Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Plugged a leak and spent some Boat Bucks

Not a boat related leak (not yet anyway), but rather a condensation issue in the shop.
The construction design for this shop results in an uninsulated gap between the two main rafter C-channels. Those rafters make direct contact with the exterior steel skin and get cold enough to cause a condensation drip when the weather conditions change. It's not a lot of water, but it's enough to be a bother and not something I want to deal with later on when I'm trying to fair and paint.

I looked around for something that could fill the gap to provide some insulation value before taping it up and was happy to find that I had some small foam mats that could be cut to size and stuffed into the gap. It worked perfectly and best of all cost nothing but an hour of time!

It's menial - I know it, but I was so happy to save a few dollars with this fix since my Credit Card is absolutely ON FIRE at the moment! The carton of foam plus two sheets of M-200, all the lumber I've gone through and today I ordered some epoxy and fillers, Bio-Solv epoxy solvent/cleaner, Peel Ply, Perforated release film, Green-Flow breather, vacuum film, gum and flash tape plus a roll of Enka fusion, some mixing buckets and a couple of cans of release wax plus almost a dozen rolls of various fabrics.

Cha-Ching!!
The Piggy Bank has imploded.

In other news, I'm hoping to get a call tomorrow saying the counter top material for the laminating table is ready for pickup. I need to get that glued down before I can finally unroll the full-sized plans to start marking out and cutting the float frames.

After that, well - after that I guess I'll actually be building a boat... to be honest, it seems a bit surreal when I stop and think about it.


A bit hard to see in this picture, but there is a small gap between these two C-Channels making up the support rafters

Foam sheets. We had these on the floor in the kids playroom in our old house


Gap filled with foam sheet and then taped over with some foil ducting tape

Sealed up now. If any further condensation occurs, I'm hoping it tracks along the tape and drips out towards the ends instead of the middle of the shop.



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