Here we have the garden hose conected to the dock side water at the dock box an running. It is on all the way but there is not all that much water pressure.
The water is over flowing the sea strainer and going down into the bilge. We were running the 38 hp Beta Marine diesel engine ant about 900 rpm and it was all good. However if we cranked it up (raised the idle) the water pressure was not good enough to keep up with the engines need for water, the engine would suck the water down in the seas strainer. We ran the engine for 20 min at 900 rpm (a bit over idle speed) to flush it out good with fresh water. We have been doing this from our fresh water tanks and we can crank up the engine and vary the speed but not this time. That is because we do not want to put the dock water here in our fresh water tanks. This dock water ha not gone through the final treatment. I know I know some people will drink it but at about $1.20 for 5 gal of good water and they put in in for you we buy what we need and are harpy about that. So next time we pickle the engine we will go back to the water tank way we have been doing it.
Now we are flooding the bilge to make sure the Rule bilge alarm is working. We had to remove the cover of the bilge alarm because the flapper was not always working in it. It was getting stuck. The cover prevents rags or some other debris from preventing the alarm from going off but in this case the cover it;s self was doing this. We got it back working great and then tested the Rule 2000 high capacity secondary bilge pump. It pumps 2000 GPH. It is plumbed separately and worked great. The we tested our every day Whale IC bilge pump. It pumps about 5 gal a min. It worked great. So all is good.
We had to pull the Rule 2000 bilge pump and Rule bilge alarm from the bilge. They are attached to a piece of PVC pipe. It is a deep bilge and to pull the equipment up you need to navigate it past the tranny. They are wired to a terminal block so we can remove them altogether if they need to be worked on. Debbie is improving my labeling, which there was none. I had purchased numbers for the wires but never got to putting them on. So we blew a fuse on the bilge alarm trying to figure out the wiring. All fixed now 😁
We cleaned the strainers of course and this time decided to leave them out as they will not be sitting in water and will last longer while not being used.
We took this opportunity to clean the bilge with Simple Green and it looks good.
PVC pipe going down into the bilge past the tranny.
Rule bilge alarm flapper. The two black hose barbs to the right (starboard) is the original bilge pump. We have not given up on it yet. We re-built it but have never gotten it to work. We would like to have it for the 4 th pump and put a hose out to the cockpit for it to pump water out.
Jabsco Model 6600j-Series now 36600 Marine PAR Belt Drive Bilge Pump (475-GPH, 12-Volt, 15-Amp, 3/4")
Scrub-a-dub-dub!
All done, tested and clean. You see the Rule bilge alarm flapper and below that is the Rule 2000 flapper then the Rule 2000 bilge pump.
No comments:
Post a Comment