Got a few work sessions in this past weekend. The focus was on the drain holes between the stringer grids. The original drains were 1" pvc pipe. Due to the circular size and placement of the drains none of the stringer grids ever fully drained. Some would leave 1" or more standing water in them. In addition almost all of them were leaking some water into the stringers. Seeing that we have everything torn apart and I had to remove the existing drains to de-water the areas we were glassing/gelcoating I wanted to take the opportunity to improve on the drains.
I had a couple sticks of 4" fiberglass exhaust tube laying around the shop. I cut it in half long ways, so ended up with half moon pieces. I then marked the drain locations with a pencil and cut them in.
The biggest offenders for holding water were the outboard to inboard drains that drain into the main bilges. The pvc pipes were 1/2" off the bottom of the floor. The new drains are flush with the floor.
After cutting them, I filled any voids with butter and laid 1 layer of 1.5oz matt in the bottoms and rolled it flat/fair. Didn't get any pics of that as I was in a rush finishing up but will snap a few next trip down.
Next I will bond the drains in with butter, let that set and then glass them in.
4" half moon drains is probably overkill, 3" or even 2" would have been better than what was there but being that I already had the 4" material on hand I saved a few boat bucks by utilizing what I already had. One thing is for certain should be significantly easier to wash the bilges now and hopefully most all of the water will drain out resulting in less standing stinky water.
