How We Detect Flooding On Our 1600 Compartment Battleship 

Or when the glass of champagne is overflowing

❤️

I fully second this statement!! You guys did a great job our BB62 looks beautiful!

Awww

I hope museum ships in desperate situations see this project and realize its not impossible to do the job the right way. Battleship New Jersey raised money, promoted themselves, built an audience, and stayed dedicated to this project for a LONG time. They are the textbook definition of how to take pride in these ships like the sailors that served on them. They are leagues ahead of almost all their peers. Ships in the mud like Yorktown, Alabama, and North Carolina are in a much worse structural state of repair than they'll ever let on. It's like watching a 5 year frame off car restoration versus a guy with spray paint and a free weekend

Make into a ring tone. 🤣

@@frankchan4272 And have someone secretly put it on his phone as an alarm

@@frankchan4272 You are evil.

Or "A Day In The Life Of A Curator "

This channel makes me proud to be a New Jerseyan.

Amen

Man. Can’t we get back to the days of simplicity and reliability? Instead of designed to fail engineering. 🙄

Simple, hard wired solution instead of an overly complicated computer system. Love it.

@@MadJustin7 As a computer systems developer/programmer/engineer - I couldn't agree more!

Interesting. Were your floats filled with air, or was the solid material they were made of naturally buoyant? If they were air-filled, I guess one of the benefits of a water-test would be that it would catch if the float itself ever developed a leak & would not be buoyant when called for in a real emergency. Though I guess a float randomly developing a leak would be very rare.

@@westtex3675, your comment looks more like a troll instead of actually asking a question that you give a shit about. You're the one that mentioned "solid material they were made from", as though you already knew what you expected me to say. When you actually have a question that your fat ass can leave the couch for, let me know.

@@westtex3675, floats aren't made from "solid material". Dead giveaway.

They could be. There are plenty of solid materials that float (cork, styrofoam, other foams, etc). In fact, the buoys that mark the locations of submerged lobster traps often feature styrofoam. But as to what type yours were, you would probably know better than me. There are undoubtedly hundreds of different types of floats available for industrial switches. Additionally, even air-filled floats involve some sort of **solid** material (plastic or otherwise) that holds the volume of air.

@@westtex3675, it's not "could be".

Sure, but this does exactly what they want and could be made with supplies around the yard and has probably stood the test of time better than a commercial unit from 1990. I’ve dealt with some commercial security stuff from back then and it wasn’t very resilient. It was upgraded from incandescent lamps at some point, every light has what looks like a bunch of bondo above it.

ive helped wire up ships flooding alarms for decom tows, even more shocking would be in most cases the flooding sensor is a stick with two nails in it wired with old sp phone salt&pepper wire. nothing fancy, but it worked.

Keep it simple.

back when i was an IC, i crawled in some really nasty places testing float switches for flooding alarms on ship.

I would like to know the same thing. Especially for 55.

I had the same thought, surely there's some metal or stone ballast that could be hauled around to empty compartments somewhere. It's not like New Jersey's loadout/weight is changing very frequently anymore, and just look what happened to old USS Texas. Water sat in the torpedo blister tanks and caused the ship severe damage over time.

@@legogenius1667 USS Texas I would argue the lean should be kept for historical reasons, not the water but the lean. Not just had it been that way from leaked blisters but twice in her military past. On shore bombardment duty Texas twice flooded one side to gain range with her big guns. Likewise Fort Drum (our former concrete battleship guarding the bay in Manila) On withdraw fired once so fast and hot she gained range from added pressure. They surrendered to the Japs as ordered but did their best to leave little behind besides the shell that is still there. It was a pill to remove the threat when we returned but at lest the two battleship turrets were disabled when the men left before. We boarded the deck filed it with a mix of explosives and fuel. There is even footage of the hatch in the air that The Fat Electrician uses and points out.

Or just run an ethernet through the same way the power is.

