Advice following a boat survey

[DShK]

2 hours ago, Gybe Ho said:

 

For the benefit of the OP, someone should mention there is a difference between the process of routine epoxy "blacking" and the much thicker application of epoxy to stabilize a sandblasted hull with minor pitting. Two to three times more paint layers should go on to get a thick flow into the pits.

You really are just making stuff up as you go aren't you?

[MtB]

28 minutes ago, DShK said:

You really are just making stuff up as you go aren't you?

 

I often wonder if he has been chased off Facebook, Instagram et al for all the crud he posts, and this is his last refuge on the internet. 

 

 

[Arthur Marshall]

8 hours ago, Gybe Ho said:

I agree old boats are over valued both GRP sailing yachts and narrowboats.

 

 

Not if the seller disagrees or requires 6 months to adjust to market reality, this where the market illiquidity kicks in.

 

Take the boat in this thread, the seller has spent £5k+ in the past year and believes external hull corrosion has been arrested for 5 years. The buyer has cause to believe things are not so rosy, the abbreviated survey creates uncertainty and a possible negotiation impasse. 

It's all very well wanting a thread that flags up experts, what we really need is a flag for posters who know absolutely nothing about narrowboats, don't own one,  appear to have never been close to one, and offer stupid advice from a position of total ignorance.

[Gybe Ho]

16 hours ago, DShK said:

You really are just making stuff up as you go aren't you?

 

You appear to claim otherwise, how many microns of epoxy would you recommend should be applied to a sandblasted hull at the end of a job to deal with pit corrosion?

[agg221]

To the OP (if you are still reading this thread),

 

The problem you inherently have is balancing budget against condition - I am making the assumption that you are looking at boats of this age because they sit within your budget. 20yrs ago, paint systems were generally a lot more basic. Epoxy (2-pack) painting of boats was a lot less common than it is now and conventional bitumen blacking needs doing very frequently (every couple of years) if you want to maintain decent coverage. This boat has clearly shown the normal type of degradation over the years and the current owners have cared enough to try and do something about it by painting with epoxy - this is good.

 

In theory, blasting followed by epoxy stops corrosion from getting worse. I can't quite tell from your comments but I take 'active corrosion' to mean that there are some parts of the boat where the coating has failed and there is now more corrosion happening. The important question will be how much and how deep (your surveyor should be able to comment on this). If the new pitting is still pretty limited in both area and depth then cleaning back well and re-coating should suffice for most of it.

 

The reason 2mm pit depth is important is that it is nearly impossible to get fully comprehensive insurance with a hull thickness measurement below 4mm, and the steel starts at 6mm, hence the 2mm maximum pit depth requirement. Welding up pits in mild steel is dull but easy on the sides, so it depends on how many there are at over 2mm depth as to how long it will take and how much it will cost (welders cost £100s per day, not £1000s, so it depends on how many days of work it will be). The bigger question for me would be whether the baseplate was epoxy coated at the same time and how deep the pits are in that - the baseplate is normally 10mm thick to start with so you can have pits up to 6mm deep, but it is often not painted from new and sometimes missed off blasting and epoxy coating as it is a pain to do. I would be asking the surveyor about this.

 

In my opinion it would be reasonable to ask the seller to cover the costs of welding repairs. This is because, with the boat having been epoxied, it is reasonable to expect that corrosion has not got worse, but in this case it has. It would also be reasonable to expect that all pits greater than 2mm deep on the sides, 4mm deep on the baseplate were welded up before epoxy painting as the 4mm hull thickness requirement has been around long enough that this should have been known at the time when it was first done. Note, it may not be the seller's fault but could be down to where the work was done, but it is still their problem to solve. This would mean pressure washing off, marking the pits, welding them up and then coating over them with at least a couple of coats of epoxy. There is another risk that this would address at the same time - in some cases the prep work may not have been done very well and the epoxy may fall off when pressure washed - you kind of want to know if this is going to happen!

