water exhaust on the side of the ships ?

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Cohaagen

"Water exhaust"!

That's a bilge outlet. "Bilge" is waste water that collects in a special compartment low down in the ship and is pumped out. Anything bigger than a punt has one. Bilgewater is really nasty stuff. My old boy has some interesting stories about bilge-cleaning and valve changing from when he was a deck officer cadet in the Merchant Navy.

Too right there....when a vessel came into a shipyard for repairs, one of the worst jobs (usually reserved for apprentices) was to get into what was termed the 'double bottoms' below the floor plates and into the bilges to get at the sea valves.

[MLF]

The big ones were the generator cooling water outlets, I seem to remember. There were also the loo outlets (pain in the neck if you got under one of those !), and in the really by-gone days (one hopes) there were tank cleanings from tankers being pumped straight into the sea .

MLF

[CapZap1970]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Too right there....when a vessel came into a shipyard for repairs, one of the worst jobs (usually reserved for apprentices) was to get into what was termed the 'double bottoms' below the floor plates and into the bilges to get at the sea valves.

That's why the term "bilge rat" is used, I pressume...
CapZap

some quick editing.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by privateer

some quick editing.

is it 'on' all the time or does it stop occassionally? :hmm:

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by privateer

some quick editing.

Hehe....you just can't resist

Originally Posted by Racerboy

is it 'on' all the time or does it stop occassionally? :hmm:

It cycles on then stops for a short period before pumping again.
As I have no intention of doing anything but show it's possible,
I'll not be refineing it.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by privateer

It cycles on then stops for a short period before pumping again.
As I have no intention of doing anything but show it's possible,
I'll not be refineing it.

mind making it a generic .dat? That way I can test my new program for adding new nodes... Just a .dat file with the particlegenerator in it would be great

[d@rk51d3]

Would be nice as an indication of an enemy ships hull integrity. The more damage she recieves, the more water pours out from the bilge pumps as she slowly loses control.:hmm:

[tonschk]

Originally Posted by d@rk51d3

Would be nice as an indication of an enemy ships hull integrity. The more damage she recieves, the more water pours out from the bilge pumps as she slowly loses control.:hmm:

Thank you for the answers ,yes I agree ,somehow this bilge exhaust must be also connected with the Hull integrity of the ship,
a damaged hull must produce a strong bilge exhaust

[AVGWarhawk]

This is a very cool idea. I see some progress already and it looks good! I hope it works out!

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by tonschk

Thank you for the answers ,yes I agree ,somehow this bilge exhaust must be also connected with the Hull integrity of the ship,
a damaged hull must produce a strong bilge exhaust

just thinking to myself here there is a way to do this, that is tying it to damage........jeez, I have too much to do already

[Boats]

Actually most of the water shown being pumped overboard is cooling water from machinery spaces. Seawater is pumped in through seachests (a through hull fitting running to a strainer to keep the sea critters out of the engines) and used in a heat exchanger to cool the anti-freeze type fluid that runs in a closed circuit through the ship's engines and generators. Once the seawater ran through the heat exchangers it was pumped overboard. As long as an egine was running the pumps were at work. We called it overboard discharge and was vital in keeping all the machinery running properly.

Bilge water is pumped only a couple of times a day, the pumps are shut down afterwards. A ship doesn't take on that much bilge water to warrant the pumps running constantly. Unless she's damaged of course.
If a ship is damaged her bilge pumps might be as well. I think that battleship in the above photo is being pumped out with a portable pump. Her machinery spaces were probably inoperable due to the attack. Without the generators or main engines the ship's other machinery ceases to function.

[Von Manteuffel]

I don't think the water in the lowest of the three pictures (the one with the pink arrow) is bilge water. It looks like run-off from fire-fighting hoses. Bilge pumps tended to be small and of limited capacity, so it's unlikely that they would pump out greater and greater volumes of water as the ship was progressively damaged and took on more water. They were simple beasts, often operated by a float switch which switched on the pump automatically when water in the bilge reached a certain level.

There were often two, or more, bilge pumps, with the primary one fitted at the lowest point in the bilge and the other(s) slightly higher, to take over when the primary became clogged ( a very common occurrence), or overwhelmed.

The type of hull also affected the amount of water in the bilges and, therefore, the need for pumping. Wooden hulls, with caulking, leaked like seives and needed constant pumping. Riveted hulls, since the rivets were actually fitted into holes in the hull, also leaked. The older the hull ( and, therefore the older the rivets - looser, corroded and stressed by years of vibration ) the more leakage and so the more need to pump out the bilges. Welded hulls were the least leaky, but still, any ship will take on water - if not from below the waterline, so much as from above decks, through hatches, ventilators etc.

IMHO working bilge-pump outflow would be great eye-candy, but all that is needed is a simple flow, not tied in to ship damage.

[Sailor Steve]

And don't forget that in WW2-era surface ships, every time someone flushes the head it dumps straight overboard.

Seriously, this could be a cool little thing.