Engine Room Insulation (Long Question)

[Shoalcove]

Thanks very much for the info! I'll do some further investigation to find a local supplier. It sounds like you have one heck of an interesting project underway. Best of luck!
Cheers, Shoalcove

[lorenzo b]

The real question is who's paying for this. I have a large engine room, 15 x 10 x 7, and most sound proofing systems were far too expensive. I used 1 1/2 inch styrofoam panel, about $12, layered with 3/8 ply on top and it works fine.

[DeepFrz]

Sound insulation is a very complicated business, however there are materials that are designed to do the job. Soundown is one of the companies that specializes in sound insulation. Yes it is expensive, but materials designed for the job do a much better job.

Airsep has equipment to stop the splashing of the generator exhaust and significantly quiets the exhaust.

You need to think of sound absorbing materials as well as sound blocking measures and sound isolating (engine mounts, floating floors, etc.) in order to do an adequate job. Hiring a good engineer with experience in these matters would probably be worthwhile.

Then you have to think of ventilation of the engine room.

Something you may be able to do is visit a high quality yacht of recent vintage and check out how they have insulated and ventilated the engine room. Pay particular attention to the isolation techniques they use as well.

This is not an easy task.

[Laidback]

Originally Posted by Chief Engineer

Before you go into all the expense of insulation...check out the price of a smaller genset.....

On the vessel in my avatar we have two Perkins Gensets....being an ex-RN vessel we are used to the sound.

I have seen "lead curtains" hung around gensets on some mega-yachts.

1942? There may be a lot of Hazardous insulation in there now....proper removal would be very expensive......

The Suggestion made by the Chief needs considering for 2 reasons :- The Chinese engine producing 30KVA from a generator maybe over kill. But, the weight of the generator alone will probably touch half a ton!
Suggest have a sit down and calculate the necessary electrical requirements of the boat.

[lorenzo b]

In my experience with a leaky cabin of about 7000 cu ft of living space you will nee the 30k only for A/C , at least a 5 ton unit, or electric heat. the 8K unit should be fine for your batteries.
If you find you still have old insulation onboard that contains " A ",never use the word on the advise of my lawyer, you can consider wrapping it and painting it to seal it. It only causes problems when airborne. Most likely it's already been removed.

[Zach]

Just as an update...

Ended up using 2 layers of lead loaded Sounddown foam inside the forward bulkhead (backs up to the master stateroom)

We made that bulkhead out of 3 layers of 3/4 marine plywood. 1 on the engine room side, and 2 on the stateroom side.

For generators, we pulled out the Northern Lights and the Chinese generator and are dropping in a a Cat 1.5 13.5kw with a full sound enclosure.

Now I just need to figure out exactly how far from the props you have to be before you can run a through hull for raw water on a generator. (thinking about placing it in the lazarette!)

Zach

[Chief Engineer]

I have seen many thruhull located in lazarettes. You just want to make sure they will be underwater at any position of heel.