Front well drainage - typically how does this work?

[Radiomariner]

Somebody mentioned "wet bilge "design. This is where well deck drains down into the bilge and runs down to the aft end to be removed by the bilge pump. There are small cut-outs in the corners of the steel frames allowing the flow of such water. These are prone to blockage (Wet leaves etc.) which can result in water in the bilge rising to deck level.( As the OP described). Some such boats even have the shower draining straight into the bilge!

If yours is such a boat beware of the possibility of the hull corroding from the inside.

[cuthound]

As Pearly has said, Reeves shells were not used by Ownerships until 2000. These had decks draining through the 2 metal tubes into the engine compartment as already described.

 

Most before that were built by Pat Buckle, and have conventional holes in the outer hull to drain the well deck. The last Ownerships boats were built in Poland.

 

I had a share initially in a Buckle boat and later in a Reeves boat.

 

However, there were a few boats purchased by Ownerships by other builders, including "Annabelle", " Vagabond" and "Copperkins 2". There may well be a few others. I am not sure what draining method these used or who built them.

Edited January 27, 2015 by cuthound

[Wombat]

Our joiner, who is presently stripping the rear cabin, tells me that it is the worst of the design options for front well deck drainage; ie. as described by Radiomariner but without any sort of constraint for water to the edge of the baseplate to starboard and port; no pipe, no tube, no channel, nothing. It gets in at the front and drains all the way back and is free to swill across the boat width, creating the perfect conditions for all sorts of timber rotting nightmares as it goes . If I'm lucky I might be finding corresponding triangular apertures at the bottom corners of the engine bulkhead to let it escape into the engine bay. Timbers in unventilated wet/damp places - that's a triple yuk!

I'm going to recommend to the other owners that we invest in a cratch cover - they've said they don't want one, I think I've found a very good way to encourage them to change their minds!

[Neil Smith]

Pat Buckle only fits out boats and buys his shells Andy Craft.

 

Neil

[Neil Smith]

Once you get all the floors out there might be enough room in the corner where the floor bearers are joined to the hull to get a plastic pipe down the length of the boat to the bilge pump, if not seal off the front bulkhead and put a scavenge type pump in the stern.

 

Neil

[Neil2]

Our joiner, who is presently stripping the rear cabin, tells me that it is the worst of the design options for front well deck drainage; ie. as described by Radiomariner but without any sort of constraint for water to the edge of the baseplate to starboard and port; no pipe, no tube, no channel, nothing. It gets in at the front and drains all the way back and is free to swill across the boat width, creating the perfect conditions for all sorts of timber rotting nightmares as it goes . If I'm lucky I might be finding corresponding triangular apertures at the bottom corners of the engine bulkhead to let it escape into the engine bay. Timbers in unventilated wet/damp places - that's a triple yuk!

 

I'm going to recommend to the other owners that we invest in a cratch cover - they've said they don't want one, I think I've found a very good way to encourage them to change their minds!

 

That's astonishing, given the boat was built in 1995. Did you have the boat surveyed prior to purchase?

[Guest]

That's astonishing, given the boat was built in 1995. Did you have the boat surveyed prior to purchase?

Why would you expect a surveyor to comment on something they cannot actually see without any dismantling?

 

It's their classic 'get out' clause.

[Cheshire cat]

Your joiner has probably already alerted you to the fact but Pat Buckle used chipboard for his floors. Not exactly water resistant.

 

The cheapest answer to your immediate problem is a cratch. You do need to stop feeding the rust.

Our Ownerships boat also had water under the floor one winter. It turned out that the autobilge had become disconnected and a combination of weeping stern tube and rainfall caused the bilge to fill until it topped the divider between the engine hole and the cabin. After pumping out the bilge I managed to remove another five gallons of water from under the floor using a sponge and bucket.

 

That was six years ago and we haven't had a wet baseplate since. Ours is a 1996 Pat Buckle boat without a cratch so I believe there is a box section for the water to run front to back and it is currently intact.

