[PSUBS-MAILIST] concrete submarine yacht, status, forming, viewports

[clientes@tolimared.com]

concrete submarine yacht, status, forming, viewports

Hello Thijs,

To answer the question of status i have to tell you the whole story...

Lake Atter is a alpine Lake with little access by road. There was only one site
(you see it on the picturs)(http://tolimared.com/submarine) where the road comes
so close to the water that you can place a crane there and lift a heavy
submarine into the lake like on a pier. 

Unfortunatly a few years after i had my submarine in the water this place was
converted in a bathing area with a sand beach. So there was no site for a heavy
construction crane any longer. The cranes of the yacht clubs have 5 tons limit.
So my sub was trapped in the lake.

A buoy on lake Atter for yachting purpose costs 50 Euro a Month. As i got a job
promotion i lived in Vienna which is some 4hours in car from the lake. Of course
i still came for the weekends, took my generator and portable battery pack out
of the car - packed it in the red plastic boat you see in the pictures - rowed
out the 50m to my submarine´s bouy packed the batteries and generator into the
sub - let the plastic boat on the bouy - ready to dive.
Great fun. 

My wife a german language student from colombia got a kid - i got a job offer
for southamerica a second kid on the way - you can not fly after 3 month of
pregnancy so we had to take off and leave the submarine on its bouy i still paid
the bouy fee from southamerica.
For 5 years.

Obviously the fact that a miserious submarine is anchored in their lake drove
some locals completly nuts they wanted to have a look in and broke the lock of
the top hatch with a hammer - unfortunatly damaging the seal in the process. 

My brother from austria reported me the fact - but there was little i could do
from colombia. With ballast on board the submarine has only some 200 liter of
flotation so if rain and spray water enters trough the hatch for months- sooner
or later it would go down i was aware of that. Anyhow i could not use nor sell
the submarine from southamerica and the buoy check came every month. So i
decided to make an attraction for local divers and let things go their way . 

A couple of months later my brother reported me from austria that my sub went
down and has converted into a attraction for the divers some 30m down - the
mistery submarine from lake Atter...a honorable place for a concept study. This
solution also offers the possibility of a long term study how hull and viewports
develop during the next decades. Reportedly both are in great shape.

Being installed in Colombia (South America) of course i checked the possibility
of a site with unlimited access to the ocean for building a submarine yacht of
about 15 m lenght that would be capeable of doing ocean crossings without a
support ship and give enough space for live aboard. I found a nice piece of
caribbean shorline near TOLU where economic labour force and road access is
available.

My favorite plan is to get a buyer or investment partner and build the hull in
TOLU near cartagena then take it to a place wherever in the world the buyer
needs it for final equipment. I would document building status by digital Photos
from colombia.

At the moment i make a living as an import export advisor
(http://latinindustry.biz) but if a investor or buyer should show up for a
submarine proyect i would move inmediatly to the building site and start
building the hull.

Concrete forming molds
-----------------------
What concerns concrete forming you should have a look at the forming process
with "slip forms" as done in toronto TV tower - this consists in a small ring
forming area that moves up the building a step evry 5 days - just do it
horizontally. You need to compact the concrete in the mold - if you build whole
mold at once you can not access all areas. If you check how oil platform legs,
bridge foundations, cooling towers, etc... are formed you get a good idea how to
do it - they do not use a complete mold they form in small parts...of course all
mold parts get removed and must be prevented from moving during pouring in the
concrete. My mold material consisted in 5m2 cheap pressed sheet material and 50
kilo pinewood.

Viewport seatings in a concrete submarine
-----------------------------------------
The general purpose of viewports seatings is that you need the area of the
viewport being stable and flat. In a submarine with a thin steel skin over a rib
skeleton the skin moves under water pressure at dive. The viewport seat stops
that movement in the area where acrylics and hull meet. In a concrete submarine
you will not have that kind of movements.
A massive steel peace in your hull will interrupt uniformity of force flow. So i
opted for forming the viewport seating from concrete - no steel ring. Worked
fine at my pressure test model, worked fine at my submarine.

Kindest Regards,
Wilfried




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