The first job after sprayfoaming and before laying the floor was to position the cabin stove and install the steel hearth base. Here is the squirrel stove on it's base made of 1/2" baseplate offcut. The stern end reached a convenient knee and the fore end can be seen supported on a steel angle welded in to fit. A tab at the hearth front was added to support the sub floor as was the plate to the stern end beyond the knee.
Ballast in the form of conveniently sized drive paving bricks was packed below the hearth. Being very cost aware, Dave had "rescued" these from a waste skip.
Here the back cabin side floor sections have been added. Below these the fuel tank has been insulated. The foam on the back face can just be seen after cutting back.
The busy scene on the photo below shows the various stages of ballasting:
1 Cleaned thoroughly with a vacuum cleaner to ensure no remaining debris.
Scuppers cleaned and edges/scratches given another coat of paint.
2 Roofing felt fitted to within 1" of the edge of each compartment is laid. This protects the baseplate against scratching and eventually "melts" to fix the ballast in place. The bare edge allows contingent water movement.
3 Ballast in the form of paving slabs is laid to as closely as possible, but with the edges clear, fill the compartment.
In this case the long thin rear slab was found to be bevelled so this was laid along the bottom rear edge.
Following ballasting the sub floor is installed.
The sub floor is 19mm hardwood ply shaped to fit around each knee and fastened to the base knees with self tapping screws about 8 to 10 inches apart. Where possible joints were made on the knees which are 8 feet apart. Where a joint did not occur over a knee (ie longitudonally or where a pipe crossing was built) a bridging piece was added to ensure stabilty and level.
Even though an oak planked floor will be laid above it in most places each section was carefully checked for level to it's neighbour to ensure no ridges.
The hearth steel support has now been painted but the hearth itself has been left to give the tile cement best chance to stick.
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