My 9 month old
boat has had a problem since new that no one has been able to fix. It's not that they haven't tried. The
builder, the
pump manufacturer have all tried many times but still the problem persists. I have left on a
cruise to North Qld with the problem because no one was making any progress and I thought that if I waited until it was fixed I might never get away.
The problem is that the house
water supply continually gets air in it and it won't self prime. The
pump which is supposed to shut off when the accumulator reaches set pressure, runs continually because it can't prime itself and therefore can't build up pressure in the accumulator. We can prime the pump by opening a faucet and running
water down the drain and when we do this the accumulator begins to build pressure and then shut off. But after a while the system loses pressure and we find the pump is running again. Let me describe the system. We have four integral water
tanks of approx 300 litres each built into the
bilge. water is drawn through into a bank of valves (similar to a manifold) that lets me select from which tank I want to draw. A manual foot pump (which works perfectly) is teed into this same valve bank. It then passes through an inline filter to the pump which is mounted above the
tanks (pump supplier tells me this is not a problem for this pump). From the pump it feeds into the attached accumulator and from there to the various
parts of the
boat including the
head, deckwash,
galley, stern
shower and hot water system. I think I have tried all the logical remedies like checking for kinks in hoses, tightening all clamps etc, even changed out the pump.
Please, any ideas from the experts at CF?