volume to heat, so they warm up quickly and for spring, summer and autumn use are easy and inexpensive to heat. The owners of steel narrowboats will often say that grp cruisers are not tough enough on the canals when negotiating locks and tunnels, but I have never suffered more than a scratch in all my years of cruising in grp boats. Remember that grp cruisers are smaller and lighter than narrow boats: They are more responsive to steer, they stop faster and have much greater acceleration than lumbering 15 tonne steel narrowboats. This superior manoeuvrability means that staying out of trouble is easy. Grp cruisers also often benefit from a 'V' profile hull, which is not only easier (and cheaper) to push through the water, but this also helps with directional stability when steering. It is also possible to moor closer to shallow bank sides than you can with flat bottomed narrow boats. They also tend to draw less water, so getting stuck in shallow canals has never been a problem for us. Grp cruisers are cheaper to buy: they waste no internal space on a forward 'well deck', this space being fully occupied by a huge double bed that any narrowboat would be jealous of. Our bed is more than 6 feet wide and infinitely more comfortable than any narrowboat 'double' bed that I have ever come across. In addition, the longer grp cruisers have centre cockpits and aft cabins, so there is no wasted space at the stern as there is with narrowboats. For this reason, in order to have the volume of internal space that you might find in a given size of grp cruiser, you would need to buy a considerably larger narrowboat. Just look inside a 30ft example of both if you doubt what I say. Remember too, that a shorter boat is cheaper to licence and cheaper to moor and can often fit into that last available gap in a prime canalside location. Also, grp boats do not need to be hauled out and 'blacked' every 2-3 years, giving a huge maintenance saving as well. In the last seven years, annual maintenance for us has been engine oil and filters, fuel filter and antifreeze. I check the impeller annually but have only replaced it twice and I slapped some new paint on the deck last year. Average annual cost less than £100. I should also dispell the myth that grp boats should winter ashore; this is just not true. They are absolutely strong enough to survive severe winters afloat and their hulls certainly don't need to 'dry out'. If you do overwinter ashore, the cost of craning out and back is offset by only needing to licence the boat for half the year. With every year that passes, the steel hulls of narrowboats are thinning due to rust, eventually resulting in the need for patching or complete over-plating; a very expensive operation. The other serious problem with steel craft is that of electrolytic and cathodic erosion; the sometimes severe pitting that can dangerously compromise the integrity of metal hulls; steel, iron and even worse aluminium. Grp hulls suffer no such problems, although a small, inexpensive shaft anode will be need to protect their propeller which is likely to be made of bronze. An outboard will have an anode of it's own. Osmosis is a minor condition that can occasionally affect grp hulls, but it is just a surface bubbling of the outer gel coat, does not make a boat leak, is not structural and has never caused any vessel to sink... unlike the rusting of steel hulls! Grp cruisers also seem much roomier than steel narrow boats. This is partly because cruisers tend to have much larger windows, giving much better views from the saloon. Also, with centre cockpit cruisers, you aren't walking through one cabin to get to the next, so it doesn't feel like you are living in a corridor. Centre cockpit cruisers also offer a lot more protection from inclement weather, especially with the windscreen and cockpit tent in place. No standing holding an umbrella, instead sitting in the warm and dry. Having said all that, there are some features that are desirable in a grp cruiser. If you intend to cruise any distance, you really want a diesel inboard engine: Only diesel fuel is readily available at the canal side and you may have to walk miles to find a roadside petrol station if you have an outboard motor. Also, it would be dangerous to carry large amounts of petrol on board. Diesel engines are extremely fuel efficient: my 20hp Vetus diesel uses 0.5l per hour at canal cruising speeds in my 30ft cruiser, that's about a month's cheap cruising from my built-in tank. You should also look for a shaft drive rather than a 'z' drive; there is much less to go wrong and repairing/reconditioning a 'z' drive can be hugely expensive. 'Z' drives protrude from the stern of cruisers and are therefore vulnerable to collision. Their aluminium alloy construction can also suffer serious corrosion over time. If you do have a shaft drive, then you MUST have a weed hatch above the propeller, as you will occasionally pick up rope or plastic or weed that will halt your progress, and without one you are stuck; unless you can swim! For summer use, we wouldn't swap out grp cruiser for a steel narrowboat, and we do many hundreds of canal and river miles each year.

For inspectors for whom this is true, it's not because they don't charge enough for a visit, it's because they can't get enough inspections booked. Maybe there are too many of them.

I've had one for 7 years now, only for summer use, not 24-7 during the winter months and it's always started first time and produced loads of heat without issue. Best to get an appropriately sized one and run it at 3/4 or more output to stop it from sooting up. If you do run it at low output, push it up to full power for the last 10 minutes of operation before powering it down to burn off any accumulated soot. It used to be said that buying an entire heater costs less than just servicing an Eberspacher!

We paid £180 last year for a 23 minute inspection where the inspector sat drinking tea and asking us questions about our boat's installation rather than looking for himself. He only went into just one cabin and glanced briefly under the engine hatch before passing the boat. He lived very locally to our boat and we were one of three jobs he had booked for that day. Make up your own mind if that represents good value to the boater. How much could a disc actually cost if it's price was added to the BSS invoice and would it be worth the extra if it helped the CRT to cleanse the waterway of unsafe, unlicensed boats.

Or towards a brand new porta potti with all new gaskets, valves etc.