 

However, another option which I am not particularly suggesting you do, but does suit some people in the right circumstances. Welding up pits is one of the easiest welding jobs there is as you don't need to create a seam, so as long as you don't turn the power up too high and burn through you are generally OK with pretty much a 'point and weld' approach, so long as the pits are deep and narrow. If you use a surface tolerant epoxy (e.g. Jotun Jotamastic 90) then you don't actually need to blast clean to bare steel as it will stick to residual rust if you go over it well first with a wire brush on an electric drill or an angle grinder. If you are in the right location, have a practical approach, some people who can show you what to do, and are time-rich and cash-poor, then it would be an option to get the boat pressure washed and surveyed properly, the price discounted by the appropriate amount based on what is found (based on a quote) and then do some or all of the work yourself. For reference, I didn't do the welding on ours (wrought iron is a lot more tricky than steel) but I did all the dressing off of welds, the surface preparation before painting and the family did the painting which took about 3hrs work per coat, using mini-rollers on a 38ft boat. We used about £280 of paint, rollers, brushes and gloves to do the whole thing with three coats. Not the right approach for most people, but it worked for us.

 

Alec

Edited November 2 by agg221

[Kynes]

3 minutes ago, agg221 said:

To the OP (if you are still reading this thread),

 

The problem you inherently have is balancing budget against condition - I am making the assumption that you are looking at boats of this age because they sit within your budget. 20yrs ago, paint systems were generally a lot more basic. Epoxy (2-pack) painting of boats was a lot less common than it is now and conventional bitumen blacking needs doing very frequently (every couple of years) if you want to maintain decent coverage. This boat has clearly shown the normal type of degradation over the years and the current owners have cared enough to try and do something about it by painting with epoxy - this is good.

 

In theory, blasting followed by epoxy stops corrosion from getting worse. I can't quite tell from your comments but I take 'active corrosion' to mean that there are some parts of the boat where the coating has failed and there is now more corrosion happening. The important question will be how much and how deep (your surveyor should be able to comment on this). If the new pitting is still pretty limited in both area and depth then cleaning back well and re-coating should suffice for most of it.

 

The reason 2mm pit depth is important is that it is nearly impossible to get fully comprehensive insurance with a hull thickness measurement below 4mm, and the steel starts at 6mm, hence the 2mm maximum pit depth requirement. Welding up pits in mild steel is dull but easy on the sides, so it depends on how many there are at over 2mm depth as to how long it will take and how much it will cost (welders cost £100s per day, not £1000s, so it depends on how many days of work it will be). The bigger question for me would be whether the baseplate was epoxy coated at the same time and how deep the pits are in that - the baseplate is normally 10mm thick to start with so you can have pits up to 4mm deep, but it is often not painted from new and sometimes missed off blasting and epoxy coating as it is a pain to do. I would be asking the surveyor about this.

 

In my opinion it would be reasonable to ask the seller to cover the costs of welding repairs. This is because, with the boat having been epoxied, it is reasonable to expect that corrosion has not got worse, but in this case it has. It would also be reasonable to expect that all pits greater than 2mm deep on the sides, 4mm deep on the baseplate were welded up before epoxy painting as the 4mm hull thickness requirement has been around long enough that this should have been known at the time when it was first done. Note, it may not be the seller's fault but could be down to where the work was done, but it is still their problem to solve. This would mean pressure washing off, marking the pits, welding them up and then coating over them with at least a couple of coats of epoxy. There is another risk that this would address at the same time - in some cases the prep work may not have been done very well and the epoxy may fall off when pressure washed - you kind of want to know if this is going to happen!

 

However, another option which I am not particularly suggesting you do, but does suit some people in the right circumstances. Welding up pits is one of the easiest welding jobs there is as you don't need to create a seam, so as long as you don't turn the power up too high and burn through you are generally OK with pretty much a 'point and weld' approach, so long as the pits are deep and narrow. If you use a surface tolerant epoxy (e.g. Jotun Jotamastic 90) then you don't actually need to blast clean to bare steel as it will stick to residual rust if you go over it well first with a wire brush on an electric drill or an angle grinder. If you are in the right location, have a practical approach, some people who can show you what to do, and are time-rich and cash-poor, then it would be an option to get the boat pressure washed and surveyed properly, the price discounted by the appropriate amount based on what is found (based on a quote) and then do some or all of the work yourself. For reference, I didn't do the welding on ours (wrought iron is a lot more tricky than steel) but I did all the dressing off of welds, the surface preparation before painting and the family did the painting which took about 3hrs work per coat, using mini-rollers on a 38ft boat. We used about £280 of paint, rollers, brushes and gloves to do the whole thing with three coats. Not the right approach for most people, but it worked for us.