 

I would suggest you buy some fluorescent plumbers dye from screwfix and put it down any drain holes in the well deck and see where it turns up. That's what we did and we discovered we hadn't got any leaks in the channel. The bilge turned green but the underfloor didn't.

Edited to remove duplicate sentence

Edited January 27, 2015 by Cheshire cat

[Neil2]

Why would you expect a surveyor to comment on something they cannot actually see without any dismantling?

 

It's their classic 'get out' clause.

I'm not a surveyor but if I was buying a boat that had one of these deep well decks I would sure as hell find out where the water was going, I think that would be a reasonable expectation of someone calling themselves a professional.

[Scholar Gypsy]

Our boat was built in 1982 and has a deep hull. The front well deck is below the waterline, and we have a 15" deep water tank under that!! there is a large sump at the back of the front well, which is emptied by means of a large bilge pump.

 

One of the first things I did after we bought the boat was to build a deck board and have a cratch cover fitted. Seventeen years on I have only had to pump the sump out twice, and in both instances it was because of very leaky lock walls rather than rain.

 

The advantage is that we have an almost full height front cabin door, and we can stand up inside the well without bashing our heads on the top plank. There is always the potential for a minor flooding disater however, I prefer our present arrangement rather than the situation on modern boats, where you have to stoop almost doubled up to get through 4ft high front cabin door.

 

On the last point, another option is to have a hatch in the roof over the (4 foot high) front door. We added one some years ago - though it is quite heavy and needs a bit of care when opening and closing it. It is also important to remember to close it if it starts raining hard (don't ask).

[Wombat]

 

That's astonishing, given the boat was built in 1995. Did you have the boat surveyed prior to purchase?

Yep - me too in the astonishment department. I have no idea. We only bought our share last September. On behalf of the owners I think I'm the first to bottom out this problem (lol, forgive the pun ). Cratch coming soon (hoping!) as I think it is the only solution that has a chance of working. Live and learn. One thing is for sure - if I ever buy our own boat 100% I'll be looking for a step up from the front cabin and drain holes thro the sides of the bow! At least with this one the costs get shared 10 ways

[Grebe]

I agree with all that has been said above about underfloor drains and welldeck heights.

 

Can I just add that if you are having drain holes fitted to the front welldeck, have them made big enough to get a foot into it. It can then be used to aid 'man overboard' recovery.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Grebe

[Phil Ambrose]

Somebody mentioned "wet bilge "design. This is where well deck drains down into the bilge and runs down to the aft end to be removed by the bilge pump. There are small cut-outs in the corners of the steel frames allowing the flow of such water. These are prone to blockage (Wet leaves etc.) which can result in water in the bilge rising to deck level.( As the OP described). Some such boats even have the shower draining straight into the bilge!

If yours is such a boat beware of the possibility of the hull corroding from the inside.

Boats do rust from the inside, the boat moored behind me is one such boat. 2 or 3 times a week the bilge pump come on for a good 5 minutes, it has done this all the 4 1/2 years that I have been here, the hull is permanently rust stained despite being repainted twice in that time. The boat is a permanent moored, a true floating cottage and recently they had a lot of woodwork done and during the course of this the chippy ended up lifting dinner plate slabs of rust out from under the floor. The engine had to have a new starter because the 'ole filled up.

The owner insists " it's fine"

Phil

[Neil Smith]

I agree with all that has been said above about underfloor drains and welldeck heights.

 

Can I just add that if you are having drain holes fitted to the front welldeck, have them made big enough to get a foot into it. It can then be used to aid 'man overboard' recovery.

That would not be wise as he said the well deck was the same level as the cabin so you would need a snorkel and mask in there. LOL.

 

Neil

[NickF]

We hired a Liverpool boat a couple of years ago and that had the standard drain holes to drain the bow well deck.

 

[David Mack]

Can I just add that if you are having drain holes fitted to the front welldeck, have them made big enough to get a foot into it. It can then be used to aid 'man overboard' recovery.

 

But if you fell in, would you be able to get a foot into a drain hole above the water level, and then lift yourself out?

 

Somehow I doubt it. What you need for the man overboard situation is footholds below the water line.

