Manual bilge pumps

[Scarlett]

Just curious, do your boats have any manual bilge pumps. Mine had one in each engine room but they are shot so am removing them. I am not sure if I will replace them or not. Comments please, thanks John

 

[SEVEN]

The switchs on the helm have auto and manual to toggle switches.

 

[SeaEric]

My old 1966 41 TC had a manual bilge pump mounted on the bulkhead that was common to the engineroom, inside the forward head. It was so old that it was no longer usable. I opted to remove it instead of replacing or rebuilding when I refit that area. What I did do was to add 2 additional high volume DC powered bilge pumps - one forward and one aft.

 

[SEVEN]

Just curious, do your boats have any manual bilge pumps. Mine had one in each engine room but they are shot so am removing them. I am not sure if I will replace them or not. Comments please, thanks John

Sorry Scarlett I miss read what you where asking. I still have the manual pump in each engine room and the still work.

 

[Byresch]

I was never required by BoatUS to have a manual bilge pump on my Roamer, however they required them on the 2 sailboats I owned and they had to be in good working order.

 

[Pascal]

Manual pumps while popular on small and older sailboats with limited electrical don't make much sens on larger power boats. I d rather have additional back up rule pumps.

If you want non electrical pumps then engine driven emergency pumps are a better option than manual pumps

Or you can put a big AC emergency pump. We have one on the lazzara 84 i run. It s 240v with a control manifold with 1 1/2" pick up in 3 bilges. I think it pumps close to 10 000 GPH. Hope i never have to use it but I excercize it monthly

 

[SEVEN]

Manual pumps while popular on small and older sailboats with limited electrical don't make much sens on larger power boats. I d rather have additional back up rule pumps.

If you want non electrical pumps then engine driven emergency pumps are a better option than manual pumps

Or you can put a big AC emergency pump. We have one on the lazzara 84 i run. It s 240v with a control manifold with 1 1/2" pick up in 3 bilges. I think it pumps close to 10 000 GPH. Hope i never have to use it but I excercize it monthly

That size pump should keep you afloat for years. I was just on a friends wood boat that had about 30 gallons of water in the bilge. THE ONE AND ONLY PUMP WAS NON OPERATIONAL. I gave him a piece of my mind.

 

[jim rosenthal]

Blue Note has a bilge pump (auto) in each compartment, plus a Jabsco pump for stripping the forward bilge sump. I just finished rebuilding it last year. I also found a NOS spare- maybe the last large Jabsco remote diaphragm pump for sale. Although I do have to put a 12v motor in it, because it is 24v.

 

[Pascal]

Right now I have 4 rule 3600 on the hatt and will add two more later in the refit, I have the carol Manuel ready for them

Even on the little 26' gaffer I built, I have 3 rule 2000. It s no brainer but something most sailboters don't grasp.

 

[krush]

Why not have a manual pump or two? Can't hurt.

I think my boat has 4 main pumps (showing on bilge panel)and 2 extra emerg

Forward bilge (under head)
Aft bilge (under cockpit)
Port (under engine)
Starboard (under engine)

and then two emerg Port and Stbd outboard of the engine/stringers.

I may add emergency pickups to the engines too.

 

[Pascal]

Because chances are that in a flooding emergency you ll have a lot of things to do like finding the leak, calling for help, getting the ditch bag ready just in case, even heading to the nearest beach making it impossible to use the manual pumps which don't pump that much anyway. More stuff to maintain, more thru hulls too

 

[Fanfare]

I think Fanfare was built with three Navy style manual bilge pumps. These were bronze and when you lifted the handle water filled this tube as it came up. Consequently you LIFTED all the water you pumped out. Also access was terrible. They only pumped the engine rooms and the generator room. They were to back up the original four electric centrifugal pumps. I somewhat later found that the aft stateroom pump was not only covered by the installed carpet and therefore inaccessible, but also that the generator bilge alarm and that of the aft cabin were wired together which made it impossible to tell which was which.

I replaced these Navy pumps with Whale diaphragm pumps. While I was doing this I made the bow compartment a separate waterproof bulkhead from the generator room. I added a manual pump there and also one for the aft stateroom. That made five new manual pumps. I also retained the original electric bilge pumps and added a second duplicate set of electric "crash" pumps. Despite this a former insurance company required me to add a third set of fully automatic electric pumps in case no one heard the bilge alarm bells.

Many years ago, before all these pumps, we were provisioning for a three month trip to the far outer Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. A friend volunteered to cook if we would keep him in wines. All those cases must have overloaded the bow, because a generator room centrifugal bilge pump back siphoned, but the alarm failed and did not sound until the stbd engine room bilge alarm sounded. Fortunately there were about six of us on board to man all pumps. Did you know that you can use the electric bow shower sump pump to remove water if it is over the top of the sump? Yes, you can!

The problem with the electric pumps is what nearly happened to me. My batteries are in the generator room, nearly the lowest part of the boat. A little longer with the failed generator bilge alarm and these would have been submerged and likely inoperable. There was a lot of water in the bow and many of us had blistered hands from the manual pumps by the time we got it out. So as far as I am concerned it is not possible to have too many bilge pumps, whether electric or manual. I was fortunate in that I had enough manpower pumping while I tried to find out where the water was coming from. The water was so murky that I couldn't see anything. We were lucky we didn't sink.

Another time I will relate how we had a depth sounder break lose and try to sink us at the same inopportune time that the boat was filling with smoke. One guest mentioned that at least if the boat sank it would put out the fire. I think I need better crew!

 

[Bob Bradley]

A wise old mariner once stated that the best bilge pump is a frightened man with wet feet and a bucket.