I'm sure it isn't just us that notices things going downhill and gently ignores them in the hope that it has always been like that - well at least I hope it isn't.

When we first got the boat the shower was incredible, as well as the normal 'get you wet' setting adjusting the head also created a multitude of needle fine jets or by using only the centre section of the head you could I am sure, remove most of your skin. Over the last few months the shower had been getting slightly less aggressive but still well above what the average household manages but we did notice that the pump was getting gradually noisier. I refer you to the first paragraph of this page.

Then one fateful day - no water. The pump ran, and ran, and ran, it probably would have carried on running but we turned it off. In the very short run up to this (a few days) we did notice that when you turned the tap on water did flow (stored in the accumulator) then came to a stop for a few seconds before  the pump switched on and restored a dribble of a water flow to the tap. Then when the tap was turned off the pump ran for ages to re-pressure the accumulator.

We have in the last few months replaced the pressure switch and noticed at the time that there was a fair amount of dampness around the pump, particularly gathering on the accumulator tank. We put this down to condensation and in an attempt to reduce this problem I lagged all of the pipes in the pump area. The pump area I wish to point out is behind a small section of panelling in the main bedroom's wardrobe. To get to it you need to empty out the entire wardrobe, then remove a few screws to take out the panels. Now I'm quite a big bloke, last time I dared measure I was 6ft 4ins (yes I can stand up in the boat) and around 18 stone with a 48 inch chest - unless I breath in, in which case I'm even bigger. So imagine the joy and happiness of little old me working within a wardrobe a mere 20 ins deep by 30ins - at floor level - by torchlight and in a slowly growing puddle.

As I furkled once more in the depths of the wardrobe I noticed a rust brown stain on the recently installed grey pipe lagging and this was traced to the bottom of the water pump. Still in the land of self denial and as the pump was obviously running I considered either a block in the pipe between water tank and pump, or a blocked inlet filter. The filter was clear (the joys of a stainless steel water tank) but removing the feed pipe to the pump from the tank revealed no water at all. What it did however reveal was a very strange and torturous pipe layout that meant that the outlet from the tank was actually higher than the tank by the time it got to the pump. This had me floored for a while until I somewhat belatedly recalled that this arrangement had been working for the last 6 or 7 years. I tried blowing through the pipe until I heard bubbles at the water tank end, then letting the water flow (or not as was the case) back towards the pump. Eventually I primed the pump but it was still pitifully slow.

We were faced with the option of repairing the existing pump or replacing it. As the cost of a re-furb kit was a little over £20 and a new pump was a little over £120 guess what we did first?  So back we went to the chandlery and came back with a water pump. Now duly fitted we have a water pump so quiet that we sometimes don't even hear it, the return of  the skin removing shower and a hole in the credit card. Hopefully we also have a dry cupboard but I daren't look.

The long and short of it all is that the water pump works by having an eccentric in the end of its' shaft that in turn activates (in our case) four small rubber plungers. The pump was indeed running but the noise it turns out was caused by the end bearing having collapsed, which in turn reduced the amount of eccentricity the shaft generated. The collapsed bearing was the source of the brown stain and the noise. The blurb that came with the new pump says that a) it is happy to run dry and b) it can self prime to about 3m, hence the strange plumbing arrangement working.

Leading to  . . . . What comes in must go out.

We have a shower, or more specifically one of those hip bath things with a shower over. We also have 3 males - each with short hair and 2 females - each with longer hair. As the bath / shower is lower than the outside water level there is another pump under the bath that ejects the waste water. At least it does when it is working. Same scene, different outcome. The pump runs but noting comes out. All we have to do now is find how to get to the pump - we know where it is but not how to get to it.

Sure that those nice people at Black Prince know a thing or two about running a hire fleet (Wych Way was a hire boat) we are certain that it must be easy to get to. However, since then  she has been updated a fair bit and one of the updates was the tiling of the bath side panel. This of course means that we couldn't find the screws to remove it. One by one we had to smash the tiles off and scrape off the grouting until we had a bare board but this still didn't reveal any screws. Eventually I worked out that if you levered the panel up you could then pull the bottom towards you and out. In theory then we didn't need to smash the tiles off but as they had been rather well grouted to the side of the bath it was something that had to be done.

Finally we got to the pump. Taking it to pieces revealed not so much a 'hair ball' as a 'hair snake' that had completely blocked all of the pumps' chambers and started making its' way up the outlet pipe. Once removed we rebuilt the pump, reinstalled it and tested it. Result being a much quieter pump that is also more efficient.

Now we have a unique 'random grout' pattern on the bath side panel so I guess one of the next updates is going to be all about tiling then.