[ChimneyChain]

Or walk to the side and climb out.

 

Darren

Edited January 29, 2015 by ChimneyChain

[BD3Bill]

Funnily enough the thought of how do you get out?, had crossed the minds of me and the lovely Jayne.

 

We bought a potholing ladder, long enough to reach the bottom of a lock.

 

Takes no space at all (rolled up) next to the back step.

 

Cheers Bill

[blackrose]

We hired a Liverpool boat a couple of years ago and that had the standard drain holes to drain the bow well deck.

 

My LB has the same. I have to agree with Alan on this. Some of the drainage designs mentioned in this thread sound overly complex and problematic. I think I'd rather just have no well deck and a solid bulkhead at the bow than have to live with wet bilges, tubes and rely on bilge pumps. Such boats are clearly not designed for tidal rivers where one may encounter waves breaking over the bow and the water has to drain fast.

 

Of course, modern canal boats are designed for accommodation and to some extent ease of access, but first and foremost they are boats and must be watertight. So I would much rather duck my head when using the bow doors than have a boat with inherent design flaws.

 

Also, on some boats with self-draining bow desks the drain holes are too small. Mine are the size of half a large grapefruit, whereas some I see are only the size of a golfball. I think the idea is that on rough water small holes won't let too much water in, but the problem is that they don'let water out fast enough and are too easily blocked. Assuming large drainholes are high enough above the waterline and the bow door threshold height is high enough above the deck to prevent ingress, then whatever water gets in from the occasional wave hitting it will simply flow out again.

Edited January 30, 2015 by blackrose

[Neil2]

My LB has the same. I have to agree with Alan on this. Some of the drainage designs mentioned in this thread sound overly complex and problematic. I think I'd rather just have no well deck and a solid bulkhead at the bow than have to live with wet bilges, tubes and rely on bilge pumps. Such boats are clearly not designed for tidal rivers where one may encounter waves breaking over the bow and the water has to drain fast.

 

Of course, modern canal boats are designed for accommodation and to some extent ease of access, but first and foremost they are boats and must be watertight. So I would much rather duck my head when using the bow doors than have a boat with inherent design flaws.

 

Also, on some boats with self-draining bow desks the drain holes are too small. Mine are the size of half a large grapefruit, whereas some I see are only the size of a golfball. I think the idea is that on rough water small holes won't let too much water in, but the problem is that they don'let water out fast enough and are too easily blocked. Assuming large drainholes are high enough above the waterline and the bow door threshold height is high enough above the deck to prevent ingress, then whatever water gets in from the occasional wave hitting it will simply flow out again.

There's another aspect to this, having a deep front well means that if it's a trad (ie the bow is likely to be the main access) it can be quite a climb to get in/out. We once hired a boat that had a deep well deck and I remember thinking what a pain it would be having to use it on a regular basis. That boat actually had three steps so quite a bit of deck space was taken up as well.

 

Where rough water's concerned, if there is any danger of waves breaking over the bow that's no place for any conventional narrowboat to be whatever front drainage arrangements it might have.

[SamKingfisher]

I have never seen a Liverpool shell with a wet cabin bilge (apart from plumbing leaks obvs). All the more recent ones seem to be pretty generic, maybe they mucked about more in 1995

[cuthound]

As far as I am aware, only the Ownerships boats with a Reeves shell used the "tube" method of well deck draining.

 

This is not to say no other builder used this method, but it is a complicated and expensive solution, hence not very common.

[Neil Smith]

Perhaps they asked Liverpool boats to build it that way to be the same layout as the reeves boats.

 

Neil

[cuthound]

Possibly. I was with Ownerships from 1992 until its demise in 2010 and was not aware that they ever commissioned a boat based on a LB hull.

 

If the OP would name the boat he has a share in I could probably name the builder.

 

Edited to change a "v" to a space.

Edited January 30, 2015 by cuthound

[mark99]

Useful tools to examine such matters are dyes to dye water to see where it goes and usb waterproof borescopes which are quite cheap now once married to a laptop.

Edited January 30, 2015 by mark99