Missing flotation styrofoam

[Dguy]

How about spraying/pouring building/insulation foam into milk/orange juice jugs as to avoid a mess and compression issues.

[Chumpy36]

That seems like a good idea. Would air or the foam in the jugs provide more floatation?

Thanks

J

[Wyb2]

Empty jugs will provide the most floatation, anything you put in them will add weight, making them slightly less buoyant.

The difference between one lightweight object or another is pretty negligible though, water weights 62 lbs per cubic foot. What you care about is something that is relatively light and won’t absorb any significant amount of water. Styrofoam and empty jugs fit this description, but I think construction foam (great stuff) is open cell, and wouldn’t take long to get waterlogged if submerged. You can buy 2 part kits of floatation foam, that expands the same way great stuff does, but forms a closed cell foam resists absorbing water more like EPS styrofoam.

Great stuff in jugs probably would firm them up a bit and help prevent them getting crushed if that’s a concern for some reason. Probably worth testing to make sure the curing, off-gassing foam doesn’t try to dissolve the plastic jug.

[OverEasy]

Just an FYI on the use of ‘Great Stuff’ or similar one part spray foam materials.
The material needs to free vent from its exposed surfaces to expand and cure properly.
Found that out the hard way on a project several years ago.

Try it for yourself with filling a sandwich ziplock bag and sealing it.
Then spray an equal lump of foam in a pile in the open.
Wait a day or two ( more than enough time for open air curing) then slice the bagged foam open.
Now slice the open air foam pile open.
The sealed bagged foam will have a big bubble and not be fully cured.
The open air foam pile will be cured and have small bubbles.

The reaction of the material to make foam requires the volitates to freely expand and outgas.
Trap the volitates and it messes with the expansion and then tries to dissolve what foam may have formed.

[Starscream]

Do the empty jugs make a lot of noise? That would make me crazy. Thx!

Not at all. In the aft berth, they get kind of compressed into the bilge by the floor liner, and if anything they make that liner less creaky. In the side and front bilges, they're not really compressed, but well buried and if somehow they were ever loud enough to hear, you'd be having other more important problems on your hands.

The best ones to use are the rectangular windshield-washer fluid bottles. They don't crumple and crack/pop the way round water bottles do. You have to remember that they need to be firmly held in place; you can't just toss them in there. That may mean wedging them or tying them together or in place. In an emergency, they can't just float loose.


In any case, I believe that a well-maintained set of bilge pumps will likely be a much better option than foam / bottle flotation. One of the few major 26X incidents on record would have been avoided with a good set of bilge pumps. They will alert you to a problem before it gets to the point that the flotation system of the boat has to be tested.

Story here:
viewtopic.php?t=6199

[OverEasy]

Hi StarScream!

Yeah, that was a sad incident indeed.🫤
The addition of those openable low aft side vent portals and not making sure that they were closed before moving on the water was terrible. It was fortunate that there was no loss of life given the circumstances.

Yes, you bring up a good point about adding bilge pumps (and integral alarms) might have helped avert disaster.

We currently have 3 alarmed bilge pumps amidship and plan to add 2 more in the aft corners in the near future.

We also have an amidship an independent high water alarm should conditions ever exceed the capability of the bilge pumps to mitigate the problem.

While we agree and like the idea of a less creaky aft berth floor not keen on the potential aspect of having any substantial amount of floatation situated that low in the hull. I’ve seen multiple big powerboats with a substantial amount of their floatation set low in the hull float inverted when capsized. An inverted hull bottom is a very difficult item to climb aboard during a capsize event. There is also the aspect of getting trapped within the inverted cabin area.

We’d much rather contend with an upright hull condition and the cockpit awash than being inverted should the situation ever occur .

Your boat, your rules.

Best Regards
Over Easy

[Chumpy36]

I like the idea of alarmed bilge pumps. I assume they are automagic?

What do you guys suggest?

J

[OverEasy]

Hi!

This is the current Sea Dog version of an alarmed bilge pump switch




(We have the predecessor version with the simpler selector rocker switch and just the indicator lights without an audible.)
We also have the version with the circuit breaker instead of fuses.
MUCH MORE RELIABLE!!!👍👍
The last thing we need in a crisis is fumbling around looking for and replacing fuses!!!🙄🫣

Here is a picture of our set-up:


The three switches to the left are for the already amidship installed Port/Center/Starboard bilge pumps.
The two switches to the right are for the future installation of bilge pumps in the Port &Starboard stern corners.
(Hopefully this winter…🙄)

Below the two TBD switches is our separate backstop high water audible & visual alarm.
This is a photo of what we used for an independent bilge high water alarm panel piece.

(NOTE: We are swapping out the fuse on this for a circuit breaker this winter…we just didn’t have time/part when we were installing previously)
In the main center bilge amidship there is a standard float switch mounted on a riser block to elevate the switch.
This is a “just in case” feature we added. Pumps are electro-mechanical in nature and there is always some minuscule device failure or overwhelm potential. This provides us with an audible indication in addition to the visual light alarms on the switches.

