[PSUBS-MAILIST] Ballast water valves on single hull subs with bow and stern tanks was AW: Uc3 Nautilus

[James Frankland via Personal_Submersibles]

Hi Carsten
Have police asked you for assistance?  You would know immediately if
UC3 had a problem with valves or if the boat was sunk intentionally?

regards
James

On 15/08/2017, MerlinSub at t-online.de via Personal_Submersibles
<personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
>
>
> I like to explain how the ballast water system on UC3 and on Euronaut works.
>
> UC 3
> One hull sub with a bow ballastwater tank and a stern ballastwatertank.
> One ballast butterfly vale on top of each tank - tanks on the bottom open to
> the sea.
> Mechanical linkage from the valves to a troughhull to inside the sub to a
> mechanical hand lever.
> The position of this hand lever shows the position of the butterfly valve.
> Pretty simple and easy. No backup system - if you turn the two hand lever -
> the boat dive.
>
> Euronaut
> One hull sub with a bow ballastwater tank and a stern ballastwatertank.
> One ballast ballvale on top of each tank - tanks on the bottom open to the
> sea.
> Mechanical linkage from the valves to a troughhull to inside the sub to a
> eletrical servo.
> Servo can be drop off in case of a electrical error and replace by a hand
> lever (a pipe)
> Troughhull angel indicator gives you a green light if vale is closed, a red
> for open.
> Dashboard has four green and four red lights for the two ballast tanks
> valves and the
> two eletric remote controled hardtank valves. Servos only operates if you
> switch the converter on.
> You have to press the buttons for 15 Seconds before the ballvalves are fully
> open.
> This give you some time in case you can not read the labels proper and press
> maybe the wrong button..
> In harbour or surface drive only mode the ball valves a sealed by metall
> plates -so even opening the valves will not flood the tank. These metall
> plates have small check screws - so you can test the vales function safe in
> harbour without to dive the boat. This test will be done any time before
> leave the harbour to ensure that both ballast valve are working.
>
> Problem with one hull sub with a bow ballastwater tank and a stern
> ballastwatertank are:
> If only one vale open and the other is still close the boat will half dive
> under an very heavy angle.
> To prevent any mistake like that we only operate the valves only after a
> harbour check and only with closed hatches.
>
> Saftey procedure:
> What ever goes wrong with the system - first close the hatch and endsure the
> pressure hull tightness (seal the exhaust system).
>
> A submarine is only a submarine if the hatch is closed.
> In all other cases it is just a motorboat with a very low freeboard.
>
> vbr Carsten
>
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