Tidal Board

Welcome to Shelley Signs. We are a leading supplier of external signs and panels with particular expertise in Tidal Boards. Please explore the website – the Showcase Section has a large library of photographs illustrating signs, panels, framing structures and graphics. For a chat about the options phone Robert Shelley on 01743 460996.

Tidal Board, Tide gauge boards, tidal gauge boards

Product Overview

Tidal ports, harbours and marinas throughout the country use tidal gauge boards to help with navigation. Shelley Signs specialise in the design and manufacturing of the D53 tidal gauge, these can be found in areas such as those managed by the Port of London Authority (the PLA), Holyhead Harbour, the entrance to Beaumaris marina, the channel into Pwllheli Marina and just off Hayling Island Sailing Club to name but a few.

Technical Specification

The D53 is one metre long in length and manufactured in Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP, G.R.P), although we are more than happy to provide longer gauge boards at the request of our clients. All our tidal gauge boards are printed using our new acquisition the Mimaki JF 1631 flatbed printer, where all graphics are encapsulated into resin this provides a durable and tough surface which we have found can withstand more knocks and abrasions than those gauge boards made out of other materials and subject to another process. Using GRP allows the surface of the tidal gauge board to be easily cleaned, this stops the growth of algae with will usually appear over a period of time.

We often have requests by our clients to provide certain special fixings they require to enable them to fix the tidal boards to posts, stansions and also pontoons. As standard all our D53 tidal gauge boards are 4mm in thickness and are all metric in design, they also come drilled and supplied with stainless steel screws unless requested otherwise by our clients, as some of our clients have requested imperial measurements or even combined metric and imperial measurements.

Tidal gauge boards have to be produced and manufactured to comply with a design agreed with by the Docks and Harbour board, as is the D53. The type of board depends on how the measurement is supposed to be read, the D50 and D64 are both read differently to the D53, with the D53 this should be read from the top, the bottom of the datum numeral being the metre mark, to ensure that this board is correctly read the bottom of the lowest boards needs to be set 200mm above datum.

Case Study

We recently faced an interesting commissioning at Cardiff Docks as a combination of seawater and freshwater areas required specifications that we had never completed before. Cardiff Bay, the Barrage, Inner and Outer Harbours and parts of the Rivers Taff and Ely are all managed by Cardiff Harbour Authority who in turn are part of Cardiff Council, 200 hectares of freshwater lake was created in 2001, and the combined seawater and freshwater meant that freshwater boards like the D50 had to be positioned on one side of the wall whilst on the other the D53 tidal board was on view, in some locations it was required that a new board had to be created incorporating the D50 and D53 on the same board.