Wednesday 4 May 2011

Day After

I spent most of today cleaning up the mess from yesterdays incident.  I removed the batteries, fortunately the battery box contained the acid spill and fortunately also seems most of the explosion damage.  I was expecting to find acid damage everywhere but seems I have been lucky in that respect.

Once the batteries were removed I used a wetvac to suck out the now naturalized acid and then because the box was put in before the engine I had to cut it up to get it out.  The new one going in will require the deck drains to be cut and re-welded at a later stage.

Once the solid debris was removed I sprayed a solution of soda around to kill of any acid, then throughly washed out the bilge and engine bay and anywhere I thought the acid might have reached.   All this took about 5 hours.  This is how the damage looks today.

 The Batteries

 Battery box 

 Battery box

 This is a metal bracket through which the
restraining straps pass.  Both are ripped

 This piece of angle was a right angle &
the other strap bracket

 The shunt

Where the power dill hit

Judging from a lot of the comments I've had from other sources I am lucky I didn't suffer any personal injury.  I have heard some horrible tails. In hindsight I think I was lucky.

On a positive note.  The massive whack I gave my knee yesterday seems to have done some good.  I have had a long term problem with it.  Time will tell!

7 comments:

  1. Kev do you know what caused the spark that set the explosion off??? In my old sailboat I had traction batteries in an airtight sealed box with a 2.5 cm hose vented overboard. No fan. Glad your safe, hope the knee is going to be OK also. Great blog!!!!

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  2. Hello Kevin

    Thanks. I am going to look into this a lot more. I knew they could do this but never had any idea how powerful the effects could be. I just thought it would be like that little pop we got when we made hydrogen in a test tube at school. I suppose it's quantity.

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  3. Oh yes, the spark came from some grinding I was doing on the stern.

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  4. I once saw the top of a battery go through the roof of a gas station garage! I think the strong box you built contained a lot of the damage. Just glad you're OK.

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  5. Thanks Bill.

    I think you're right about the box. I really think that took the brunt of it saving more damage and injury.

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  6. I hope both your knee and the new battery worked out well! I read the previous post and was glad you took the time to post pictures of the aftermath.

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  7. I thought it worth blogging. I haven't got new batteries yet but it's on the list.

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