Opening windows on the front of a deckhouse

[Matt Johnson]

Anyone have any design specs or requirements (acrylic thickness, ratio of cutout to surround) of adding opening hatches to the middle of the acrylic windows on either side? I've seen hatches cut into the forward windows of multiple cats and on the side deadlights of modern decksalon boats. Maybe something like that could work.

Matt

[GILow]

Hmm... Sounds complicated.

Thankfully we won't need to do anything so tricky. MarkJ, your suggestion wins the day. We've just been for a sail and I took my trusty tape measure.

We can easily do double opening windows in that centre panel and clear the mast, but for simplicity's sake we will just make the lower half open and keep the top half fixed. Why the lower half? I know it will be more vulnerable to waves, but the deck house is one of the most lovely parts of the boat in which to sleep, and having the lower half of the window open will direct cool air to the level at which you sleep. Very nice. Double opening will be quite tricky, and since I assume I am going to have manufacture this myself, simple will be the name of the game.

Thanks to all for the ideas and advice, great to get me thinking out of the box.

Matt



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[Cadence]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Anyone have any design specs or requirements (acrylic thickness, ratio of cutout to surround) of adding opening hatches to the middle of the acrylic windows on either side? I've seen hatches cut into the forward windows of multiple cats and on the side deadlights of modern decksalon boats. Maybe something like that could work.

Matt

If I understand you? I Hope you mean polycarbonate not acrylic. Polycarbonate (Lexan) at 1/4" is bullet proof. Down side is it scratches.

[Triumphant]

I have a steel ketch with an aluminium wheel shelter, when we bought the boat in 1994 it had 3 non opening windows in the wheelshelter which were made out of armoured glass, so very hot at anchor

In 2004 we added an opening window in the middle made of 4 or 6 mm armoured glass and what a difference it makes in the trade winds.

Last year we changed the remaining side ones to opening windows as well. The glass is 8mm as this is what the manufacturer specified, (it does make the windows stronger but quite heavy), A/C at anchor now!!!

It is worth bearing in mind that if you go from non opening to opening windows we found that the radius of the corners of the new windows will be different in order to retain the strength of the whole thing, both set of windows from different suppliers said the same thing, so do not expect a direct “drop in in” solution

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by GILow

MarkJ, your suggestion wins the day.

Yay! I shall go celebrate with a big fat Australia Day beer! (15 hours after the rest of Oz)

[GILow]

Happy Australia Day wherever you are today Mark.




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[MarkJ]

Thanks.
St Maarten. Da Caribbean

[Matt Johnson]

sound like a good plan with the split window.

What I was talking about is something like Cantana does on the acrylic front windows of their cats.... like these: