Boat Pitting found. Need Epoxy Painting? Already blacked. Cost etc needed.

[blissbee]

hello, i am selling a boat and the survey is back and the buyers are saying that it will need to be sand/ grit blasted and epoxy painted as she is pitted and more than expected for a boat of 2.5 years old. What causes pitting? What is the best option to remedy it, ensure the boat doesn't deteriorate rapidly? And is epoxy the same thing as 2pack?

It has just recently been cleaned, scraped and blacked with 2 coats of bitumen. she's a 45 ft widebeam. Can you tell me also i) a rough cost for sand/ grit blasting? ii) a rough cost for epoxy 2 pack? i am trying to get a sense of what work is needed and what I can allow for when we re-negotiate the price.

Thank you!

[BEngo]

hello, i am selling a boat and the survey is back and the buyers are saying that it will need to be sand/ grit blasted and epoxy painted as she is pitted and more than expected for a boat of 2.5 years old. What causes pitting? What is the best option to remedy it, ensure the boat doesn't deteriorate rapidly? And is epoxy the same thing as 2pack?

 

It has just recently been cleaned, scraped and blacked with 2 coats of bitumen. she's a 45 ft widebeam. Can you tell me also i) a rough cost for sand/ grit blasting? ii) a rough cost for epoxy 2 pack? i am trying to get a sense of what work is needed and what I can allow for when we re-negotiate the price.

 

Thank you!

Epoxy is a 2 pack- there are other 2-packs such as polyurethane.

 

Pitting is caused by a myriad things ranging from steel quality, through land-line and 12 V electrical installations to water quality. It only happens if the paint coating has failed.

 

Lift out, grit blast, week on the bank, put back c£2k.

 

Dacrylate Epidac 2 c£70/5l

 

15l (just) does a 60ft narrow boat including the bottom so you won't need more than 20l and might get away with 15.

 

Allow extra for protecting the upper part of the boat, sealing the windows, doors and vents, throwaway gloves, rollers, brushes etc. Allow even more if it's not a DIY application- about £1k with paint.

 

As a boat yard job entirely I reckon it would be about £4k.

 

 

I rather think they are trying it on if the boat has recently been blacked. It shouldn't need doing again, pitting or no for at least 2 years if the recent job was done well.

 

N

[Timleech]

 

 

I rather think they are trying it on if the boat has recently been blacked. It shouldn't need doing again, pitting or no for at least 2 years if the recent job was done well.

 

N

 

Quite likely a surveyor trying to earn his fee by getting the purchase price down.

 

Tim

[peterboat]

Hi, Did he inspect it before the blacking ? or after if so did he have x ray specs? When mt widebeam was lifted out at about the same age I to had pitting but I suspect it was more to do with mill scale than any thing else after power washing and cormastic you would have never known about any pitting I will see how effective it has been when it comes out in July Hope it all goes well

 

Peter

[matty40s]

The buyers WANT it to be sandblasted and epoxyied - at your expense.

The surveyor MAY have recommended thsi treatment, however, he/she, will NOT have said it was ultimately necessary for the purchase of the boat.

 

I would be amazed if the pitting on a 2 1/2 year old boat was that deep that your good clean down and full blacking would not stop any further pitting if regular maintenance and electrical protection was observed.

Perhaps make a small contribution if they are insistent, or sell elsewhere.

 

 

The only caveat to this is if you have seen the survey report and it is catasrophically bad, then you need to be going back to the hull manufacturers pronto.

[Timleech]

The buyers WANT it to be sandblasted and epoxyied - at your expense.

The surveyor MAY have recommended thsi treatment, however, he/she, will NOT have said it was ultimately necessary for the purchase of the boat.

 

I would be amazed if the pitting on a 2 1/2 year old boat was that deep that your good clean down and full blacking would not stop any further pitting if regular maintenance and electrical protection was observed.

Perhaps make a small contribution if they are insistent, or sell elsewhere.

 

 

The only caveat to this is if you have seen the survey report and it is catasrophically bad, then you need to be going back to the hull manufacturers pronto.

 

A lot of new boats are sold with a quick coat of blacking over the millscale.

These boats will not hold their blacking well until all the millscale has come off, and in the meantime there will tend to be pitting of the bits where the millscale has come off.

 

A very effective way to deal with this is to get the hull grit blasted, and if you're going to that expense you might as well slap on some 2-pack.

So, if this boat is in that category then the surveyor may be giving sensible advice. Whether the hull needs to be grit blasted is another matter, though.

 

Tim

[blissbee]

Quite likely a surveyor trying to earn his fee by getting the purchase price down.

 

Tim

I tend to concur Tim, thank you

 

Epoxy is a 2 pack- there are other 2-packs such as polyurethane.

 

Pitting is caused by a myriad things ranging from steel quality, through land-line and 12 V electrical installations to water quality. It only happens if the paint coating has failed.

 

Lift out, grit blast, week on the bank, put back c£2k.

 

Dacrylate Epidac 2 c£70/5l

 

15l (just) does a 60ft narrow boat including the bottom so you won't need more than 20l and might get away with 15.

 

Allow extra for protecting the upper part of the boat, sealing the windows, doors and vents, throwaway gloves, rollers, brushes etc. Allow even more if it's not a DIY application- about £1k with paint.

 

As a boat yard job entirely I reckon it would be about £4k.

 

 

I rather think they are trying it on if the boat has recently been blacked. It shouldn't need doing again, pitting or no for at least 2 years if the recent job was done well.

 

 

Epoxy is a 2 pack- there are other 2-packs such as polyurethane.

 

Pitting is caused by a myriad things ranging from steel quality, through land-line and 12 V electrical installations to water quality. It only happens if the paint coating has failed.

 

Lift out, grit blast, week on the bank, put back c£2k.

 

Dacrylate Epidac 2 c£70/5l

 

15l (just) does a 60ft narrow boat including the bottom so you won't need more than 20l and might get away with 15.

 

Allow extra for protecting the upper part of the boat, sealing the windows, doors and vents, throwaway gloves, rollers, brushes etc. Allow even more if it's not a DIY application- about £1k with paint.

 

As a boat yard job entirely I reckon it would be about £4k.

 

 

I rather think they are trying it on if the boat has recently been blacked. It shouldn't need doing again, pitting or no for at least 2 years if the recent job was done well.

 

N

Thank you for a thorough reply. That's really helpful. Yes I think they are trying it on. The boat was surveyed and then blacked by them, 2 coats. Unfortunately, I was not able to be with the surveyor as he surveyed. I asked for a copy of the surveyor's report when they mentioned 'pitting' as they were not clear as to 'the extent' and he does not appear to be saying it is 'catastrophic' He does give 2 years as a figure for the next lifting. I feel this comes under general boat maintenance and it will be subjective as to what a person chooses to do and how often they choose to life and what they choose to paint with. The buyer has been saying that they would want the boat to be lifted as soon as and this done and that it may need over-plating! It's nuts. I think I need to start showing other people the boat!

 

Hi, Did he inspect it before the blacking ? or after if so did he have x ray specs? When mt widebeam was lifted out at about the same age I to had pitting but I suspect it was more to do with mill scale than any thing else after power washing and cormastic you would have never known about any pitting I will see how effective it has been when it comes out in July Hope it all goes well

 

Peter

Yes, he did. No, no x ray specs. A gadget though (I will look at the survey to find the name) Took various readings. I have got the chart. Thanks for your help. I need to find out more about this 'mill scale.' Thank you. Things are looking up, fingers crossed.

 

The buyers WANT it to be sandblasted and epoxyied - at your expense.

The surveyor MAY have recommended thsi treatment, however, he/she, will NOT have said it was ultimately necessary for the purchase of the boat.

 

I would be amazed if the pitting on a 2 1/2 year old boat was that deep that your good clean down and full blacking would not stop any further pitting if regular maintenance and electrical protection was observed.

Perhaps make a small contribution if they are insistent, or sell elsewhere.

 

 

The only caveat to this is if you have seen the survey report and it is catasrophically bad, then you need to be going back to the hull manufacturers pronto.

Thank you, this is so helpful. They made a revised offer and this, they said, included the cost for sandblasting and epoxy painting which I am now, also, finding was severely inflated. Not sure where that estimate came from. I rejected this offer. It is likely that they will get back to me with a 2nd revised offer and that the cost of sandblasting / epoxy painting will factor into that. They may be wanting me to pay half, I don't know, it would be a re-negotiation. They have been saying that they would want to do this as soon as, which I had always thought untenable. You are right, the surveyor does not say 'do it now', he suggests 'in two years.' I have the copy of the survey to study (lucky me!). No the survey is not catastrophically bad, it's hard to gauge what the truth is, it seem written from a slant of 'risk' all the way through. Surprised they didn't include my cats as a risk too! I agree.

 

A lot of new boats are sold with a quick coat of blacking over the millscale.

These boats will not hold their blacking well until all the millscale has come off, and in the meantime there will tend to be pitting of the bits where the millscale has come off.

 

A very effective way to deal with this is to get the hull grit blasted, and if you're going to that expense you might as well slap on some 2-pack.

So, if this boat is in that category then the surveyor may be giving sensible advice. Whether the hull needs to be grit blasted is another matter, though.

 

Tim

Thanks Tim. I need to find out more about 'mill scale.' Would the millscale not have come off when the boat was pressure washed and blacked, just a week ago? How would I know if the hull needs to be grit-blasted? Thank you again.

[BEngo]

I tend to concur Tim, thank you

 

 

 

 

<SNIP>

 

 

Thanks Tim. I need to find out more about 'mill scale.' Would the millscale not have come off when the boat was pressure washed and blacked, just a week ago? How would I know if the hull needs to be grit-blasted? Thank you again.

Mill scale is the blue-black surface coating on a new sheet of steel. It is some form of iron oxide (Fe304????) and forms as the red hot plate surface meets the air at the rolling machine. It is not waterproof but sticks quite well to the steel, and an ordinary pressure washer won't shift it, until water gets to the steel underneath and starts to rust that. Rust is bigger than the equivalent steel so the expansion pushes the mill scale off.

 

If this happens in lots of very small areas the steel underneath is corroded away at those places only and that is (one way to get) pitting. Top-end new boat builders tend to build with blasted and primed plate or pickled and primed plate. Both have had the mill-scale removed before the builder sees the steel.

 

 

The hull only 'needs' to be grit blasted if there is substantial build-up of rust- at least 1 mm IMHO or if you want to get the mill scale off. A typical reason for wanting the mill scale off is to put on a paint that doesn't stick to mill scale. Grit blasting is not always a very effective method of dealing with pits as it can tend to close the top of a pit over the corrosion cell if the wrong media is used.

 

For shifting rust there are alternatives to grit blast- very high pressure water blast(40,000psi and up), abrasive discs, needle guns, wire brush in descending order of effectiveness.

 

From your view point the best thing might be to decide how much you trust the surveyor (remember that he was not working for you but for the potential buyers and he does have a huge bill every year from his Professional Indemnity insurers which he does not want to see increase) and then believe his advice to blast in 2 years, or not, as the case may be.

 

From my POV, and I've not even seen the boat, I would have the boat out in two years, pressure wash it, and see what has happened. The pits cannot be seriously deep (or the survey would surely have recommended action NOW) and the pressure wash should have cleaned them out well so its a pound to a pinch of cr@p that at next lift there will be other areas of pitting but the first lot won't have gotten any worse. In which case black and repeat. If there is a problem then blast and epoxy.

