Plugged pipe between seacock and sea strainer and out of ideas!

[madhatter1]

Grasshopper, you must become one with all your AC components. It is the only way. AC guy is just for refrigerant and compressor swaps. I do not know this because I am wise. For I also was a young grasshopper.

Sorry Bob, not much help today and certainly not trying to piss you off. But pumps, water flow, and descaling are all just basic maintenance. It does seem during the off season you do need to reinvent the wheel. I’m halfway there on the intake side. Next up is redesign from the pump housing to the units. Flawed but this winter the fix is imminent.

 

[Bob Quinn]

That is what I did. We get really long, fibrous weeds on the north end of the River D in Detroit and they jammed up those elbows so tight, I could not unweed them. Took them out, a foot of re-inforced hose, never a problem since. I will look into the South bay strainer this fall. The AC strainer is the only one that gets full of weeds. Getting too old to crawl back in that corner of the port engine room any more than I have to.

Sounds like the same sea weed we have here. It looks almost like hay.

 

[Bob Quinn]

Grasshopper, you must become one with all your AC components. It is the only way. AC guy is just for refrigerant and compressor swaps. I do not know this because I am wise. For I also was a young grasshopper.

Sorry Bob, not much help today and certainly not trying to piss you off. But pumps, water flow, and descaling are all just basic maintenance. It does seem during the off season you do need to reinvent the wheel. I’m halfway there on the intake side. Next up is redesign from the pump housing to the units. Flawed but this winter the fix is imminent.

yeah, I know, I'll be back at it probably tomorrow. LOL definitely need a better setup.

The seaweed in my marina is growing up all around the boat now that it is late summer.
I kind of think that I could clean it out and it might just be plugging up immediately again.
I think I'll check the strainer again in the morning. The flow just seems really light from what "I think" I saw a year ago.....

 

[Bob Quinn]

You can’t create a smooth transition with street fittings? 22.5, 45, or 90 and hose gets a lot of variations There is the abyc rule of being able to withstand some ridiculous (200 pounds?) weight straight down on whatever fitting arrangement is used. That abyc rule usually works out to be a one fitting on seacock arrangement

Thanks for the info, didn't know there were rules about that stuff. I don't think I will stand on it to test though!

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Maybe the pump is not priming. IF that is the case, you will not get full flow.

 

[Bob Quinn]

Maybe the pump is not priming. IF that is the case, you will not get full flow.

I was wondering that. I'll try to hook a hose into this thing tomorrow and make sure the system is full of water.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

I was wondering that. I'll try to hook a hose into this thing tomorrow and make sure the system is full of water.

Poor priming happens quite regularly on the 53 because the intake is not very low in water and it is close to the side of the hull. Air can get pushed into the intake in heavy seas especially with stabilizer fins just in front of this intake. I have had continued problems with mine over the years and have heard the same from other 53 owners.

 

[Bob Quinn]

Poor priming happens quite regularly on the 53 because the intake is not very low in water and it is close to the side of the hull. Air can get pushed into the intake in heavy seas especially with stabilizer fins just in front of this intake. I have had continued problems with mine over the years and have heard the same from other 53 owners.

I have a rubber plug with a garden hose adapter that fits in the end of the sea strainer.
If I hook this up and turn on the air, this should be sufficient to prime the pump correct?

I mean it could un-prime when I pull the plug, but if it is sufficient to prime the pump I can at least go check the flow with the water on to the plug and see if it makes for better flow.
Does this sound right?

 

[Bob Quinn]

A couple options. Possibly complete overkill?
option 2 adds an additional shut off so when trying to flush out the sea cock water from the garden hose does not just push through the pump. Not sure that would be necessary or not.

