Re: Installing Hardware Below the Waterline
As the OP of this thread, I'll reply to your question here:
Why do I have to pour the foam through drilled out holes in the deck? Can't I lay the deck down after I have poured the foam?
If you look at a cured chunk of closed cell poured in foam, it's got a hard outer shell that's basically smooth and should resist water intrusion better then if you cut the top off of a cured chunk of flotation foam & expose the expanded foam interior. To some degree this removes a fraction of the encapsulated air volume trapped in the foam. It's the air trapped in the foam that's providing the flotation.
EDIT: Many manufacturers depend on the expanded foams expansion into every nook & cranny below decks and it's adhesion to those surfaces, as an integral portion of the structural components of the hull & deck.
NOTE: If the OP (original poster as noted by the
[OP] next to their user name) hasn't posted anything in a thread for 3months, it's best to treat them as dead threads & for research only. Try not to post into them. If you have specific questions about the OP's boat, topic or thread, you might PM the OP, perhaps they will respond.
As boating season winds down, more people are considering some boat maintenance this winter, so there have been a bunch of old threads brought 'back'. Once there's been a new post, the thread goes back to the top of the recent post list, and there are many subsequent posts... And although the discussion may prove helpful to some, it would be of much greater benefit, to more iboaters, if it occurred in a relevant and recently started thread.
And now back to your hardware below the waterline thread....
BTW: Might consider starting a maintenance thread about your boat & what you're doing. And post up some pix. Plenty of pix junkies around these parts
