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Agreed, certification for home-built personal use submarines are a
luxury. For commercial passenger transport in the US, the Coast
Guard is going to require certification. The only other reason it
might be warranted is for commercial diving work where the client
requires you to have liability insurance because they want your
insurance to cover any claims that might arise due to the work you
perform, and/or don't want a claim against them for any work
injuries you might incur. I'm not convinced a non-certified sub
is unable to get insurance for all possible work. A few years ago
there was an marine insurance company representative at Underwater
Intervention whom I talked about regarding liability insurance for
a non-certified home-built submarine. While expensive, it was not
unobtainable. Are you going to need certification to get hired by
an oil company to support underwater ops on an offshore drilling
platform...probably. Are you going to need certification to get
hired to do three days worth of underwater inspections of boat
piers for a private local boat yard...probably not. In my opinion
certification does add value to a personal-use submarine but
whether that value is actually realized financially cannot be
guaranteed. When someone is considering certification you can
safely assume they are one or more of; (a) planning on
selling/marketing to the public; (b) planning on commercial
passenger transport; (c) planning on serious commercial work.<br>
<br>
Given the estimated cost of certification we have seen so far
($50-60k US) it's easy to understand why we in the personal use
market do not want government intervention forcing certification
upon all vessels regardless of use. This is one reason
self-enforcement of safe design, fabrication, and operations is
important and why PSUBS has pushed design and fabrication in
accordance with guidelines of certifying agencies.<br>
<br>
We should also recognize that there's no restriction on PSUBS
becoming its own certifying authority and serving the home-built
market. Such a CA would not go to the extent of requiring x-ray
reading of welds but could act to confirm basic design parameters,
equipment, and documentation based upon what the owner/designer
presented. It wouldn't hold the stature of an ABS or GL rating,
nor be feasible for passenger based operations, but may help with
finding insurance and some types of work once we built it (over
time) into an accepted certificate.<br>
<br>
Hank's words that a very good and safe sub can be unremarkable and
built to ABS (or other CA) specs are exactly right. Phil Nuytten
essentially said the same thing at the 2009 convention, I believe
his exact quote was, "this stuff isn't rocket science".<br>
<br>
Jon<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/27/2013 8:20 AM, hank pronk wrote:<br>
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<div><span>I can not see a real benefit to having a
certification for average home built sub. On the other
hand we should stay as close to or right on the guidelines
set by the certification process. When I took Gamma apart I
was amazed at how unremarkable things are. Maybe the
guidelines are more advanced since 1993 but it is not out of
this world to build to ABS specs. Because I have all the
drawings and documentation it would be nice to certify Gamma
again but my windows do not conform to todays standards. We
as average Home sub builders should keep our projects as
unremarkable and simple as possible to keep them
safe. Remember, test, test, and test again. Then when your
completely happy with it, test it again.</span></div>
<div><span>Hank</span></div>
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