That was my first thought, piece of cake to get SMS alerts from that.

generally the flooding concerns are spaces below the waterline.

Yeah and the bridge too. Nobody ever calls out damage control parties to the bridge for flooding.

You'd be surprised how often spaces above the waterline flood. Thats where plumbing is. Thats where the rain is.

As far as I know boats are ungrounded systems. They use 3 phase power to eliminate the need for a return wire. If there is a short to the haul: it can be traced before a second short causes a problem. Electric cars are kind of the same way. The traction battery floats. If there is a short to the frame: the car will refuse to charge.

@@jamesphillips2285 Interesting, thank you.

The problem with using the ships structure to carry a current is that there will always be spots that start to corrode and cause high resistance. It is also not a good idea to mix voltages with the grounding of the ship. In this case, the ship has a ground link to earthing on the dock. The best thing was what they did. The only difference I would do is setup a localized board for each section then have it repeat it back up to the main board. Also having it be DC for local but AC for the main run back up would be better. I do tend to over engineer redundancy to make trouble shooting easier.

the last video i think. were they restore the power cables and pipes. on the pier

I remember Ryan mentioning on an earlier video that there was an environmental restriction preventing them from dredging at this time. Something about spawning season, I think.

@@christianvalentin5344 I missed that, thanks for letting me know.

@@Aotearoawoodturner I remember seeing that but for whatever reason had it in my head that was ship work not dock. Makes way more sense that it would be on the dock. Thanks for the reminder.

​@@fsj197811I think it might have been a little bit of both, ship work and shore work for the utilities/infrastructure upgrades.

I'm sure that they are probably set pretty low toward the bottom - just to give them the most advanced warning if/when they have an issue. Assuming they don't get torpedoed - any water ingress is almost certainly going to develop over a long-period of time (although - in the case of the condenser from 2017 - it is entirely possible that you can develop a long-term problem that goes unnoticed for a long-enough period to be a little bit of a scary thought). I would imagine that - in the event that it appears the water problem is somehow bad enough to threaten multiple compartments - Ryan will scramble down there and start securing all the water-tight doors around the affected area. Otherwise, I'm assuming they'll keep someone there to keep eyes on the situation until they can get a contractor (same sort of people they used to ballast and de-ballast for the dry-dock) to come out, drop some pumps in and run hoses up and over the side. Then you bring out another contractor to assess the problem and effect repairs. This is conjecture on my part, but it seems to be the logical action-plan.

​@@Joseph55220they do have some pumps on board, it won't solve a Titanic Iceberg gash dumping water in at a rate of cubic yards per minute, but it will solve some small issues. As for the fix, they do some repairs in house, Ryan and Maintenance would probably head down, take a few pictures, talk it out, and get contractors in as needed.

Collisions could still occur - either from other ships or debris coming downstream.

@@KnightRanger38 Precisely!

Yes, but by having them in all the compartments tells you the extent of the flooding. Also don't talk If you don't know things, you don't operate a battleship museum.

@@ashipcrafter2440 Do you run a museum ship? Otherwise shut up on that issue. The water detection alarm system was installed by the Navy for water intrusion detection during mothball periods. A museum ship isn't likely to suffer catastrophic damage, leading to an immediate breech of several layers into the ship. And when a water intrusion is detected, it's a simple matter of sending staff, as there should always be 1 or 2 staff onboard trained to access any space on the ship, so manually identifying the source/extent of the leak shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes. After the USS Sullivan's sank, I realized how "business" mentality the museum ship staff are. It's a waterborne vessel, with watertight compartments built in, if the proper doors were closed. Rather than having staff onboard trained(to know what doors were between watertight zones, and also to identify it/when the leakage had spread far enough to render a zone beyond saving)to go down and close the watertight doors surrounding the water leak, the evacuated, and let the entire ship sink, as if it were an office building. In the USS Sullivans sinking, they simply abandoned ship, rather than spend any time attempting to identify and mitigate the damage.

