Ventilation

Bob,

You're right...there was confusion. The fan that I was talking about you have as #36. Fan #38 is completely gone. I will have to check my notes at home for my observations about #38. Off the top of my head, I recall that all that's left is the reinforced base, which means that the ducting pass-thru hole will be visible. I'll get back with you later.

Parks
 
I had a look through my analysis notes last night. All that remains of what you have labeled as Vent #38 is the reinforced pad upon which the vent/fan assembly once sat. The decks underneath have compressed together, so nothing can be seen from the side.

There is a row of rivets running athwartships just forward of the outlines of the vent foundation, and another just aft. These rows of rivets continue with equidistant spacing forward and aft of this area. A railing stanchion base sits at the roof's edge, lined up with the forward edge of the vent foundation.

Inside the foundation area itself, two holes in the deck can be seen. One, in the forward starboard quadrant of the foundation, is irregular and is possibly a corrosion hole (there is a larger irregular hole forward of this outside of the vent's foundation). In this hole, there is something thin running athwartships...is this the frame? I could not verify from the one image in which it appears...the other images of this area show the entire hole as black.

The second hole in the foundation pad is not irregular. Three of the four edges are straight and the curved corners are sharp. It is longer longitudinally than transversely, runs along the outboard (port) side of the foundation and is not centred fore-and-aft, but rather slightly forward. This would be the vent ducting pass-thru. There is debris visible in the hole, but none of it is identifiable. It does not appear that the thin object seen in the first hole extends through the second hole.

That's the extent of my notes on this particular area.

Parks
 
Parks:

Thanks for your notes. Nothing really jumps out at me. The real answer would be found if we could see into the promenade deck but it sounds like it has pancaked. I still hold out hope that somewhere an Olympic photo will surface that shows this area on the promenade deck. There seems to be a lot more Boat Deck photos of Olympic, probably because of better lighting. The few passenger photos taken on the promenades have been of fairly poor quality.

Regards,
Bob Read
 
Bob,

Back to Peter's book again. I was looking through it, and although this is not the 1st time I saw this photo, this time it just jumped out at me! There is a boat deck photo (I think it's page 111 or 114), that is a Brown Brothers photo of a man on the raised roof. The photographer is on the port side, and you can see the fan, and the duct going over the side of the indent of the raised roof (between the bay windows).

Considering that we know that the fan was on frame 6A, and the duct just seems to go straight down, I'd say that it either had to split at the frames, or just incorporate them.

Regards,

Daniel.
 
You guys probably don't to hear me going on about the wreck imagery, but I have the pass-thru hole very close to the roof's edge. In addition, what I think is the frame seen through a corrosion hole directly inboard from the pass-thru is not seen in the pass-thru hole itself. From this, I deduce that the frame does not extend outside the confines of the Lounge room proper; in other words, when the designers extended Titanic's roof to cover the alcoves created by the Lounge's bays, they probably didn't extend the original framing (used in Olympic) into the new areas of roof. In that case, there would be no frame in the way of this fan's ducting. The fan itself does rest atop the frame, inboard of the Lounge outer wall.

Did I explain myself clearly, or was that confusing?

Parks
 
Parks,

Thats a good point. On the Olympic photo you can see this duct curving over the side of the roof and of course there was no extension on Olympic. Titanic quite probably (obviously) had no frame in this section, however the problem still stands as it had to travel through the floor of the boat deck and then through the floor of A deck where the frame would have been in the path. I don't know what it did after B deck, and in which direction it travelled, I don't know what area of the ship the fan serviced.

Daniel.
 
Daniel,

That's where we're lost without the fan itself. The fan motor housings had plaques on them that describe what areas they serviced. If the fan were there and the plaque not obscured by rusticles, you would have your answer.

For instance, according to its plaque, the fan over the Lounge supplied the Lounge only. However, the fan outside the 1st Class Entrance supplied the following:

B Dk. Passages Port
C Dk. 1st Cl. Accom. Port
D Dk. Reception Rm.

