Our foam insulation has been completed by professionals from the bow back and from the engine room forward. In the middle was 1.5m of hull covered with an old bulkhead and walls that remained as old rusty iron. September’s job was to cut away some bulkhead, strip the hull back, wire brush, paint and finally to insulate both sides with a DIY foam kit. This is a big deal for us as any exposed iron hull becomes wet with condensation when the winter comes.

Before foaming we had to move the central heating controls, move the clock and barometer, clear the shelves, remove the shelves, remove the coat hooks, take out a double socket, remove 4 new wall panels, cut away 3 layers of old bulkhead and 4 x 2 noggins, rebuild the bulkhead with insulation panels but leaving the hull exposed, remove previous spray foam that was on rusty metal, de-rust the metal, paint it with 3 coats of paint, unpin a dozen cables, secure 2 x 2 wooden battens to the iron for the panelling to be attached to, wrap the cables in plastic and then cover everything with plastic sheet that we didn’t want to be covered in foam over spray. It took a week! Everything needed to be covered because we knew that Lawrence would go into a spray foam frenzy once he started as he knew he could only stop for under 30 seconds before the spry foam nozzle set hard and would need replacing. It seemed like a lot of work to just insulate less than 2 m of boat.

Here the iron hull is scraped back of paint and rust to reveal the rivets and overlapping plates of iron and ribs.

The red area is fully painted with left over paints from other jobs and everything is covered with thin plastic sheets. The new 2 x 2 battens are covered with duct tape so it can be ripped off later to reveal clean battens to put the panelling on.

With full PPE including disposable overalls and an organic gas and vapour breathing mask Lawrence took about 30 minutes to finish all the exposed hull and crevices and used the whole DIY spray foam kit.