 

Alec

I'm still here! Thank you so much for this detailed response. I've been reading everything that people have shared and I'm very grateful for the advice.

 

I'm currently talking with the seller, broker and surveyor and we're working on finding a resolution.

 

In response to one comment, I do really love the boat and I'm still keen for things to move forward.

 

I'm really hoping that the next time I start/contribute to a thread, I'll be on the water 😊

[agg221]

10 minutes ago, Kynes said:

I'm still here! Thank you so much for this detailed response. I've been reading everything that people have shared and I'm very grateful for the advice.

 

I'm currently talking with the seller, broker and surveyor and we're working on finding a resolution.

 

In response to one comment, I do really love the boat and I'm still keen for things to move forward.

 

I'm really hoping that the next time I start/contribute to a thread, I'll be on the water 😊

 

Hope it helps contribute to your deliberations!

 

People have different approaches to boats - some see issues such as weld repairs as reason to walk away and find another boat; others have a more emotional response to having found 'the right boat' and go ahead anyway, accepting the inconvenience. Neither is right or wrong - just depends what type of person you are.

 

I was also going to comment on the weed hatch height issue. That does seem to be coming up in surveys now due to a change in insurers' policy. We had it too, on a boat which was last surveyed five years ago  by a very reputable surveyor but has now been flagged as an issue. Fortunately for us, the whole of the counter is a watertight zone so it was accepted that we didn't have to do anything. If we did, I think I would be inclined to have the increased upstand welded to the outer edge of the current flange, and maybe taper it outwards if there was space. This would mean there was no grinding needed in-situ (less mess) and the weld bead would not interfere with the hatch so no grinding needed there either. It would make the top of the tunnel wider, so it was easier to get down it. A job like this can be done with the boat in the water by a mobile welder if needed so it certainly wouldn't put me off buying it.

 

Alec

Edited November 1 by agg221

[MrsM]

OP, when talking to your surveyor it might be worth asking for his opinion on what is actually causing the 'active corrosion', as there are a number of different potential causes - wear & tear, MIC etc. Good luck with your purchase. 

[Kynes]

28 minutes ago, MrsM said:

OP, when talking to your surveyor it might be worth asking for his opinion on what is actually causing the 'active corrosion', as there are a number of different potential causes - wear & tear, MIC etc. Good luck with your purchase. 

I will do! Thanks so much ☺️ 

[Mike Todd]

On 31/10/2024 at 20:36, Rod Stewart said:

I tend to agree. What is the point of spending hundreds of pounds having a boat lifted and another few hundred surveyed, if what is a relatively simple task of cleaning it off is omitted.

 

I sold a boat earlier in the year, which I had surveyed prior to sale. Mainly to satisfy myself that it had no problems, and was worth the money I was asking, but also to black it whilst it was out of the water. I cleaned it off before inspection.

 

The problem arises when clear instructions are not agreed up front, and who pays for putting the coating right once it's been cleaned off. If it's a bitumen based coating, then after jet washing, it will need to be re applied, but I would think, in this case, the boat being epoxied, no further action would be required. Obviously any epoxy removed in the inspection would have to be addressed.

 

It's not unreasonable for a potential buyer to want to present a clean hull to a visiting surveyor, in my opinion.

I suspect a legal minefield: if a potential buyer commissions a jet wash then they are liable for any damage caused. Some  paint us bound to come off in the process and it may be difficult to resolve any ensuing dispute. A survey should be non intrusive so as to avoid such claims. I do not know the protocol about drilling holes to determine hull thickness but fortunately NDT methods avoid that. A survey commissioned by the seller is rarely worth anything but neither is one for the buyer save for meeting required expectations. 

[agg221]

53 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I suspect a legal minefield: if a potential buyer commissions a jet wash then they are liable for any damage caused. Some  paint us bound to come off in the process and it may be difficult to resolve any ensuing dispute. A survey should be non intrusive so as to avoid such claims. I do not know the protocol about drilling holes to determine hull thickness but fortunately NDT methods avoid that. A survey commissioned by the seller is rarely worth anything but neither is one for the buyer save for meeting required expectations. 

