Jump to content

Alpha95

Member
  • Posts

    9
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Alpha95

  1. Haha indeed. When we bought this boat it had many strange discoveries inside it, and outside covered in domino's lol. Luckily it's all cleaned and empty now, though our trailer is now full of rubbish and the tip won't let us on with it
  2. Just for added info, here one of the smallest parts that was cut and welded with new steel. Our boat had rotted from water from the inside, not the outside. This is from work done back in March. Since then boat has a new top and exterior, along with roofing and windows. Getting ready for a fit out in the next week or 2.
  3. Hi Laura. Sorry to hear about your stresses. Having a bit of a rotten and holey boat myself (sorted now thankfully) all I can recommend from my experience is get it out of water as soon as you can and on hard standing if this is possible for you. I had a lot of my hull cut out and replaced. I was originally quoted £12000 to do the work by a marine company (or rip off merchants, not sure as I never called them back) but luckily found a marine welder that charged a day rate of £200 per day. For the completed job it comes to £1300 for his labour. I had steel on board already which I provided. Bare in mind the area I'm in is expensive so you may find cheaper, just don't be afraid to ask for references, insurance etc. There is a lot of cowboy welders around! May sound like a chore to find a good welder but if you are on any Boatyard with steel boats around then someone will bound to be able to recommend a welder, even the yard themselves! Really in my opinion I find the hull the scariest bit of boat maintenance and really the most difficult when it goes wrong. Another option is to get quoted on having the hull overplated, though a lot of people have mixed opinions on this and I do find it better myself to have sections cut out and replaced. Once the scary stuff is out the way and the hull treated you can have a good project doing bits yourself and chip away at the work. Don't be too put off and it sounds like a great boat. For now if you can't get it out of water, try and get some putty over the hole as a temporary fix, stop water getting in. Sounds funny but there is a guy we know of who springs a lot of leaks on his boat and by now I think half of it is just putty lol.
  4. Hi all. I posted here back in January with a rather big project. Didn't get started working on it until late March and have been chipping away at it between work. It did have 2 holes in the bottom, quite large actually. We've have these sections cut out and replaced, not just a bit of metal plopped over it. We are having final bits of welding done to it this week so we can get everything on the Hull ground down and painted. Anyway, for anyone that remembers it is in fact a wood top boat. Everything apart from the welding is self done (I got a marine welder in for below water line) and every bit of the top has been replaced. It has regular double glazed units (glass is there ready to be fitted and large front window with emergency Hatch arriving tomorrow) along with Upvc cladding on the exterior. To seal the wood top we have very thick liquid rubber between the Hull and the wood. The roof overhang will also help keep the nasty water away. Roof overhang you ask? Yes. But I will be putting on a rather wide rub rail along the edge. That will also protect the corner and keep everything damage proof and stop that roof catching on anything, not that this will really be leaving its residential mooring spot. Here's where it's at so far anyway, from how we got it to how it is now More pictures which are from today
  5. Cheers for the responses. I can't reply individually or I may be here all day. We have had a look into what's required and will be doing things by the book. As for sinking worse case is the first spot the residential yard has offered is when it's done we can be put into a mud berth, not very far to sink but I don't wish to find out exactly how far. We have access to someone who has been marine welding for nearly 25 years. I think the point was missed about testing the thickness for metal, we have someone to test this for us who is not doing a official survey. This is so we know what points are affected so we know where to carry out the repairs.. The costly official survey will be carried out after its done. I must apologise for grammar. I eagerly left school with not very good results to do a trade and spent too much time I'm my youth buying old cars to learn how to fix and building things ? . My girlfriend normally proof reads everything but I thought I'd get away with it on here.