It works for us.

Best Regards,
Over Easy 😎😎🐩🐈

[Chumpy36]

Thanks!

[LakeMac26C]

I like circuit breakers alot too. Replaced my corroded fusebox with CBs. Only problem was finding CBs low enough to handle the light duty circuits (like 5A, 3A, or less). The CBs the panel came with were all over 20A which might be fine for a bilge pump, but not good for lights, etc. I was able to find direct fit replacement 2A CBs that were water resistant after some searching. Chinese quality so who knows?

[Chumpy36]

Got a link?

[LakeMac26C]

I think this is the switch/breaker panel I bought awhile ago. The one I bought was wired wrong such that there was no breaker protection for the whole panel, only individual switches if that makes sense. A simple pigtail from the battery to a "control" circuit breaker and THEN onto the rest of the panel fixed that. Hopefully they improved that by now.
https://www.amazon.com/WATERWICH-Waterp ... 43&sr=8-52
Individual breakers can be bought on Amazon or eBay for the cheapie Chinese stuff.

[Starscream]

Hi StarScream!

...

We’d much rather contend with an upright hull condition and the cockpit awash than being inverted should the situation ever occur .

Your boat, your rules.

Best Regards
Over Easy

Hey OE!

Yeah, I thought long and hard about the high c.o.g. flotation issue. Twelve 1-gallon jugs in the bilge adds about 100 lbs of flotation. If that's what causes the swamped boat to flip, then so be it, the consequences are my fault. Very few boats have real positive flotation anyway, and I got into this boating thing before we had the Mac, with a sinkable boat that I knew would head to the bottom. I've accepted the boating risk, and the fact that my X may not have real positive flotation anymore, after all the gear we have added and loaded with a family of 6 on board.

For us, the positive flotation of the Mac is a bonus (if it really exists in the first place), not a requirement to be out on the water. I assume the boat is totally sinkable, as any other boat is, and act accordingly. As far as I know, no Mac has ever been holed by surface debris in a way that causes a swamping.

I prefer to rely on the bilge pumps TBH. Mine arent' alarmed, but it's certainly a good idea to add that feature and I may do so in the future. In the middle of a lively sail it would still be possible to miss the 20 ft fire-hose jets coming out of both sides of my boat; I've missed more obvious things in the past. Anyway, one of the jets could be submerged and invisible while the other is high and dry, on a good heel.

[OverEasy]

Hi StarScream

You bring up a really good point.
You’re right that a100 lbs of low COG buoyancy isn’t gonna be the sole contributor to an inverted Mac.
Especially if there’s lots of other stuff competing with it…

And you do bring up an excellent aspect of bilge alarms.
The heeled (low) side is the side that’s probably going to have the bilge pump operational in an adverse situation.
And yes it might very well be missed (at least on ours) when heeled over.

This is especially true on Over Easy as our discharges are amidships above the chine on both respective sides.
It was part of our evaluation process when setting up our system the way we did with the alarms.
It also was an additional factor in adding the separate high water bilge switch alarm sub-system.

(We’re going to move forward with our idea of adding the additional foam flotation in the upper side pockets on each side of the aft berth area. We’ll also look at adding a fitted (removable) piece up in the bow section into that virtually unreachable triangle area.
It’s not a big or difficult set of areas to add flotation to and it’s generally sorta useless space to us anyway.)

You’re also right that nothing is unsinkable … and as you point out that when we add features to our boats there are always weight penalties to contend with. I’m laughing a bit as I’ve been playing around with where to add what to keep Over Easy on an even keel as right now we have a slight list to port given the dual batteries, A/C and galley are all on that side. Whatever static load we add in the future it’s gonna have to go on the starboard side .

Your boat, Your rules.

Best Regards,
Over Easy

[Starscream]

For the odd shaped compartments I thought about using inflatable bladders instead of Styrofoam or bottles or ball-pit balls. The idea was that they would better take the shape of the compartment and offer the maximum flotation.

I actually bought a couple for trial. The best bang for the buck bladder are the ones used for weighting pool tarps over the winter. Search for "pool tarp water bag" on Amazon and you'll find them. I didn't buy them from Amazon tho, I bought them from a pool supply house where I had a better feeling about product quality.

Never installed them, though, went with the bottles instead. Maybe I will give them another think. How to inflate was the big issue, and although I was concerned about durability they seem fairly robust.

OE if you want to add flotation to the aft cabin sides, maybe consider these water bags. If you could find a way to inflate them in place, they'll stay put and offer a lot of flotation.

Even our inflatable camp mattresses that we have under the 4"foam mattresses that I made a couple of years ago could add flotation, assuming they stay inside the berth area and don't find their way out into the main cabin.

It's all theoretical, at this point, and anything is better than nothing.