Flooring ?

Our boat is a USN Utility, the interior flooring is no skid , a variant of air craft carrier no skid.

Black epoxy with small flint shards , pretty worn down so barefoot is OK, but since I have installed a new cabin top, and 4 opening bronze ports,perhaps a floor upgrade ?

While gluing down teak parquet , or self stick tiles from a box store would work, I winder if anyone has ever used

NewLife by GelPro 20 by 32-Inch Pebble Designer Comfort Mat,

The cabin sole is so limited in area the price would not be outrageous.

Looks both soft , and no skid .


Comments?

I Googled this stuff, and it seems to have a foam core, and it's got a beveled edge. If you are planning to butt pieces together and cut off the bevels, you might need to seal the edges or find some other means to keep it from delaminating. Sounds like a lot of work. There are a lot of cushioned and non-skid vinyl products that would probably meet your needs and be a whole lot easier to install.

Our floors are just plywood. I painted them w a fairly dark green floor paint and like the looks of them. Carpets are for yachts and they impede access to the hold and the engine compartment. The floor paint has a very matte finnish and seems to require no anti-skid help. Carpet may reduce engine noise though but unless it's specifically for noise reduction I wouldn't expect much noise reduction.

We had one of those mats in front of our galley sink, they won't last a month as flooring. Below is nice stuff, I liked the grey w/ nickel sized dots on it, I got some samples/ but too expensive for me:
LONSEAL Flooring: MARINE

There are some garage floor products that look like they would do a nice job on your sole and much more reasonable too.

I agree carpet is too yachty, but that is what I ended up with. Grey, in/outdoor, cheap from Lowes. In a cut to fit runner that can be picked up and shaken over the side, sand, doghair and all. Or hosed down and flung over a rail to dry. It is so thin it doesn't dampen much sound but it does keep junk from getting into the hatch cracks which is a plus.

I have taken all my carpets out. Not only do they hold moisture, but can and do grow with smell. Under deck is plywood, but painting is only to protect the wood. I have a friend with a 42 Marinette who has replaced his flooring with engineered flooring, Brazilian Cherry. The product is all wood and locks together. He used a few brads to secure it and it really looks great. As for hatches, a hatch was made where needed. To dress the deck the alternate Captain placed a lovely throw carpet which is easliy removed for cleaning and off the boat during winter storage. The current family of vinyl products available are great and as mentioned earlier no belvel. I am looking at both for a 2013-14 major refit.
For exterior use the vinyl products are first class and are non-skid. Bill

FF said:

... I winder if anyone has ever used

NewLife by GelPro 20 by 32-Inch Pebble Designer Comfort Mat,

The cabin sole is so limited in area the price would not be outrageous.

Looks both soft , and no skid .


Comments?

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3/4" is pretty thick. I'm not sure about funature or anything pointy. My brothernaw has a restauant and behind the bar he has similar looking stuff. It's helps the reduce the sore backs and feet of the staff. Maybe check a restauant supply house for flooring.

Well, I guess we are yachty as the Eagle is completely carpeted except for the galley. The carpet is cut to size, not tacked/glued down so it can be rolled/taken up. Since the areas are small it’s not very expensive to re carpet, and easy using the old as a template. I re carpeted the Salon, 12’ X 16’ for two hundred buck using a remnant, and took about 4 hour total from start to finish. It does quiet the noise, and the boat is a lot warmer.

We also have accent throw rugs for the high traffic areas. However they cost more than the carpet.

I'm currently in the process of making a Teak and Holly Plywood sole in the salon. It can be epoxied into place. I'm not sure if any of the construction adhesives would work. Its a matter of whether the adhesive will stick to the plywood. Make a test area and adhere something down and test it out.
I don't like carpeting in boats. They are major dust collectors, hold the heat in the summer time and wear out fairly rapidly. I have always had plywood or fiberglass floors. In the winter, the admiral usually buys an oval throw rug and throws it out in the spring.

manyboats said:

...Carpet may reduce engine noise though but unless it's specifically for noise reduction I wouldn't expect much noise reduction.

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Eric: I think you'd be surprised. We have 4.5 large throw rugs in the salon. When the rugs are off the floor, the engine noise is noticeably louder. Part of the noise reduction is that the rugs cover/seal the hatch seams but the over all noise reduction due to the rugs is significant.

Larry I like the feedback and will explore possibly using some kind of roll up rug like thing that will work for us. I need to make all new floor/hatch covers and I'll be looking to increase the sound attenuation abilities of the floor. I think moisture in rugs could be greatly minimized by the choice of material used.

Another noise source I have noticed even on my last boat is that sound from the engine seems to come up the way the control cables do to amplify engine noise at the helm. Especially valve noise. Anyone else seem to have simillar noises?

