Foam Board Insulation for the Ice Box

Salvaged 1" Dow Styrofoam Insulation Board adorning Pilgrim's salon. 

Fortunately for us a 60 something foot sailing vessel in the yard is shedding large quantities of 1” Dow Styrofoam Scoreboard.  The vessel is undergoing a full cabin refit and the foam board was used to mock up the interior.  We are collecting the useful scrape pieces for Pilgrim’s ice box refit.

We hope to re-use the fiberglass interior panels from the original ice box.  Since the original bottom panel roughly followed the curve of the hull and our free insulation consists of many small sections, I am using 4” to 6” wide panels to insulate the bottom of the box.

First layer of foam board along the hull.

Once a layer is complete, I apply foil tape across all the seams.  On the next layer I will the seams.  I am also alternating layers on the hull and the vertical side walls to create a staggered joint at the corners.

First layer of foam along the wall.

The graffiti on the insulation in the image above are my notes for shaping the insulation along the curve of the hull.  I penned a vertical line down from the underside of the counter top to the hull.  I then marked of 2” increments along the vertical line.  At each two inch mark I measured the horizontal distance from the vertical line to the hull.   Using a sharpie pen, tape measure, framing square, and a  4’ straight edge, I plotted the measurements on a section of foam board.

Then connected the dots.

And cut along the line.

The curve matched the hull well, but the overall width of the piece of foam was about 3/8” too narrow.

I mounted the insulation with the gap along the hull.  This area will be buried by the next layer of insulation along the hull. 

While measuring for the next layer of foam, I realized the origin of the error on the previous piece.  I was using a ½” wide folding rule to capture the horizontal measurements.  Rather the hold the rule flat against the vertical wall I was measuring with wide plane of the rule at a right angle to the wall.  Thus my measurements from the line to the hull were made ½” aft from the point where the wall meets the hull. Well I’ve got many more layers on which to perfect my technique.

On to the next layer.

More images and notes from this on-going project as available in the Ice Box Rebuild Photo Album.