Another Bilge Pump Thread

[cal40john]

Disaster pumps

Has anyone installed an Ericson pump, or belted on a trash pump on your engine or kept a self contained trash pump onboard?

Ericson pump
Ericson Safety Pumps


trash pump found in Dashew's book, they recommended it because the pump is plastic
Engine Driven Pumps, Electric Motor Driven Pumps, Hydraulic & Pneumatic Driven, Pedestal Mounted Pumps, Magnetic Coupled Pumps, Vertical Pumps, Drum Pumps, Hand Operated Pumps - Pacer Pumps


Once I discovered flood rates compared to pump rates I started looking into alternatives for pumps normally found in places like West Marine.
I found a flood rate equation from an Ocean Navigator article I believe.
The Rule 3500 at about half rated capacity (to compensate for head/friction/voltage etc) is about 30 gal/min. That pump rate keeps up with about a 1 inch hole 1 foot under the waterline. A 2 inch hole 0.5 feet below the waterline is about 60 gal/min.

The smallest pumps mentioned above start at about 125 gal/min, which will keep up with a 3 inch hole 0.5 feet below the waterline.

The Ericson pump is interesting to me because it is in place always ready to go, but you have to put the boat in gear, alternatively you cound mount it on a PTO to avoid having to put the boat in gear, at which point a self priming trash pump could make as much sense. A drawback to the Ericson for me is that I have a V-drive. Dimension wise it looks like I can cram one in there, but I haven't figured out the mounting yet. On the plus side there is no maintenance.

If I put a trash pump on a PTO then it probably makes sense to have a clutch so you're not wearing out the bearings on the pump when you're not using it. Downside you have to engage the clutch and the main engine has to run, plus side, you don't have to have the engine in gear.

Having a pump with its own engine means that the boat engine doesn't have to operate, but you need get it out on deck, run hoses, and in between times maintain the pump engine so that you know it will run when you need it, you need to fill it with gas when you want to use it, or run it often enough that you don't varnish the carb, which then becomes another storage issue with something containing gas. Permanent mount gas engine belowdecks is not acceptable, price on diesel driven pump is not acceptable to me.

So those are my thoughts on a disaster pump. Anyone out there with something installed and how well it works?

Since I don't race and sail short handed mostly, manual pumps and buckets aren't the best solutions since the crew is likely to be busy in my opinion. And for the articles I've seen promoting using the engine cooling pump, my engine pumps 2 gal/min at idle, if it's linear with rpm that's a big 6 gal/min at speed. My boat came to me with two manual diaphragm pumps (10-20 gpm) and an electric diaphragm 6 gpm pump, which by the way was hooked up backwards when I got the boat. All those pumps go to the bottom of the keel. I have added a Rule 2000, it sits on top of the lead in the keel to make it accessable. The float switch on it is activated when there is somewhat more than 12 gallons of water in the keel. So this pump pretty much stays dry unless I have a problem. It also turns on an alarm at that point. Reading about trying to find the water ingress point once the hole was underwater inspired the alarm.

John
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