Author Topic: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)  (Read 20793 times)

Offline Darrin

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School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« on: August 19, 2010, 06:04:13 PM »
HOLY COW BATMAN, has it been over 2 years since we started this string???? 

One of the post's about the potable and sanitary systems has brought this string to life once more (I hope). Sadly I don't recall seeing in the Fleet Submarine Manual anything about valve line up for nearly ANYTHING and the closer our boats are getting to operating the ships actual systems once more it sounds like time for those whom have restored their systems back to opererational or a very close to how it was origionally operated.

Taking a page from previous School of the Boats I am now asking for those whom helped before come forward once more and help the other boats bring their boats to the same level..

What that means is: take the potable water and sanitary tank issue that we are discussing right now, the Torsk does have her's mostly operational and it is in my opinion to ask the experts onboard her to step forward and discuss the valve line up and what it took to restore those 2 systems.

Due to everyone's schedules these school of the boats will be longer time wise than previous ones.

The experts on the Torsk will be pulling their drawings and valve line ups in the next week or so (hopefully sooner) and start teaching once more, now if the experts from COD or anyone else would like to jump in please do

Darrin

Offline Darrin

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2010, 04:37:50 PM »
Here is Chief Mike's response in regards to the plumbing post:

For starters, yes, the fresh water system can be used without involving any potable water tanks.  As Darrin said, the fresh water header was supposed to be charged to around 8-12 psi, so, when you hook up shore water, you should install a pressure regulator to knock down city water pressure.  Otherwise, you may find a few leaks.  We use the fresh water tanks #1 and #2 during the winter, because the water to the pier is shutoff during the winter to prevent the water pipes from freezing.  Be sure your hoses/pipes are heat traced and well insulated or you may suffer that fate.  So far, we've never had the fresh water tanks freeze.  If we did, the oncomng ice ager would give us more to worry about than a frozen potty water tank.

You may find that the shutoff valves for the potty water tanks leak.  They sure did on Torsk.  So, even when we didn't want to use the fresh water tanks, they filled up anyway.  Before we began using the tanks, we filled and drained the tanks a coupe of times to clear out any bad water and other contaminants.

Fresh water tanks #1 and #2 are about 980 gallons.  Tanks #3 and #4 are about 973 gallons.  (I feel like I'm sitting for my qual board).  There are two shore connections on Torsk: one is located in the After Torpedo Room on the stbd side about mid-compartment; the second connection is located in the Forward Torpedo Room on the aft bulkhead, stbd side.  The Reserves put in a external shore connection in the Forward Torpedo Room when she was a Reserve boat.  This line came down through the salvage valve penetration. It allows us to connect city water topside.  A copper pipe runs down through the salvage valve penetration and connects into the shore connection in FTR.  This is the line we are currently using.  Much easier to use than running a hose to the connection in ATR or FTR.

Our San #2 has a sewage pump installed in it along with a high level alarm.  A sewage hose is connected from the boat to the sewer line on the pier.  When we want to pump San #2 we open a couple of valves and pump.  (Except lately, because our sewage pipe was wiped out in a storm.)  As for San #1, the honey dipper comes out on the pier and sucks the tank out.  We do not presurize the tank.  I highly recommend against this unless you like the smell of sewage in the morning.  Ask anyone who has blown sanitary on himself.  We have found that it was very easy to connect into the blow line for the sanitaries and use that connection for pumping.  It eliminates the need for removing the SAn Tank access cover every time the tank needs pumping.  It will require a confined space entry to make the connection to the blow line in the ballast tank.

The large spigot on Forward battery is probably the fire hose connection off the Trim Header.  Since the Trim Header was normally filled wiith salt water I doubt it was used for filling buckets.  Of course, the only reference I have for the valve you are talking about is Torsk.  However, the valve you refer to is in the exact same location as our fire hose connection.  If you look around, you will find similar connections along the port side in every compartment.

Hope that all helps.  If I were you, I would hand over hand the piping in the Fresh Water system and make a drawing that shows all valves and tanks.  We did our drawings in Visio.  Since you may not have Visio, I converted them to pdf.  Note that connections and piping that is not original, like the connections to our hot water heater in the after battery well, are shown in red.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Visio-Fresh Water.pdf (92.66 KB - downloaded 2 times.)
 
