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Early leak warning??


steve_gts

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Hi All,

 

Was chatting to someone at the weekend who recently found that he'd had a tiny leak in the boat (still not sure if was from the water system or from outside). But when he took the floor up to do something else, found a thick layer of rust all over the base plate, it was about half inch of rusty bits, so pretty serious corrosion, albeit on a very old boat. But it must have been slowly leaking and causing the corrosion for years unnoticed.

 

Anyway, it got me thinking about having an early warning system, so after asiking Google, I found these: http://www.envirotechalarms.com/water-leak-detection-kits/

 

It says they are 240v, but I caan ask them if they do or can adapt it to run on 12v. But I was wondering if anyone has anything like this?

 

I'm thinking...... it would identify a leak in various key places under the floor and just set a flashing light or buzzer off if it happened, it seems like a no brainer, but why haven't I heard of anyone doing this already? :-/

 

Cheers,

Steve

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Any water should find its way to the back of the boat so you only have one place to check, so make an access panel and simply check this place often.

I check every morning! but we do get a bit of condensation in winter which I mop out.

The daily check has proved good as I have found a few leaks before they had a chance to get serious.

 

................Dave

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Ah yeah, good point about the condensation, his is an old boat, so probably not as well insulated as mine and I guess years of that dripping down could have caused it. He was pretty worried that it might have been a leak in the hull somewhere (as you can imagine).

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It's possible to work out how much steel you (or your chattee) have lost by weighing a sample of rust and measuring the area involved.

 

See earlier thread here http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=73277&hl=

 

but if my sums are right 1.2g of (dried) rust per square cm is equivalent to 1mm of steel. If I have got that wrong by a factor of ten then my boat would have sunk by now...

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There are loads of battery powered cheap detectors on Amazon (search water/leak alarm). Most have a small alarm/battery box and a remote sensor that you can put in the bilge, or under your water pump. I replaced the battery in mine with a cheap conversion to run it from the boat 12v. (Maplins sell "fixed voltage regulators" for pence that do the job,)

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I've just bought a couple of these:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120978451504?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l264

 

one to sense under the floor and the other to go in the tray under the water pump.

 

I've not installed them yet, but I did a quick test and they work well, and use basically no power when not alarming. The same seller has a version with a flashing light, if you prefer.

 

MP.

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Rust takes up about six times the volume of the steel consumed, more if it is wet and flaky so things always look worse than they are. So half an inch of rust equates to 2mm or less of thinning.

the way you wrote that suggests that you think an average loss of 2mm is insignificant ohmy.png

Edited by Murflynn
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You must have replied within seconds of my post. Why not reflect for a few moments and you will see that I did not say that? I've seen figures that say the ratio is 10:1. I'm trying to reassure the OP that things might not be as bad as he thinks. He can get some NDT testing done to see what the plate thickness is. Did you pay for the five minute argument or the longer one? tongue.png

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You must have replied within seconds of my post. Why not reflect for a few moments and you will see that I did not say that? I've seen figures that say the ratio is 10:1. I'm trying to reassure the OP that things might not be as bad as he thinks. He can get some NDT testing done to see what the plate thickness is. Did you pay for the five minute argument or the longer one? tongue.png

as I said, you seem to be suggesting that an AVERAGE loss of metal of 2mm is not significant.

 

that probably means that in vulnerable locations there could be a loss of up to 50% of the plate thickness.

 

 

................................... I don't see your point.

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