 

 

 

 

N

[madcat]

Reading this and the other CE thread I think your buyer looks difficult ,maybe you should look hope for a less nit picky buyer. Not a helpfull post I admit.

[Paul C]

The boat was blacked at the same time as the hull survey? Was this paid for by you, or someone else (the prospective buyer)? How long did they leave it out the water for the paint to dry?

[wandering snail]

Mill scale is the blue-black surface coating on a new sheet of steel. It is some form of iron oxide (Fe304????) and forms as the red hot plate surface meets the air at the rolling machine. It is not waterproof but sticks quite well to the steel, and an ordinary pressure washer won't shift it, until water gets to the steel underneath and starts to rust that. Rust is bigger than the equivalent steel so the expansion pushes the mill scale off.

 

If this happens in lots of very small areas the steel underneath is corroded away at those places only and that is (one way to get) pitting. Top-end new boat builders tend to build with blasted and primed plate or pickled and primed plate. Both have had the mill-scale removed before the builder sees the steel.

 

 

The hull only 'needs' to be grit blasted if there is substantial build-up of rust- at least 1 mm IMHO or if you want to get the mill scale off. A typical reason for wanting the mill scale off is to put on a paint that doesn't stick to mill scale. Grit blasting is not always a very effective method of dealing with pits as it can tend to close the top of a pit over the corrosion cell if the wrong media is used.

 

For shifting rust there are alternatives to grit blast- very high pressure water blast(40,000psi and up), abrasive discs, needle guns, wire brush in descending order of effectiveness.

 

From your view point the best thing might be to decide how much you trust the surveyor (remember that he was not working for you but for the potential buyers and he does have a huge bill every year from his Professional Indemnity insurers which he does not want to see increase) and then believe his advice to blast in 2 years, or not, as the case may be.

 

From my POV, and I've not even seen the boat, I would have the boat out in two years, pressure wash it, and see what has happened. The pits cannot be seriously deep (or the survey would surely have recommended action NOW) and the pressure wash should have cleaned them out well so its a pound to a pinch of cr@p that at next lift there will be other areas of pitting but the first lot won't have gotten any worse. In which case black and repeat. If there is a problem then blast and epoxy.

 

 

 

 

N

Could the pitting still be possibly caused by millscale if its silver under the rust?

[MtB]

Could the pitting still be possibly caused by millscale if its silver under the rust?

 

I'm not expert but I'd say this is severe electrolytic corrosion. Is your boat plugged into a shoreline?

 

And getting back to the OP, I agree with Madcat. You have a picky buyer out for all they can squeeze from you. If you are confident your price is fair and reasonable, there are plenty of buyers out there who will buy a 3 year old boat without bothering with a survey.#

 

In addition, I'd say protection from hull corrosion is a very imprecise science. The rust you have is probably typical of a boat that age and just part of the normal aging process for a steel boat. If future owners continue to just lift and apply cheap and cheerful blacking every two or three years, it will probably be another 20 years before it needs overplating. As the survey points out, nothing needs doing for two years anyway which is a normal maintenance interval. I bet this surveyor makes much the same recommendation on every boat he surveys. I'm not sure I've ever seen a hull with NO pitting.

 

MtB

[Alan de Enfield]

There may have been some confusion caused by "Wandering Snail" and the resurection of an April 2013 thread.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Alan de Enfield

[David Schweizer]

I know a surveyor who has a reputaion for this sort of recommendation, and he even suggests someone who will do the job!!

 

Have you seen the survey? does it actually say how deep the pitting is, or is it just a general observation? Pitting that cannot be measured is not serious enough to warrant anything more than standard blacking every couple of years, and if the boat has just been blacked there is no immediate rush, I would decline doing the work and let the buyers make their own decision.