 

Offline Mark Sarsfield

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2010, 12:19:57 PM »
Why did you guys place a water heater in the battery well when you could have put a modern tank in place of the originals?  Did you consider on-demand units?

The fire hose connections make sense.  You would want the ability to put out a fire with more than just a portable extinguisher.

If you use an original pressure line to the sani tank to pump out the sewage, then did you disconnect that line from the rest of the air  system?  I can't imagine that cleaning out sewage from the 225 lb air system would be much fun.

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Mark Sarsfield
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"If you have one bucket that can hold 5 gallons and one bucket that can hold 2 gallons, how many buckets do you have?" - IQ test from Idiocracy

Offline Darrin

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #3 on: August 21, 2010, 03:29:35 PM »
Those are some very good questions and I will answer them as best I can,  I know that most of you are tired of hearing that the Torsk crew has done so much with so little that it is mind boggeling and that is the gods honest truth. A LOT of the things that are onboard that have allowed her to come back to life once more have been donated by volunteers/crewmembers/and the local community or removed from decommissioned ships by volunteers , with that being said the water heater was donated many years ago and installed so we could have hot water onboard once more.

Why you ask did we not go with a tankless potable water system?? those are very expensive and we were fortunate enough to have water heater donated.  Why didn't we go with the smaller type water heater that you find in residential houses today that fit underneath the sink? at the time those had yet to be donated to the boat (I donated 2 last October) and the other reason and a very big reason is that when you start taking the bulkheads apart you have the potential to destroy "historic fabric" I.E. the stainless steel walls and frame work associated.

I brought that question up in '05 about restoring our origional water heaters and I was told very polietly that they were too far gone to be used and after thinking about it regardless if the tanks still hold water I could not bring myself to try to pressurize the tanks with hot water because I could not be sure how long if at all that they would be operational after setting since '71 without being used or even properly drained. There is a plan to install the 2 "new" hot water heaters online in the current location or close to the current location of the origional water heaters, that project is a winter project or when someone with good plumbing skills wants to tackle them. And yes we do have plumbers from the SeaBees looking at them now from what I understand as a future project and we are taking everything as it comes in regards to volunteers.

Bringing a firemain back online while nice in theory is not practical due to having to bring both the Trim and Drain systems back to fully operational to include having the sea chest's open to the sea (please refer to the Fire Fighting School of the Boat)

Chief Mike mentioned that when we "blow" our sanitary's to the pier we have to go inside the Ballast tank to verify that all of the connections are connected correctly so we don't have that issue.

To see what has taken place since 1998 please click on the link and go through all of the work weekend pictures and all of the other work parties we have had over the years.  http://www.usstorsk.org/volunteers/423vlntr.htm

Offline Mark Sarsfield

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #4 on: August 23, 2010, 04:03:09 PM »
Okay on all.

I've gone through the work weekend pics on several occasions to help me figure out some stuff.  Also, my personal tour of your boat in July gave me a lot of good info.

Regards,
Mark Sarsfield
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"If you have one bucket that can hold 5 gallons and one bucket that can hold 2 gallons, how many buckets do you have?" - IQ test from Idiocracy

Offline emeacho

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #5 on: August 24, 2010, 08:45:57 PM »
It was by far easier to install a large water heater in after battery than trying to fit one in the space where the original water heater was installed.  I think the boat was built around the water heaters.  We'd have to take out some of the bulkheads in order to get the water heaters in and out.
 
The sanitary pumping line is connected to the blow discharge line, not the line used to pressurize the tank before blowing. We actually cut the discharge line and connected the sanitary pumping line to that pipe. 

Offline Mark Sarsfield

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2010, 02:46:35 PM »
Okay.  Did you guys post the diagrams, yet?  I didn't notice any.

Regards,
Mark Sarsfield
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"If you have one bucket that can hold 5 gallons and one bucket that can hold 2 gallons, how many buckets do you have?" - IQ test from Idiocracy

Offline Lance Dean

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #7 on: August 25, 2010, 06:55:59 PM »

Offline Mark Sarsfield

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Re: School of the Boat 20 Aug 10 (valve line ups)
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2010, 10:54:56 AM »
I found it.  Thanks!

Regards,
Mark Sarsfield
USS Batfish reenactor



"If you have one bucket that can hold 5 gallons and one bucket that can hold 2 gallons, how many buckets do you have?" - IQ test from Idiocracy