 

[motoryacht lover]

If you have the oberdorfer pump with the bronze impellar they typically have an Allen head screw at the top
Of the pump. When mine won’t prime i purge the air by removing that Allen head screw and that gets
Me primed. Maybe my situation is different but very easy and worth a try. Good luck

 

[Bob Quinn]

If you have the oberdorfer pump with the bronze impellar they typically have an Allen head screw at the top
Of the pump. When mine won’t prime i purge the air by removing that Allen head screw and that gets
Me primed. Maybe my situation is different but very easy and worth a try. Good luck

Ya know, I think, now that you mention it, I think I may have done that last year. Hmm maybe that would be easier than trying to push water through with a garden hose.

Thank you!

 

[Sadey]

Every time I clean my strainers out, which is often here in Nashville, I have to loosen that allen head screw at the top of the pump to bleed the air out of one of them. For some reason, the other one doesn’t need to be bled, but it is slightly lower in the bilge. Four years in Racine and Sturgeon Bay I never had to clean my strainers once, although I did it at the end of the year simply on principal. Here in Nashville since July 1st I’m on my third cleaning and my first time flushing each compressor with garden hose pressure. I was amazed at how much junk came out the discharge. I’m also trying chlorine tabs in my Grocos. I don’t think it will help in your case Bob because yours is at the source but maybe downstream??

 

[Bob Quinn]

Video of raw water output, does this now look normal?

Does this raw water output now look normal?

 

[rsmith]

Looks slow. I put in separate discharges for each ac unit and raised them above the waterline so I can see the discharge from each. Dave this solved the trapped air pump cavitation problems I had.

 

[Sadey]

Wonder if that would help? I think that pump has the most compressors on it.
Funny, as I’m typing this the salon AC just shut down with an HP message. I just looked at my strainers yesterday and flushed my compressors out last week. The water in this marina has looked like you could walk across it for the last week so off I go once again.

 

[Pascal]

Looks a bit slow but it could be that your outlet is partially submerged

Here is mine for comparison

https://youtube.com/shorts/t7_UJ6GLvS4?si=KW8OmLAf5kFKt0Kj

Again the only way to be sure it to out the hose in gallon jug and time it.

 

[Fanfare]

On my 50MY, 1965 vintage, the AC input was shallowly mounted beneath the AC compressors in the pt engine room. The intake had external fore-and-aft slots probably about a foot below the waterline. Once in a while a plastic bag would be sucked over this but mostly the Groco strainer would fill up weekly with mud and grass. The strainer and shut of were really hard to reach having to support myself across the transmission and leaving only one hand to disassemble the strainer. After putting up with this for too many years I had a new larger Groco strainer moved to the forward end of the engine room under the fwd bilge deck hatch. Being much deeper they clog far less and the larger size can hold more debris. Even though the shut off is a long reach down it is still an improvement. And I can use both hands to remove the strainer. A huge improvement!

Groco also made a combination strainer and electric grinder which could be even better for cleaning. However it has a rubber O-ring at the bottom for the motor shaft which I was afraid could become another leakable maintenance item so I decided to skip this and go with the old reliable.

As an aside I have always had superb results in working with Groco. During Covid a small part in a factory head rebuild kit failed shortly after I got it all put back together. Groco had me ship the whole base to them where they entirely rebuilt it, painted it like new and sent it back to me. No charge.

 

[Pascal]

On my early 53 the sea cock was under the shaft and the strainer attached to the sea cock just outside the shaft. No ideal

During the repower I moved both the engine and the air con thru hulls forward of the engine. No internal strainers.

One more thing I forgot to mention… adding valves on each air con inlet hose helps maintenance and troubleshooting. You can back flush or descale one unit at a time without having to shut down the entire system. Also makes it easier to time water flow into a jug. Also in a bind you can shut down flow to a couple of units and push more water thru, say the master at 2 am when it shuts down for marginal flow. Easy addition.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Re: Video of raw water output, does this now look normal?

Does this raw water output now look normal?

Looks fine but why is the boat sitting so low? Your painted water line is mostly submerged.

 

[Bob Quinn]

Looks slow. I put in separate discharges for each ac unit and raised them above the waterline so I can see the discharge from each. Dave this solved the trapped air pump cavitation problems I had.

Thanks, i will keep investigating.