Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Foam


I sprayed foam in the engine room and aft storage room otherwise known as the Lazarette.

I'm spraying a closed cell polyurethane fire retardant foam in these areas. The main reason for the foam is to stop condensation. Once the metal sees a temperature difference on the inside vs the outside, the metal will begin to condensate. Foam will insulate the metal thus preventing it from seeing the "other" temperature that will cause the "sweating".

I had spent about a month working in the engine room getting it ready for foam. I first finished painting the engine room with alkyd enamel paint. This required a manual scuffing of the primed surface so the paint would adhere. After painting the room, I bolted firing strips to the steel framing as points to attach my finish wall and ceiling material. I had debated running conduit below the foam, and even went as far as buying flexible conduit and electrical boxes to do this job. My past mistakes have taught me to not get too far ahead of myself, so I decided to attach all my conduits, pipes, wires, etc.. on the finished wall/ceiling surfaces. This will make for a more cluttered look in the engine room, but everything will be where I can get my fingers on it for maintenance and future work.

Spraying the foam is not really a do it yourself project, but I decided to do it anyway. Foaming was not as hard a job as spraying my paint, but it did require me to move at a quick pace so the material would not set up in the tip of the gun. I had bought an extra dozen tips just in case, and I'm glad I did as the tips began to clog and needed frequent replacing. I wish I had gotten more yield out of the 600 board foot kit, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how far the material went.

The next step for the engine room is sound deadening the room. My plan for sound proofing is to attach 1" Rock Wool boards to the framing then cover the Rock Wool with a perforated aluminum panel. The idea is that the sound waves will go through the perforations on the aluminum panel then get absorbed by the rock wool. Once I get the bulk of the sound proofing in the engine room, I can lower my generator down into the room, then weld the access hole shut, and seal the engine room for the last time.