Operational Plumbing

[Mark Sarsfield]

We need to go hand over hand on the Batfish fresh water plumbing.  I was wondering what sort of issues other boats ran into as they checked over everything.  We plan to replace water tanks that are old and corroded and we're missing scuttlebutts.  So, those open pipes need to be capped off.   Also, do you use the original waste water tank or use compressed air to put waste into a ballast tank?  We'd like to have a "honey pot" service come out to evacuate whichever tank we use.

[Darrin]

Mark,

I am sure that Chief Mike and Gilbert by far more qualified to discuss this because by the time I got onboard the showers were up and running along with the FTR head and the After Battery head. Yes we do use the origional sanitary tanks and they do get pumped out by using a "honey truck" and we also use our potable water tank (we do not drink the water out of it). To answer the question about pressurizing the potable water tank, yes we do and it is minimal to make the sinks and showers work.

The big problem that I have seen in the 6 years I have been onboard was getting the yarways (tank level gauge) to work correctly (or to find the correct one and ensure that it operates) we have sadly over flowed the FTR head due to someone not properly securing the head after they ahem used it

Chief Mike and Gil can probably tell you all of the in's and out's I however cannot, I wish that I could but I was not onboard when that took place

Darrin

[emeacho]

As Darrin said, we use the ship's potable water system for all sinks and showers aboard Torsk.  During the summer we use a shore connection to pressurize the water header and during the winter we pressurize fresh water tanks #1 and #2 using ships air (which is also working, minus the compressors). We keep fresh water tanks #1 and #2 in service and #3 and #4 out of service.  All the original water heaters are out of service.  They are in pretty bad shape.  The sinks in the FTR, Fwd Battery, Crew's head, and Crew's mess are all operational.  The showers are operational also.  The biggest problem we have with the system is valves.  Many leak by when closed.  We need a good machinist mate who can recondition the valves in the system.  Currently, we have no machinist mates on the crew.

[Mark Sarsfield]

I suspect a lot of our valves are frozen and will probably leak, as well.  This is good information, though.

We plan on replacing several, if not all water tanks, eventually.  Maybe even install electric on-demand tanks.

So, shore water pressure is adequate to pressurize the on-board plumbing (in the summer)?  Is this why you only use two fresh water tanks?

Have you guys considered putting chlorine/bleach into the fresh water tanks to make the water potable or are they very rusty?

Is your fresh water filling valve and hose connection located int he gun access trunk?  The fleet boat manual says it's supposed to be there, but I don't remember seeing one (unless it's down in the control room).

[Darrin]

Mark,

before trying to operate valves that have not been moved in years please back the jam nut off a little bit and put some penetrating oil on the packing and let it set for a week, this will ease with opening/shutting the valve and lessen the damage that could occur if the packing is frozen/stuck to the valve stem. Like Chief Mike said these valves that we have leaking can be fixed but we truly do not have a Machinest Mate onboard or for that matter anyone whom has rebuilt these kind of valves in years.

To answer the question about if we can turn #1&2 into true potable water tanks again yes, but we have chosen not to because you have to constantly monitor the potable water tanks to make sure that they do not have any bacteria or anything else that might pose a problem. For the water that we use for the coffee and drinking water the crew has brought onboard a water cooler like what you see in an office building, it makes life very simple and easy

The only time our potable water tanks are used along with our Sanitary tanks are when we have sleep overs onboard/work weekends and the two potable water tanks and the sanitary tank for the After battery have been sufficent (to the best of my knowledge) in handeling all of the needs. Again Chief Mike and Gil can confirm how many times we have our sanitary tanks emptied and I think last year the tanks were emptied twice, sadly I only make it up to the Torsk once or twice a year now due to work and other issues so that means that I truly don't know all of the answers and that means that I miss out on a lot of stuff that goes on during the year onboard Torsk.

Darrin

[Mark Sarsfield]

Based on the manual schematics, the sanitary tanks appear to be very small.  Any idea, off the top of your head, how much each tank can hold?

Roger on the valves.  I'll have to look at one to get a better understanding of what you're referring to.

I read through the "fresh water and sanitation" chapter and it seems to be straight forward on paper.

[emeacho]

Potty water tanks #1 and #2 hold 980 gallons each.  More than enough water to get us through the winter. As Darrin said, we don't use the potty water tanks for drinking water because we don't want the hassle of constantly sampling and testing.  We do chlorinate both tanks and we have had folks drink the water without trouble, but we try to keep it from hapening.

San #1 holds about 430 gallons and San#2 holds about 670 gallons.  We have an external pumping connection for pumping San #2. We hope o do the same for San #1 when we are i the shipyard. The connection to San #2 was made to the blow line in the ballast tank. The external connection comes through a tank inspection cover that was installed after the boat was decommissioned and the bottom of the ballast tanks were closed. 

[Mark Sarsfield]

We have those inspection covers, too.  I suspect, likewise, that our openings on the bottom were sealed off.

Do potable tanks #3 and #4 also hold 980 each?

Can the water system be used without involving any potable tanks?

Where are the shore connections on the Torsk?

