A thing most people are missing. The vent I just installed is primarily to supply air to the main engine so I can close the ER hatch and reduce the noise underway.
The fan is an addition for clearing the air in the ER in the case of a fire. Because I will now close up the ER, I will need to move the smoke alarm, which is now mounted just outside the ER open hatch, to inside the ER and rig an alarm outside the ER I can hear at pretty much everywhere on the boat. I could have simply held my breath while I jumped into the ER, but without blowing the smoke away I could not see where to squirt the fire extinguishing agent and I couldn't get a second breath. The main thing that can burn in the ER is wire insulation. There are some cardboard boxes but they are not near any wires. There is paint on the walls I suppose could burn. I have a trash bucket full of oily rags. I'd better get a covered one. And diesel fuel, but it would be hard to get it going without a wick and a flame. Normally the fuel is all under suction until it gets to the engine itself, then under slight pressure back to the tank. No high pressure hoses or pipes to spray it on the exhaust pipes. Some water hoses but full of water probably would be really difficult to get hot enough to burn. Did you know you can boil water in a paper cup? Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek 30 07.695N 081 38.484W > [Original Message] > From: Rosalie B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Date: 10/5/2008 2:49:36 PM > Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] ER Fire Fighting > > On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 13:42:03 -0400, you wrote: > > It might be better to outfit yourself with breathing air (like firefighters do > with an SCBA which is NOT the same as SCUBA for underwater) instead of supplying > the air to the fire. This will not help you see necessarily, but you could use > CO2 to blow the smoke away instead of blowing it away with air. > > > >If there is enough oxygen to enable me to breathe whilst I extinguish the fire, there will be enough oxygen to enable the fire to burn. > > > >In order to put out an ER fire by starving it of oxygen, as they do on the big ships, requires an air-tight ER and a large CO2 system to flood the ER and drive all the oxygen out. Even then, it doesn't always work all that well. > >I am from the Darth Vader school of defense, as in when the Death Star was being attacked by the Rebels and Vader leaped into his fighter to personally defend his ship. > > > I don't know that there is really going to be a GOOD solution to this. But if > you have a CO and/or smoke and/or heat detector in the engine room that might be > a better way to go to detect the fire before the smoke got too dense to see. > Also you need to really evaluate what there is in the engine room that will > burn. Since the basic boat is ferro-cement, it wouldn't be the same kind of > problem as a fiberglass boat, and the engine itself isn't going to burn. > > As for smoke - you might be able to get the kind of smoke tubes that are used > for detecting air leaks in ventilation systems. It is apt to be irritating > though so you might need a respirator to use it. > > >Norm > >S/V Bandersnatch > >Lying Julington Creek > >30 07.695N 081 38.484W > > > >Isn't air (especially O2 one of the 3 legs of the fire triangle? Wouldn't it be better to cut off all the air instead of introducing more? Curious as I am always intrigued by Norm's ideas. > >Noel > > _______________________________________________ > Liveaboard mailing list > [email protected] > To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard > To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ > > To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
