Earith sounds as if it belongs to Lord of the Rings. It is in fact a village in the Fenlands in Cambridgeshire but its remote nature does give an air of Middle Earth.
We are moving here with our narrowboat Silverdale at some time in the near future. The journey from Northamptonshire to Cambridgeshire, while by car is probably about one and a half hours, by narrowboat is considerably longer. It is also by river rather than canal for most of the journey.
With this in mind, we decided to take a look at what our penultimate destination looked like.
Ditch to the side of the ?
The New Bedford River
The New Bedford River
Looking Across Hermitage Marina Entrance
Hermitage Marina
Although I state penultimate destination, it could be that we are here for some time. Luckily, it seems a beautiful, peaceful area of the countryside and we’re looking forward to living here. There’s a lot of planning ahead and there will be more of that to come.
I’m planning to document our journey so be sure to check back for updates and follow us when we are ‘on the road river’…
With the pandemic restrictions easing a little, we travelled to be somewhere else. Ely is a City (it has a cathedral) that sits on the high land in the middle of the Fens – the coastal plain in the east of England.
The river Great Ouse runs through the City and the Ely Marina sits off this.
Bridge over the river Great Ouse at Ely
Under the bridge over the river Great Ouse at Ely
A view down the river Great Ouse at Ely
Ely Marina entrance on the river Great Ouse at Ely
Boats and a swan on the river Great Ouse at Ely
Park in Ely
Ely will figure more prominently in the future as we will be moving Silverdale over that way, in the near future…
We’ve got a leak! Well, not a leak. Well, it is a leak but it’s an OK one.
In general, water can build up in our engine bay bilges, at the stern of the boat. It’s what happens.
It’s been at the back of my mind for a long while now. We had been checking the bilge pump, running it and every so (randomly) often and water is pumped. It runs via the bilge pump outlet, into the canal (don’t worry, it’s permitted, it’s just water). I thought it was the rain, getting into the bilge via the stern. Some of it will be that. Some of it will not, however.
Narrowboats have Calorifiers, which is a fancy name for ‘hot water tank immersion heater combo’. It provides us with hot water via various methods. Ours is installed under our bed, which is toward the stern of the boat and not too far from the bulkhead to the engine bay. A pipe runs from the Calorifier, through the bulk head and into the engine bay. The pipe exits through the bulkhead and out into the engine bay. It has a tap type thing on it. It is this that is the culprit!
Dripping…
This morning, I lifted up the flooring to the engine bay and clearly saw this tap contraption dripping water, regularly into the bilge.
I discussed this with Whilton Marina to confirm my suspicions. Yes, this is correct and it is what is supposed to happen. With an automatic bilge pump, any water is removed, as outlined above. Ours is manual only so when we run it, if there’s any water built up, the pump voids it into the canal.
The trouble is, a bilge pump never gets rid of every last drop of water, there is a threshold which has to be reached before it can work. A little amount of water is always left.
Bilge Pump with pipe to the outside
So, what we can do is have a ’skin fitting’ (no, it’s not a body piercing) put into the side of the hull and have the Calorified pressure outlet pipe (the tap-like thing) connected to void the water automatically, out of the boat. Cut out the middleman – the bilge pump.
We’re going to get this done.
Update
Update – this wasn’t required! A new PRV was installed, the leak stopped. With this being a safety valve, there wouldn’t normally be water being released into the bilge so we decided to leave it ‘as is’. We had purchased a battery-operated hand pump and it managed to get rid of most of the water. It’s been absolutely fine ever since.
