November 27, 2023

Calliope Girl 16

Friday

With a half day planned around an appointment in the afternoon, it was a good opportunity to start work on the final location and potential size of a new water tank to replace the bladder tank once held beneath the starboard berth.  The owner was interested in five different locations with potential for a new tank, depending on available space and other considerations, so over the course of the morning I measured each space and came up with a working drawing of the tank, along with approximate volume measurements.  For the purposes of the moment–which was mainly to determine which space or spaces to focus on, I didn’t bother trying to conceive ways to maximize the tank volume, such as through faceted angles or other adjustments, and stuck to the simplest possible geometric shapes, but once we finalized the location, I planned to build an accurate mockup so as to take advantage of the space as well as possible.

1.  The forward end of the space beneath the vee berth; this space ended up being quite small, under 10 gallons, and likely wasn’t worth the effort for a tank.

2.  The starboard side of the vee berth, opposite the existing waste tank.   This had always been a leading candidate, and at a calculated 34 gallons for the dimensions shown, continued to be.

3.  The bilge area above the keel, a good potential location in terms of weight distribution, but from a practical standpoint there simply wasn’t enough room there to make the effort, so I didn’t bother with any measurements.

4.  The space beneath the starboard settee (after removal of the old battery trays).  This space had potential as well, and a large tank fit to the space could hold up to 36 gallons as drawn.

5.  The difficult-to-access back corner beneath the galley.  This was a reasonable space, though installing a tank here could mean delays in the new galley construction while awaiting tank construction, the timeframe of which we didn’t yet know.  There were limits on the amount of the space available thanks to existing installations.

In the end, the two spaces with the most potential seemed to be the starboard vee berth, and the starboard settee.  The owner leaned towards the vee berth as long as the volume calculation was correct, as did I, so I’d press forward with a mockup to finalize the design and get more accurate measurements.

Total time billed on this job today: 4 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 47°. rain. Forecast for the day: Rain, then clearing, 50°