  6. I'm not majorly concerned about the amount of work involved from a time point of view. We like building stuff and working on things, plus my brother is a builder and gas fitter, father does electrics and construction, I did much the same before I pushed mechanics into a full time thing. We have met some very talented trades people that can lend a hand and some very good welders. We much rather salvage an old boat than buy a new one, plus the price will still be lower even if that means putting some new steel on. Still pricey but could still be avoided. We get more satisfaction from building something and spending time on it than just buying something new and be done with it, we've never been that way inclined and with our motorcycle business that's pretty much how we are now. We've salvaged projects people have said will never see the road again. We like challenges and completely understand the work and time involved, maybe I came across like it was a 5 minute job? Not sure. Our only real concern is the hull itself, but only concerned at what amount of work has to be done to it before we can start constructing the rest of the boat. This is our first job. It's rotted from the inside out in 2 places where water has sat on bare metal. These will be replaced. Even then we bashed that section with a hammer and it wouldn't budge or fall through. We are going to assess exactly what needs doing to the hull hopefully by next week
  7. First off we have residential mooring sorted out already, so we aren't worried about that. Poor man's fiberglass is a use of canvas soaked in a outdoor and uv protection paint, this turns the canvas into a hard shell similar to fiberglass. A lot of the tear drop caravan guys use this method to build their campers though have seen it used on boats. Definitely wouldn't call it a bodge seeing as it's leak proof. Also we haven't had a survey done but we have a friend of ours with a metal thickness tester. We are going to do this once the bottom is welded up as even with over plating the bottom needs to be done first. The boat does have waste holes cut, we are going to start again with these as the don't suit our intended layout.
  8. Thanks for the reply. Yes your right it does look like 4mm. I did have the same thought about access and have a few ideas in mind to make this easy without it being noticeable that the floor can be lifted. We had the idea to use poor man's fiber glass curving over the edges where the wood is attached, try and stop water sitting in these areas and seeping through. We've had some good results with poor man's fiberglass in the past and epoxy fiberglass around the leaky windows and doors, we also want to fit roof hatches so this will have to be done also. It's a bit of a risk but manageable. This engine isn't as massive priority just yet as it will be put on a residential spot and I doubt we will really move it from there, but I am a motorcycle mechanic by trade and was previously a car mechanic so shouldn't be much issue to get it going if it's just been sitting for awhile. This is the reason why I want to get the hull done to top standard and treat the inside and outside so really I've only got to pull it out of water when it needs to be blacked and not have any major headaches.
  9. Hi. Myself and my girlfriend have just bought a cheap 30ft narrow boat to turn into a live aboard. Because of length this is more of a tiny home I suppose. We took a bit of a risk and paid £900 for it with 6 months storage free. Reason it was cheap is it was sold for the price of unpaid fees, but it does need a lot of work! Although we knew nothing about the previous owner we can see he had the intention at some point to finish it and put it on water. Its packed with new insulation boards, lots of timber, sealer, tools, sheets of steel, windows and pretty much everything else needed, even a shower unit and shower tray not fitted. Pretty much everything. The is a few issues with it but rust is a major one! The bottom steel has rusted from the inside out leaving some rust holes behind. Its kind of a v-shaped hull so instead of the bottom being totally flat it has a small dip. I will post pictures tomorrow as its a bit hard to explain but this is the affected area where water has been sitting. The rest of the steel seems okay and no sign of any pitting under the paint. It also has never been re-plated so this is another option I suppose, but personally I'd rather cut out problem areas and replace. I also know there is mixed opinions on both options. We will be carrying out all the work ourselves apart from the welding (I can weld but rather have an experienced marine welder do it all and we just do the cuts and prep) but this is also slightly different to usual narrow boats. The top half is wooden rather than steel that we have mostly seen, this is fine and makes things easier on our part though a little more up keep. One question I have is ballast. How do I calculate such a thing on a boat like this? We've looked at different types of ballast and feel the engineering blocks is probably the best and easiest method but how do we calculate how much weight we will need on board? Any suggestions will be great and we will keep this post updated with progress. We are hoping for around a 3-4k budget which sounds tight but seeing as we are carrying out the work ourselves this should be manageable. We just need the hull sorted and treated inside and out before the extras come into play. Thank you
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.