It's always a tricky question this - in order to undertake a proper survey it is necessary to do some things which may result in damage, not because they are deliberately invasive but because they will expose issues which the vendor may prefer not to know about. I would argue that on a steel boat which has been painted with epoxy, pressure washing should not cause damage. It should only lift off any paint which is poorly adhered, which is a sign of poor preparation and needs to come off anyway, but the current owner may not see it that way! With bitumen blacking or an iron hull where a tapping hammer has to be used, damage is inevitable.

 

It's much easier when it is your own boat as you can plan for this. Oates had been painted with epoxy, which looked good. In preparation for the 5yr survey it was pressure washed and pretty much all the epoxy fell off, which was annoying as it meant the job was bigger than expected, but at least we knew and could address it. I then did the surface preparation with an angle-grinder mounted wire brush and re-painted with a surface tolerant epoxy primer (this means it will go over some rust and directly on to wet surfaces). It was left like this for the survey, after which my elder daughter had the fun job of going round spot-priming wherever the tapping hammer had been used to fill in the little rust marks - it looked like the whole hull had been subjected to a serious woodpecker attack!

 

Alec

 

p.s. for reference, the preparation (wash down, run the wire brush over and priming coat) took a weekend with two of us on it. The survey was on the 16th September, since which time there has been quite a bit of pit welding and we have put in four person-days of effort on the hull, plus some more time on my part to rectify the worn stern gear. We went back in the water last Tuesday. It could have been done in less total time if the welder had been available earlier.

[Tigerr]

If you love the boat, and you have a decent number of boats looked at before this - then basically this is just a price negotiation. 

Any boat of the age you are buying is going to reveal a whole load of expensove problems in the years ahead - that is what boat owning is. You deal with the problems as they arise and in a few years whatever you paid for it becomes an irrelevance. 

It has corrosion, and it will have lots more, it crops up all over the place as paint wears, weather gets in etc. 

In time you will become much more relaxed about it, and know how to fix it. 

Get as much as you can off the price, buy the boat and get out and enjoy it. Make sure you have enough money to cope with the costs, assume everything costs twice whet you think. 

[MtB]

47 minutes ago, Tigerr said:

If you love the boat, and you have a decent number of boats looked at before this - then basically this is just a price negotiation. 

Any boat of the age you are buying is going to reveal a whole load of expensove problems in the years ahead - that is what boat owning is. You deal with the problems as they arise and in a few years whatever you paid for it becomes an irrelevance. 

It has corrosion, and it will have lots more, it crops up all over the place as paint wears, weather gets in etc. 

In time you will become much more relaxed about it, and know how to fix it. 

Get as much as you can off the price, buy the boat and get out and enjoy it. Make sure you have enough money to cope with the costs, assume everything costs twice whet you think. 

 

Totally agree and this is the exact point I was trying to put across in the other thread where someone is obsessing about a survey report. 

 

If the OP really likes the boat, buy it! Then set about dealing with whatever problems it has, and there will be plenty the closer one looks.

 

All old boats have problems and there is no point in hoping that getting faults found on survey corrected by the seller insulates the buyer from a never-ending stream of future maintenance issues.

 

 

[LadyG]

Just to clarify the issue of height of the weed hatch (the actual height is a more recent issue)., but essentially the weed hatch cover will be held in place by a strong bar which is screwed down hard to ensure hull integrity. As long as no water comes in via the weed hatch the boat will not sink in normal usage.

If the weed hatch cover is removed and not replaced [dont try this], when the prop rotates water comes up through the weed hatch and may sink the boat. This would probably take longer if the height is 60mm compared  to 100mm, but who knows. One would not want the level of the canal water to be too close to the top of the weed hatch,  that must be the reason that surveyors are asking for higher weed hatches, it must relate to the depth of each boat relative to each weed hatch height.

 

The weed hatch is built in order to allow the weed and string, etc rubbish which has wound round the propshaft etc. to be removed by the boater.

The weed hatch and the cover have a watertight seal, so water should never come in to the boat by this route.

