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How do I fit a bathroom wall/ partition / bulkhead?


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Hello everyone 

I'm wondering if anyone can give advice on how to fit the wall which will cut off the bathroom from the hallway. The two bulkheads which make it a room are already there. i just need to put in the wall, with space for a door. Then after that I will build a stud wall on one side for the shower. 

I suppose cutting the wall to size isn't such an issue, that seems fairly straight forward, but how do I fix it in place? 

Thanks :)

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From what I see normally done before the cabin lining is fitted so the lining hides the mistakes in cutting to fit against the cabin side. I suspect you will have to use wooden fillets at the meeting points of floor, cabin side & deckhead. If the are triangular the screws could be made to pick up the new bulkhead plus whatever its sitting against.

Edited by Tony Brooks
  • Greenie 1
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To get the shape accurate to any profile use Joggle Sticks (Google it). Also sometimes called Tick Sticks although that's sometimes a slightly different technique. A joggle stick takes seconds to make and is a dead easy and reliable method of replicating any profile. 

Found a video:

 

Edited by WotEver
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Constructed all my internal walls using tanalized roofing batten and built as in a normal house. One piece screwed (normally nailed in a house) to floor one piece screwed to ceiling/ Uprights at 400mm centres. Pre drill holes to accommodate any pipe work/cabling vertically up or down or horizontally (not diagonally). ensure door opening allows for a frame. Install insulation to aid sound reduction. That`s the basics hope it helps. 

Would add that on corners attach one side with the finished surface before adding the corner batten. Allows for neat corner junction which can be covered with timber if using veneered ply.

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1 hour ago, jddevel said:

Constructed all my internal walls using tanalized roofing batten and built as in a normal house. One piece screwed (normally nailed in a house) to floor one piece screwed to ceiling/ Uprights at 400mm centres. Pre drill holes to accommodate any pipe work/cabling vertically up or down or horizontally (not diagonally). ensure door opening allows for a frame. Install insulation to aid sound reduction. That`s the basics hope it helps. 

Would add that on corners attach one side with the finished surface before adding the corner batten. Allows for neat corner junction which can be covered with timber if using veneered ply.

That's  fine if you can spare the space but many bulkheads ad "walls" are made form 12 to 18mm board. Along the length of a boat with 4 internal bulkheads it probably gives you about a foot of extra space.

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Retro fitting bulkheads is always a bit tricky to do and make a sound looking job. One idea that may help you is to use a batten screwed to the surface of the linings with a groove in it the thickness of the new bulkhead and about 9mm deep. You can conceal the fixing screws in the groove and then slide in the bulkhead material before putting the door frame in place. If no other fixing methods are available the bulkhead material can be glued into the groove.

Mike.

Edited by Mike Jordan
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15 minutes ago, Mike Jordan said:

Retro fitting bulkheads is always a bit tricky to do and make a sound looking job. One idea that may help you is to use a batten screwed to the surface of the linings with a groove in it the thickness of the new bulkhead and about 9mm deep. You can conceal the fixing screws in the groove and then slide in the bulkhead material before putting the door frame in place. If no other fixing methods are available the bulkhead material can be glued into the groove.

Mike.

but allow for possible metal expansion/movement?

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On the understanding that it's not the best answer to the problem it would be sensible to glue the bottom or one side rather than all round. It's rarely a good idea in my opinion to use masses of glue when fitting out. If you are fitting a bulkhead and door combination which stretches right across the width of the boat I've found its better to allow the door to close up to a partial bulkhead rather than into a rebate. This solves the problem caused by cold winters when the steel she'll contracts and the timber expands due to atmospheric moisture. My photo gallery contains a shot of an internal door with a solid oak raised panel in it, fitted by a so called boat builder in Bath. It was one of many doors on a boat which destroyed themselves in the first winter afloat. They were competently made by someone with no idea of the amount of allowance needed to allow the panels to move with changes in moisture levels.

Mike.

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2 hours ago, Mike Jordan said:

They were competently made by someone with no idea of the amount of allowance needed to allow the panels to move with changes in moisture levels.

It's American, so imperial measurements, but he should have perused this site: 

http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/calculators/calc.pl?calculator=shrinkage

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6 hours ago, Mike Jordan said:

solid oak raised panel in it

Door panels should never be glued. Oaks good for trim fixed one side to hide expansion gaps but a good birch wood multi layered ( not B&Qs 5 but 11 or more ) veneered laminated ply in my opinion should not if sealed correctly move to much. Steels` movement on the other hand to me, with no experience, is an unknown quantity but it will undoubtedly give me problems and projects for years to come!!!

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1 hour ago, jddevel said:

Steels` movement on the other hand to me, with no experience, is an unknown quantity

It ain't that much... 

  • steel: 0.000012 (m/moC)

From here:

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-thermal-expansion-d_1379.html

i make that a total of around 0.7mm for a 70ft boat from winter to mid summer unless I've misplaced a decimal point. 

Edit to amend the above - it's 7mm for a 70ft boat for a 30C difference as pointed out by David below. 

Edited by WotEver
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2 minutes ago, WotEver said:

It ain't that much... 

  • steel: 0.000012 (m/moC)

From here:

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-thermal-expansion-d_1379.html

i make that a total of around 0.7mm for a 70ft boat from winter to mid summer unless I've misplaced a decimal point. 

My mental arithemetic suggests it is 10 times your figure.

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4 minutes ago, David Mack said:

My mental arithemetic suggests it is 10 times your figure.

Yes, you're right. I took 0.000012m to be 0.0012mm, but it's not, it's 0.012mm. 

So 7mm then from 0C to 30C over the full length of the boat. Yeah, that sounds a bit more realistic. Way less than the expansion of wood vs relative humidity but still worth considering. 

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In the past I've seen 8mm of movement of the roof against a bulkhead when the sun heats one side of  my boat and the other side is cold. This is perpendicular to the length of the boat ie across the boat. Obviously it is not directly metal expansion, it is too great, but somewhere in my construction I have some sort of multiplier effect. I have greatly reduced it now but I don't know what I did to do that.

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