Essential alarms: Water, Heat, Fire/ Smoke, ...?

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jms28

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Hi all,

I want to upgrade the security regime of my Cranchi Mediterranee 40 (1990) for next season.

Last year a loose water hose flooded my engine room. After I realised that the water was sweet (armed with a bucket to empty the engine room while my father took over the helm:rolleyes:) I was more relaxed about it, but the initial shock still sits deep! So this is the very first thing I want to install: a reliable water alarm system monitoring various strategic locations (i.e. near all sea water vales or maybe just in the engine room and bilge?) Any recommendations here? Is there something with Bluetooth that could alert my smart phone as well? Or what about bilge pump float switches causing the alarm? Don't have any experience here and open for recommendations.

What other alarms are essential in your opinion? Both my engines (Volvo Penta TAMD60A) are of course fitted with temperature sensors, sitting at the elbow pipe of the exhaust to my knowledge. My question is: is that enough? Would you recommend additional fire and/ or smoke detectors? The latter I am not sure about, as the engines will always release a bit of some into the engine room, no?

Looking forward to your input!

Best
 
The commercial boats i work on have to have separate bilge alarms, auto bilge pumps are not allowed. As you are not governed by commercial coding, you could fit both, an auto water level sensor that turns the bilge pumps on, whilst sounding an alarm at the same time.

We fit smoke alarms in the engine rooms, connected wirelessly to other smoke alarms throughout the vessel. If one goes off, they all go off. Fire angel do some that should be suitable for your boat.

The other, absolutely must have, are Co alarms.
 
To the sensor of bilge water: I am using a very simple circuit consisting form a piezo buzer with + permanently connected and - fed through a wire with about 2 cm of insulation removed hanging just about the bottom. Works perfectly, it can even differentiate between sea water and fresh water - the sound produced by the later is much weaker ;-). A flashing LED in parallel doesn't cause any harm.
 
Thanks for the replies folks and apologies for the radio-silence.

I'm going to replace my old engine room bilge pump with a Whale Orca 2000 (after reading a very good review about it in the German boote magazine!) and I also want to replace the connected float switch. While I'm at it, I want to proceed and install an alarm that is linked to the float switch, so that when the switch detects water, it activates the pump AND alerts me audibly and visually in the cockpit. I found these two most commonly on the web, but read mixed reviews regarding quality and volume of the alarm: Rule The Hi-Water Bilge Alarm as well as various version of the simple Bilge pump switchboard with alarm.

Does anyone have either of those onboard? Can you recommend another good alarm that suits my criteria? What about the common Rule Rule-A-Matic Float Switch? Good and reliable product?

Many thanks
 
PaulRainbow said:
The commercial boats i work on have to have separate bilge alarms, auto bilge pumps are not allowed. As you are not governed by commercial coding, you could fit both, an auto water level sensor that turns the bilge pumps on, whilst sounding an alarm at the same time.

We fit smoke alarms in the engine rooms, connected wirelessly to other smoke alarms throughout the vessel. If one goes off, they all go off. Fire angel do some that should be suitable for your boat.

The other, absolutely must have, are Co alarms.
Click to expand...

Talking of gas alarms I had a big row with an MCA inspect over that...

He insisted under the code we used (brown IIRC ), that we must have a gas alarm. He was very red faced when I pointed out that as we had no gas on board as the boat was all electric he wasn't best please at being shown up in front of his colleagues.

W.
 
PilotWolf said:
Talking of gas alarms I had a big row with an MCA inspect over that...

He insisted under the code we used (brown IIRC ), that we must have a gas alarm. He was very red faced when I pointed out that as we had no gas on board as the boat was all electric he wasn't best please at being shown up in front of his colleagues.

W.
Click to expand...

Good point, but CO could get in from your engine exhaust, or someone else's.
 
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