 

PS I always tap the screw down handle with a lump hammer, and so far, on my very few trips down the weed hatch it's needed the same to loosen it. 

Edited November 3 by LadyG

[Lily Rose]

56 minutes ago, LadyG said:

 

The weed hatch and the cover have a watertight seal, so water should never come in to the boat by this route.

 

A while back I discovered that I was able to significantly tighten up the weedhatch bar, presumably because the last time it was blacked it hadn't been sufficiently tightened and had subsequently worked itself even looser. I know it hadn't been accessed since that blacking as, in 9 years, I have been fortunate enough to never need to go down the weedhatch

 

Fortunately there was no sign of any water ingress.

 

Ever since then I make a point, each time I turn the nearby stern gland greaser, of checking that it still very tight. Which it always has been.

2 hours ago, Tigerr said:

Get as much as you can off the price, buy the boat and get out and enjoy it

 

I think that depends upon how much you really want that particular boat, how much reduction you think you might get and how much risk you think there is of someone else buying it.

 

When I bought my boat I knew I wanted that one and didn't think it was worth risking losing it for the sake of a relatively small saving so I offered the asking price.

 

I have never regretted it. The possible saving would have been trivial given the cost of running the boat over the last 9 years even though I have literally never had to B.O.A.T. If I had then the potential saving would have been even more trivial.

 

[Alan de Enfield]

The following illustration is from the BSS.

It ia mandatory for commercial boats, hire boats etc, but is 'best practice' and an advisory for Private leisure boats.

 

 

[MrsM]

7 hours ago, MtB said:

 

Totally agree and this is the exact point I was trying to put across in the other thread where someone is obsessing about a survey report. 

 

If the OP really likes the boat, buy it! Then set about dealing with whatever problems it has, and there will be plenty the closer one looks.

 

All old boats have problems and there is no point in hoping that getting faults found on survey corrected by the seller insulates the buyer from a never-ending stream of future maintenance issues.

 

 

While I do agree in principle, it is with a few caveats. People often look at things at the very top of their budget, be they houses, cars, boats etc. This is all well and good if you are going to have access to either funds or the skills needed to complete any necessary work. For example, we've always really stuck our necks out buying property, but are pretty experienced hands-on renovators/builders so are able to tackle most things ourselves. If we were dependent upon the services of others we would soon come unstuck. I think the same applies to boats. If you know what you are doing and are capable - as many of you are - then taking on a boat that will need work is not a problem. This might not be the same for newbie boat-buyers who might have limited practical skills or experience. They may seem to be overly concerned about details thrown up by surveyors but it is only wise to be so if you are going to have to buy in skills to put right any issues (or go through a massive and rapid learning curve). Also I believe it takes owning and running a boat to fully appreciate that they are always going to need ongoing work and maintenance - possibly more than most things given they are always outside, are generally built of a material that is designed to decay in contact with moisture and take more than a few knocks when moved about the system.

Edited November 3 by MrsM

[Francis Herne]

On 02/11/2024 at 08:48, Mike Todd said:

I suspect a legal minefield: if a potential buyer commissions a jet wash then they are liable for any damage caused. Some  paint us bound to come off in the process and it may be difficult to resolve any ensuing dispute. A survey should be non intrusive so as to avoid such claims. I do not know the protocol about drilling holes to determine hull thickness but fortunately NDT methods avoid that. A survey commissioned by the seller is rarely worth anything but neither is one for the buyer save for meeting required expectations. 

I've spent this afternoon on dock working on a friend's boat. The majority of damage to the hull has been caused by a survey.

 

The plating (not far off 40 years old) is mostly in very good condition with a few scattered ~1mm pits; blacking was well adhered, wasn't touched by the pressure washer and mostly stays on even with vigorous scraping.

Along each side, spaced regularly a few feet apart (but not related to any structure of the boat), are two rows of small square-ish patches of very heavy pitting. Any blacking on these patches had totally disappeared during pressure washing.

 

The only explanation is that a surveyor at some point since the last blacking (several years ago, known and priced in when buying the boat this year) has gone down to bare metal to make thickness measurements and not recoated those patches, or at least not to a standard anything like the rest of the hull.

Edited November 3 by Francis Herne