Parks
 
Well, we have a big clue as to what it serviced.
The exact same fan on Olympic exhausted from the
1st Class Dining Room on D deck. I don't have a clue about what the fan at the same place on the starboard side served. The source for what this fan supplied on Olympic is the Andrews Notebook.
Unless the function of this fan was taken over by the fan on the boat deck just forward of the
raised roof over the Reading and Writing room then it would have to somehow traversed the frame 6A on the Boat deck, A deck,B deck, and C deck before arriving at the ceiling of the 1st Class dining room on D deck. Unless somebody out there has the equivalent of the Andrews notebook for Titanic I don't know of any way to sort out what served where at least on Titanic. It's funny, we have this info for Olympic and Britannic but as far as I know, not Titanic.

Regards,
Bob Read
 
I did a little more digging and I found out that the vent on Britannic which corresponded to the
vent at the forward port end of the raised roof over the reading and writing room was dedicated to exhaust the 1st Class Dining saloon on D deck.
Also on Britannic the two 20 in. sirocco fans which had been on frame 6A on Titanic were moved off the raised roof and slightly aft. Both of these served the 1st Class Dining saloon on D deck. That would tell me that both of the 20 in siroccos at frame 6A on Titanic most likely also served the 1st Class Dining saloon on D deck.
That would mean they most certainly had to deal with frame 6A in the ducting. So, the question will remain: How did they route these ducts?

Regards,
Bob Read
 
The answer to your question.

Bob, I had some time to look at this tonight, a luxury I seldom get, and the reason why the duct was able to pass through the alcove at the Boat Deck level was because your interrupting frame was not there. The H&W plans we have show something very different then how the ship finally came out. They made an adjustment. Frame 6A stops at the fore and after that is running along the side of the lounge bulkhead. Here is your photo. I am certain it is the right spot. The curved R&W room window is in the background. Again, we have an instance where the plans can not always to be trusted.

Bruce

http://olympic.txc.net.au/sgt003/H1522.JPG
 
Bruce:
Sorry to have to disagree with you but the Boat Deck Iron plans correspond exactly with the photo you presented which I have seen. I am placing a link at the end of this to the same photo I have lightened a little so the individual frames show up. I have placed a pointer to the frame in question,6A which travels uninterrupted into the alcove and I have numbered two frames on either side for reference.
Frames 4A and 8A pass the fore and aft beam and land on the inner aspects of the fore and aft windows which border the alcove. Frames 5A and 7A terminate on the fore and aft beam as shown in the photo and the plans. Frame 6A passes the beam and travels into the Lounge where its end is supported by a column. This creates one of the
side divisions in the interior of the lounge.
So it is this uninterrupted frame 6A that somehow has to be dealt with by the duct which takes us back to the beginning of this discussion. Here's the photo:
http://webpages.charter.net/bpread/photos/H1522a.jpg

Regards,
Bob Read
 
Bob,

I guess I didn't blow it up enough huh? Oh well. I see what you mean. I looked at the port vent in one photo - the back to service top of the 4th funnel shot, and it seems that thing was not centered directly over the frame. I noticed this on other more detailed plans also, the fan and duct appears to be a bit aft of center. They could have put in an special duct in that space between the raised roof and the boat deck. One with a slight "S" to it, or other design that accommodated that shift. I seriously doubt they split the duct, or ran the beam through it. From the reading I have done on ventilation systems of the period, a slight angle was o.k., and necessary in a lot of cases as long as it was not over a certain degree.

Bruce
 
I've been using rivet-counter.com as my source for information on the ventilation of the ship, as it's the only source I'e been able to find. From that, I've gotten a couple questions:

1. Most of the vents have a measurement. Are these measurements referring to the size of the opening?
Inkedindex_LI.jpg

2. The main page for the Vents on rivet-counter.com says that the diagrams used for the vents are not to proportional scale. Is there a source where I can find the correct proportions of the vents?

3. Vent 71, the vent next to the Aft Mast looks really tall in the diagram image.
Vent Info Template
Is this a case of bad proportion, or was it really a tall vent? I can't seem to find many pics of a vent being there, and the ones I do don't show a particularly tall one.

It seems every so often I see someone linking to a place they say is a great source of reference and resources, but the links go to non-existant pages. Seems a lot of Titanic design resources just don't exist anymore, or are hard to find...
 

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