@ravenbarsrepairs5594 You do know most water tight doors on museum ships aren't water tight anymore. Ryan did a video on the Sullivan's and water tight doors, I suggest you go watch those before you talk about stuff that you don't know anything about.

Made to mil spec, and switching an electrical switch instead of a mechanical valve, but yeah. Exactly. Fun fact, you probably have a few of these in your house. HVAC units use them, ironically enough, as condensate flood detectors. If your condensation outflow line gets clogged (usually due to microbial growth), it will alarm the AC to shut down before it spills out. Other uses include sump pumps, as a way to only start them up when there is water in the basin, and to shut down when all the water has been pumped.

@@phillyphakename1255 IIRC the likes of dishwashers and washing machines (at least front loaders) also use them, apparently one of the fastest fixes for a dishwasher that is refusing to fill/constantly trying to empty is to tip it forward so the back is a few inches off the ground then let it drop, as it's often the float valve/sensor sticking and the little shock is enough to free it. If that works you know it's the float valve without having to take the thing apart and if it doesn't you're no worse off as you were going to have to pull it out anyway.

I think I’ve heard Ryan say that they do quarterly checks

in service, they do have alarms, but they also have watches to check spaces hourly in most cases. cold iron watch, and sounding and security are the main ones that would catch flooding.

@@leftyo9589 And in service they had a 'staff' of 2700 or so men.

To allow water from rain to drain. Explained in another video.

Some museum ships do have it, we all inspect for it, generally local regulations will keep those spaces from being accessible to guests until it has been removed.

Only a guess, but probably physical inspection by numerous personel on a rotating schedule.

alarms in many spaces, also watch standers check most spaces hourly.

3000 an oz

Golden ships attract attack animals such as a bird or huge fish. So not really a bright idea.

@@bebo4807 oh. Well okay.

@@tomhenry897 doesn't need to be fully gold. Just throw some gold flecks in with the regular paint, but make sure it's enough to show up a solid gold color, and protect the ship.

@@bebo4807, and pirates….

Set off manually on orders from the bridge, similar to General Quarters I imagine.

Push a button in the room, it alarms the whole switch. Probably someone realized there are alarm speakers wired throughout the ship, and an easily hackable switch. Wire up the new alarm to the old switch, and boom.

the original collision alarm worked through the 1MC announcing system and was operated by simple switches located in a few spaces.

@@leftyo9589 But how did the ship know that a collision might happen? Via sensors or was it just the lookout in the crow's nest being scared?

Mothballed ships stay sealed to keep the water out.

That’s because you didn’t listen.

Maybe he has a condition

Sounds wonderful and wonderfully expensive.

@@marth6271 nope. In modern world it costs cheap. Usual problem is with us, bloodsucking tradies, who charge for work they do not know so do it very slow, plus mark up twice for equipment. At least gercon floats is cheap stuff used in any modern car for fluid level sensors - screenwasher, oil, coolant etc. $10. Fit this sensor to the lid or top cover of a tank. Mounting is via 8mm hole with a plastic locking nut and O-ring supplied. Float movement is about 20mm - 20 kangaroos in local hobby electronics shop

Sounds like you should donate the materials and installation work for free.

@@garywagner2466 I am on the other side of planet

The simplicity of the system is very appealing. The fact that you can test the float switch manually every 3 months should alleviate a lot of the fears. I guess they could use a sealed Hall effect switch and keep the simplicity and test ability.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You'd have to watch all 40 cameras all the time, an alarm notifies us when to pay attention.

Cost of the camera and the power to run it. You'd also need a light source to see anything. You'd also have to run cables to all the cameras. Personally, I want a 24 hour a day live feed from ballast tank #4.

Couldn't you put a camera in there to look at the board whether it goes off so you don't have to go all the way to the back quarter deck to look you could go straight to the right compartment to see the problem

​@@BattleshipNewJersey No? One camera pointing at the box. 😂😂😂

​@@chrisauton4😂😂😂 I'm so glad you said this.