Edited October 4, 2014 by David Schweizer

[wandering snail]

Clutching at straws here as we've just had Snail lifted out and there's what seems to us to be loads of pitting all along her sides and bottom that we are sure wasn't there, or at least not as extensive, at the last lift out in 2011. We are on a shoreline over winter but have a GI that we've had tested now and it is working ok. We are now back in the water looking for a 12v leak somewhere and feeling very worried. Apologies for hi-jacking this old thread!

Edited October 4, 2014 by wandering snail

[MtB]

Clutching at straws here as we've just had Snail lifted out and there's what seems to us to be loads of pitting all along her sides and bottom that we are sure wasn't there, or at least not as extensive, at the last lift out in 2011. We are on a shoreline over winter but have a GI that we've had tested now and it is working ok. We are now back in the water looking for a 12v leak somewhere and feeling very worried.

 

 

Well frankly, the corrosion evidence seems to suggest that it isn't working ok! But there may be other reasons.

 

I think starting a new thread asking about causes of the shiny silver finish underneath rust. You seem to have caught it in time though, but now would be an excellent time to do the research and decide on a course of action. Have a search on here, it's been discussed before. Maybe use Google rather than the crappy CWF search engine. Google still returns results from here.

 

 

MtB

[wandering snail]

Mike - Doing as you advised, have now discovered that Doorman had exactly the same corrosion as us, looking at his photos, back in a thread from 2011. Have messaged him as to the outcome as frustratingly that wasn't on the thread!

[Sabcat]

 

Have you seen the survey? does it actually say how deep the pitting is, or is it just a general observation? Pitting that cannot be measured is not serious enough to warrant anything more than standard blacking every couple of years, and if the boat has just been blacked there is no immediate rush, I would decline doing the work and let the buyers make their own decision.

 

This.

 

What's the actual state of the hull - original thickness and the depth of the pitting?

[Alan de Enfield]

This is a April 2013 thread that has, for some reason, been resurected.

[MtB]

This is a April 2013 thread that has, for some reason, been resurected.

 

Dammit you're right, we're wasting our time offering advice to the OP!

 

MtB

[David Schweizer]

This is a April 2013 thread that has, for some reason, been resurected.

 

well done that man, i missed that.

[Sabcat]

Lolz. I suppose though the extra posts have contributed a bit to the thread for someone who finds it from a google search about pitting. That's how I found this place, searching for info about paint - There's shed loads of info on here about paint, so much so that I've never posted about paint.

[Peter-Bullfinch]

Our Bullfinch is a 1986 Colecraft boat with 7mm sides and 10mm base. It has been blacked every two years or so since new. It's never been on a landline but the first 16 years moored against piling canal side and the next 12 years has been in a marina over winter.

We had a hull survey this week for my own peace of mind. We found a very very small number of pits and the worst was almost 2mm deep. The survey gave the vast majority of readings between 6 and 7 mm.

The blacking regime has been a thorough high power pressure wash. This is followed by hours spent with wire brushes on angle grinders. Then we try get a minimum of four coats with 48 hours to cure before going back in the water.

This year we have used Comastic and I shall be intrigued to see how it stands up to the many miles we travel each season compared to Rylards. Most of the Rylards is missing after pressure washing when we have had our biannual lift out. It has however protected the hull in a reasonable way.

This is a lot of effort and hard work. We were probably lucky Colecraft used good steel originally. I wonder if the fact the boat hasn't been on a landline has helped?

[Boat&Bikes]

The survey on our boat.6 years old, had recorded pitting of 0 .2mm . Obviously not very deep and I wonder is new steel completely flat with no pitting at all.

 

Ian.

[Phil Ambrose]

The survey on our boat.6 years old, had recorded pitting of 0 .2mm . Obviously not very deep and I wonder is new steel completely flat with no pitting at all.

 

Ian.

Quality of the surface finish depends on the type of steel used, Hot Rolled will have a scaled finish (known as mill scale)

Cold Rolled will have a scale free surface (usually a bright finish)

Phil