A sparky under the skirt and a full service

Despite all our exercise yesterday (thank you, Sally), we’ve been quite busy today. First thing we walked round to the lodge, where the Pinelog guys have finished and the electrician was working. One company connects the supply to the consumer unit and then another guy comes in and does the internal and underneath work. The two halves of the lodge have to be linked together for services, of course, so he’d taken part of the skirt off to get underneath.

On Tuesday the plumber should be here doing the same sort of thing with the water supply, then on Wednesday the gas man will return and finish his work now that the boiler can be filled and fired up. It all has to be tested and certified, of course, so as Flanders and Swann sang, it all makes work for the working man to do.

I took a couple of photos showing the approach to the side door in place:

There's a sparks under there...

…or maybe he's in there.

Back at the boat we had an early-ish coffee whilst I ran the engine for 20 minutes, than I turned to and did a major engine service, changing the oil in both engine and gear box, changing the oil and fuel filters and doing a general check over. I had planned to change the air filter as well, but had forgotten that the spare had been a victim of the great steering step immersion disaster the other year.

Since we’re doing no more than run across to the service wharf next week, the old one will do until Midland Chandlers’ Freaky Friday promotion on the fourth, when I’ll get a new one as well as replacing the other spare filters. As I’d feared, changing the fuel filter was a bit of a performance (replace the final word with others of your choosing).

It’s never been easy to get the fuel filter off a Beta 43, especially with the side of the engine box up against it, but the new position of the dipstick immediately behind makes it close to impossible. In the end, I had to take the filter body bracket off the engine and was then just about able to work the filter canister free.

It is, of course, full of diesel which runs everywhere as you tip it about. I got it done eventually, but will be sorely tempted to get Braidbar to do it next time; they installed the engine, they can service it…

/wahaha

By now it was lunchtime; afterwards and after a bit of a break we walked to Betty’s Farm again. That was quite an effort given that we’re pretty stiff after yesterday, but well worth it for some very good looking meat. Pork chops tonight, chicken curry tomorrow and top rump roast beef on Sunday, methinks.