Ive been somewhat tasked with getting the machine shop and welding shop set up on a new vessel. Of course most equipment was installed before delivery however it wasnt really organized for good work flow and organization. One of my main conserns is in regards to the welding shop. Every ship ive worked on so far has kept oxygen and acetylene bottles at opposite ends of the room at the very least and one even had the acetylene bottle in an adjoining space. Currently our bottles are just kept on a cart strapped to the bulkhead. Im wondering if theres an ABS or coastguard rule regarding this as to why this is the first time im seeing them kept next to eachother. Id like to put in more permanent solid mounts for the bottles and eventually install a retractable hose reel for them. Also if theres any other rules to keep in mind for how the shops should be set up id appreciate any insight.
Depends on the amount. Best practice is to either separate them by twenty feet or store them in separate containers.
A lot of initial setup to account for best practices doesn’t account for operations under shipboard conditions. It’s neat to have them in separate compartments until they have to be used in rough weather and carted over next to each other because that’s the only gauge and hose setup available. That’s how they end up poorly lashed in a corner of the shop and left there. Make sure you invest in a proper gauge and hose setup to account for reality.
they are stored outside. You can have a man pack set for quick work around the ship stuffed in the parts room or someplace, otherwise you need a lot of hose to reach the tanks but i’ve never seen the big bottles inside the ship.
I agree. We have the bottles outside on the stern in two separate cages. There are regulators and flashback arrestors on the active bottles with a small hose to a pipe that is run to our machine shop where it enters a box with yet another flashback arrestor then connected to the hoses and yet another flashback arrestor on the torch handle.
Interesting. Maybe its just a MSC/navy thing. Every ship i was on with msc had 1 in use set of the standard sized bottles in the main machine shop and usually another set in the deck machinist shop as those are the only 2 permanent hotwork areas. then all the spares were stored forward of the house somewhere. Never saw any sort of hard piped system asside from one that had the acetylene bottle in the parts room next to the shop with a standard rubber hose run through the cable ways over the bulkhead to the other end of the shop where the oxygen bottle was. All run off just standard regulators at the bottle.
Nearly every ship I sailed on had a set of bottles in the machine shop. Spare bottles were stored outside the engine room.
I do recall stringing hose for 100 ft. or more. Maybe we had a set in the machine shop but I always grabbed a manpak from somewhere else and made fast work of it.