After spending a week procrastinating on the sewage system it was time to get back to work!  Technically we haven’t *finished* anything yet, just torn things apart.  I’m ready to be able to put all of the floor pieces back in place and not think about the forward half of the boat for a while.  Aside from the obvious barb ends for the hoses, the rest of the system is threaded.  This means that we have to stagger what fittings get installed and when so there’s enough room to actually spin the pieces into place!

Since the valves are bronze, the connections are PVC, and the tank is poly it was hard to know how tight to make connections lest we crack one of the aforementioned things.  We decided that having a leak after putting the system into use would be awful. (I don’t want to work with sewage any more than I have to!)  Jason got the water hose and filled the tank with fresh water from the pump out connection on the deck and we let it sit for a few hours.  Unfortunately… we found some leaks and had to tighten some of the fittings up a little more! But still.. I’d rather find the leaks now than later!

While waiting to see if the water would make its way past the plumbing tape, Jason went out to the aft lazarette to remove the old refrigerator/freezer compressor unit.

Now we have an entire shelf available for the *2* new compressor units that will be running the fridge and freezer.  They’re air cooled instead of keel cooled for convenience and simplicity and since there will be one for each side, if we have a failure we can remove the fridge/freeze divider and just run with one.  I like redundancy and cold beverages!

Since we’ve essentially torn the entire boat apart at this point, it’s looking pretty trashed. There are old part, new parts, galley cabinets, and tools everywhere.  Time for a cleaning day!

I think it’s time to take some of this stuff to the storage shed!