Brooksie,
I love your nice little dinette. Any chance of getting some measurements? Next summer I'd like to take out our L shaped settee and put in a little dinette. Don't know if I have room though. Is your's plenty big? Seems I recall you have a smaller boat too. Thanks if
Thanks

Noise, engine/generator, is a constant problem and perhaps we should have another site for it. First off, every opening going upward will carry noise. The cable issue and other openings will let sound travel up. One of the problems I have found is how we apply sound deadening products. The sandwich should be built, from deck down in my view as follows: Against the bottom of the deck an impervious product, may foil items are available from builder supplies. Then use ROXUL safe'n sound bats that are fire resistant, water repellent and most importantly are sound proof. Then cover the bats with perferated board and seal the edges with proper tape, (not normal duck tape) or with some other device. The sound will travel thru the holes, be obsorbed by the bat and hit the foil and return thru the bat and out once again thru the holes, if it gets there as dead sound.
Now to the other issue cable openings. Another product which is a putty product, but never ever hardens is Duck seal made by Gardner Bender (www.gardnerbender.com). This product is moisture, noise useful and adheres to metal, wood, plastic, rubber, masonary, and painted surfaces.
Lastly, much noise comes from ridgid exhaust piping. If you are really stressed by the engine noise make your exhaust hoses flexible, the heavier the better. Standard exhaust hose has a pretty thin wall, either rubber or silicone. Take a look at industrial heavy rubber steam hose. It will meet all standards and will obsorb much noise. Bill

Perhaps a little "yachty", but I pulled up my boat's 12 year old stained carpet and installed AMTICO teak and holly flooring. It's not teak and holly of course, it's a laminate that's installed in individual strips.

Not the easiest thing I've ever done, but I like the look and I've had lots of compliments on it:



More photos here:

PictureTrail: Online Photo Sharing, Social Network, Image Hosting, Online Photo Albums

manyboats said:

Brooksie,
I love your nice little dinette. Any chance of getting some measurements? Next summer I'd like to take out our L shaped settee and put in a little dinette. Don't know if I have room though. Is your's plenty big? Seems I recall you have a smaller boat too. Thanks if
Thanks

Click to expand...

manyboats, I have many more pictures than I posted earlier under "winter improvement projects" which I can send you if you give me your email, I will find the dimensions to go along with them if I can. I don't really want to take up their space here. Yes, I also removed a settee to install this in my Willard 36. As you can see from the pics, it actually overhangs the hinged engine hatches in an effort to make it as wide as I could. The table is removable and can be dogged down in the cockpit for outside eating and a plywood slab replaces it to make a tight double bunk.

Ron that floor is beautiful. How long did it take to install?

Ron: A wonderful marine job and ehances your pride and joy. Bill

Thanks both of you. As for how long, I didn't keep track and I didn't work more than a few hours each day. If I had been paying myself marina labor rates, I couldn't have afforded it. And having done it once, I'm sure I could do the next one (not that I'm planning on it) much quicker. If I had to guess, probably 60 hours.

Consider that in addition to the floor, I had to mill a mahogany board for the baseboard and trim and finish it and I had to move the Airconditioning intake upwards to accomodate the baseboard. Oh, and remove the carpet from the sidewall under the seat and apply and trim laminate.

Here's the baseboard and trim and me working in January last year.

FF, check the advert for "Lonseal Marine Vinyl Flooring", p25 December "Afloat" mag.<www.afloat.com.au>. I saw the product at a boat show,it looked good. Unlikely to be made here,we don`t make stuff, we mostly dig and export.

Ron that stuff looks great. I'm going to google it and sure put it on my short list. Thanks Paul
Where do you get it?

FF , Lonseal, thats the ling I sent you at the begining of this discussion saying "too expensive" 72" wide and $45./ running foot! Wow

Swampu, you know that you have to get pecky cypress for all the "wood" surfaces in your boat. It makes excellent floors as well!

Ron--- Very nice looking cabin sole you ended up with. Being a laminate I suspect it holds up better under use than an actual teak and holly floor would.

Eric--- While there is thick noise insulation on the bottoms of all our floor panels, and the panels themselves are quite thick with the framing, plywood, and then fairly thick teak parquet on top, the engine noise still comes up through the helm pedestal, the storage compartment under the cabin door step, and so forth.

When we bought the boat the previous owner had put long carpet runners in the main and aft cabins but we got rid of them. There was no difference in noise level that we could discern. A big improvement was the addition of two of those gel floor pads in the main cabin. Each one is about 2' x 4', they look good and they make standing at the galley or at the helm a lot more comfortable for the feet.

They are not glued down or anything but they have a non-skid backing that keeps them in place on the wood flooring and they don't absorb water. Not the cheapest things on the planet but in our view they are very worthwhile having.

Lionseal, yes I know of the product , we have used it on some commercial boats.

Just don't love the price .And the look is really Industrial.

Living aboard in NYC , I have found bathroom rug material to be the easiest to live with ,it doesn't need binding and is machine washable.

Very useful during snow, ice and mud season, when visitors keep their boots on.

I have considered std linoleum , but very little is made with no skid properties.

Still searching for the right combo of use and cost.