I figured that some sort of modification was necessary to get the waste pumped out.  Do you guys pressurize the blow line when the "honey pot" hooks up or do you let the truck do all of the work?  Another idea would be to allow the system to do what it was designed to do and then let the truck suck out the waste from the MBT, but that would probably stink quite a bit.  We might restrict the sani system to just gray water and urine.  

On a side note, I noticed a large spigot in the forward battery passageway next to the hatch to the control room.  Was this for filling buckets to swab the decks?

I thought it was hilarious that the manual calculated (based on the boat's weekly water production) that each crew member could shower twice per week. LOL.  Those guys were lucky to get a shower at the end of the patrol.

[Darrin]

What you are asking if I can get this straight is that you want to hook up a potable water line from a "pier" source and then attach it to the Potable ater fill connection inside the boat and then leave it pressurized until it is needed and not fill the tanks is that correct?

If that is the case that is a very unique situation because I have never heard of it and honestly I don't recommend it because the potable water fill lines were never designed to have pressurized water constantly on them, and you will also have to keep a hatch fouled (not able to close) because of having this potable water line running through it.

Chief Mike may very well have a different opionion in regards to this and I again do not have the knowledge or experiance of a WWII boat loading potable water or blowing sanitary's and having San #1 pumped out. On 688's we pumped our sanitary's overboard to a pier connection and yes we loaded potable water through the Fwd Escape trunk and then secured as soon as the evolution was complete.  For me as a Topside Watch or Below Decks watch both evolutions had their own unique problems and resposibilities, pumping sanitary's wasn't too bad once you lined the system up correctly and put all of the heads off limits. (I did once have a topside watch covered in "matter" when our A Gang tried to blow sanitaries to the pier and the hull connection gasket blew out).  It was a shitty night for that topside watch... pun intended

Chief, if you can find our sanitary drawings and the potable water drawings can you post them here so that others may use them?? it may clarify some things for everyone involved.

[Mark Sarsfield]

We would only have the external hose connected for a weekend event in the summer.  In the winter we would probably fill the emergency tanks a few days ahead of time, since they are smaller, and use them for showers, sinks, and flush toilets.  According to the manual, the boat's "external" fill ports for the battery water system and fresh water system was in the gun access trunk.  Rick came up with the idea of running the hose under the super structure to keep deck spaces clear.  You are correct that the gun access hatch would be left ajar a few inches for the whole weekend.  Not much different than our crappy doors in the FTR and ATR stair wells that let in tons of hot air all summer.

[Darrin]

Our potable line is also run under the superstructure and then into the Starboard side of the sail, I was told however a little bit ago that the boat may have been modified during her Reserve trainer years. Chief Mike is going to hopefully be able to find the drawings that they made and then post them on the School of the Boat link that I started to help you and others out.

As far as filling the "emergency tanks" is concerned we have never frozen our potable water tanks that I know of, then again we are still setting in the water also and that may help out quite a bit. We do have the ability to bring all of our San tanks online and bring all of our Potable water tanks online, we however never had the need to bring everything online and I am sure that you will find out even with having a full 50+ crew onboard for a work weekend that you won't fill the tanks if you have the Fwd Battery and the Aft Battery heads up and running to include the showers in the After battery. We never have finished putting the Fwd Battery shower in operation because we currently have 2 operational and up until recently the ability to use 2 other ships who's heads were completely operational.

On the ventilation issue we found that putting large fans (formerly free standing fans with the bases and poles removed) over top of the After Engine Room hatch and in the Bridge access hatch have made a world of difference to the comfort level inside of the boat. Those fans when pulling the air out of the boat make a HUGE difference inside the boat especially in the summer when it is 90+ degrees outside and just about that much humidity.

[Mark Sarsfield]

We're not concerned about any tanks freezing.  We were looking at using them from a capacity stand point.  Even without heat, the boat stays in the 50's in the winter, because of the lights.

I need to verify where our fill ports are, too.  The manual is nice from a "how it works" stand point, but as you said, it probably went through mods.  On the starboard side of our bridge we have a large t-handle valve behind an access door and I'm wondering if they moved the fill port to that location.  

The boat stays pretty cool, if it has light traffic.  When you have over 300 visitors piling through on a 106 deg day, then any AC system would struggle with that.  Especially, when you have people backed up through several compartments.  I found out that we have two 5-ton AC units and they still struggled to keep the boat cool last Saturday during the event.  Missing half of the deck probably isn't helping, either.

I have been tempted to bring a cheap floor fan and put it over the CT bridge hatch to draw up cool air from below.  That's one of the hottest rooms in the boat.  Our FTR is the other "oven", because our AC vents stop at the water tight bulk head in that room and heat just pours down the stair well.

Any idea what diameter hose you guys use to hook up to the pier water supply?  What size compressor did you guys tie into the system with? 

[emeacho]

Bear in mind that the information I'm giving you is for the Torsk.

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.

[Darrin]

Chief,

thank you for the drawing, I am copying it and your post and moving it over to the school of the boat.. And yes the large hose connection is a fire hose connection, I had forgotten where all of the fire hose connections were on the boat.

Mark, we use a garden hose to bring in our water to our connection topside.

[Mark Sarsfield]

Thanks, guys.  This gives us a lot to chew on.  We definitely need to make our own schematics.