Is there a quiet/silent water pressure pump, or a way to make one quieter?

[El Pinguino]

I recall, many years ago, being aboard a rather large and fancy yacht that - when ever anyone opened a tap the whole boat shook...
I was on a not so grand boat a few months ago where it was much the same....
Why do people put up with this nonsense??

What I have.. https://www.jabscoshop.com/marine/pu...olled-pump.htm

mounted to a bulkhead in the 'garden shed' simply using its own 'soft' feet... and it is in line with a 35 year old accumulator...

Can I hear it running? Yes - and I consider this a 'good thing'.
Will it wake me if I am asleep? No

EDIT... it is about 4 feet from my head when I am at rest...


Is it intrusive? No

Plumbed into the same system is my Whale foot pump.. all outlets - both Hot and Cold - are served by both...

At night - after bed time - and at sea - unless it is 'shower day' - the pressure pump is switched off .....

[wrwakefield]

Along with Whale foot pumps, we use a variable speed potable water pump. They cannot be heard unless running at wide open flow.

Specifically, we have a Aqua Jet Flow Master 5.0 Water Pressure System that has been in service for 9 years and needed one part replaced so far. We keep a new one in spares. No accumulator tank needed with a variable speed pump.

I wired an indicator lamp and cycle counter into the power circuit since we don't get an audible indication it is running. I plan to add a timer to the circuit to sound an alarm and kill the power if it runs for more than x minutes as a safeguard. [e.g., If we forget to turn off power to the pump when we are not onboard.]

In case this is of interest.

Cheers! Bill

[Uncle G]

"We are sick of waking each other up in the night by turning on the tap!"


Easiest solution is to not turn on the tap!


As dockhead says, leave some water out at night - either in a glass or a bowl or a bucket, depending what you want it for...

[boatman1]

Yet another nod to a “Whale” foot pump, though they’re not exactly quiet. One would think that there is a 12/24volt centrifugal pump available that, mounted at or below the water tank, would be substantially quieter than the standard H2O supply pumps that are indeed far from acoustically subtle. Something like https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00OIHLUFA/ref=psdcmw_554568_t2_B00C6XNB50 ?

[HopCar]

Most of the small water system are diaphragm pumps and pretty loud. The rubber impeller type pump is even louder and generally don’t get up to the pressures needed on a fresh water system.

If you have room for them, a shallow well jet pump is pretty quiet. They are centrifugal pumps. Here is a link to the Home Depot page selling them.
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Plumbing...s/N-5yc1vZc71x

[Juhana]

Hi Chris,


check out these also:
https://items.marco.it/en/products/pumps.html


Cheers,
Juhana

[Capt Gill]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

I'll add my vote for installing foot pumps where needed. They are reliable, silent and help considerably in conserving water. In our case, we only have pressure water for the shower and the aft washing shower on the sugar scoop. Both sinks are served solely by foot pumps. You may not want to be so spartan, but adding foot pumps in parallel with the pressure system would mean that silent water supply would be on hand when you need the quiet, and the rest of the time your noisy electric pumps could be hosing away.

Jim

I agree, having a dual parallel fresh water feed (elect. w/pump & manual pump) is the way to go. The pluses are redundancy and choice, e.g., turn off the pump when sailing w/landlubber folks. I'm currently living on my boat and redoing much of the plumbing, so can't use the e/pump, but still have water via the foot pump which is plumbed separately from the w/tank. Can't say I'm pleased with the Jabsco Sensor Max 5.0; I'm on the third one (one was covered by warranty) in ten years, although it's quiet except at max demand.

[Hunky Dory]

I had a Jabsco diaphragm pump that was noisy. Had to replace it, bought a Johnson 4.5 GPM diaphragm replacement, can't believe the sound difference. You can hardly hear it run, infact I have to check sometimes to actually make sure it is running,

[RaymondR]

On my previous boat I had both salt and fresh water piped to only the galley sink and no pressurized water systems. The reason for this being that I became paranoid about hoses blowing of and either flooding the boat with sea water or pumping all my fresh water into the bilge when I was somewhere without a fresh water supply.

I used small diaphragm pumps and foot switches set into the deck instead of pressurization and found that when used this way the pumps are very quiet and that it leaves both hands free which resulted in significant reductions in water use.

Diaphragm pumps are positive displacement pumps with excessive take up due to the resilient materials used in their construction. This means that there is a sudden pulse of pressure generated at the end of the take up which produces water hammer in the piping system and consequent noise. Get rid of the pressure the take up works against and you get rid of the pressure pulse and that gets rid of the noise.

[Mike Banks]

The reason a pump becomes noisy may be because the bearings are of poor quality or are prematurely worn. My Jabsco pump was quite loud when new but it was acceptable, and it let others know when someone was taking a shower.

Eventually it became REALLY loud, and I took it apart. The bearings were rubbish, badly worn--and they had been cheap and unsuitable bearings when new..

I replaced them with a set of stainless steel pre-packed quality Japanese bearings, supposedly good for up to then thousand hours. They cost me about twenty five dollars each, and there were two of them. The pump ran beautifully when re-assembled, much better than when new, and it purred rather than rumbled.

That pump was still in the vessel full time live aboard after five years--but I replaced the original rubbish bearings after two years. The last three years there was no excessive noise whatsoever..

Personally--I would rather have paid an extra fifty bucks in the price when new, and not have had to bother messing about with it at all--so who will build a proper silent, heavy duty pressure controlled 12 volts brushless pump with corrosion-resistant bearings pre-packed with lifetime high quality grease?

I would like to know so I can source my next one.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by Juhana

Hi Chris,


check out these also:
https://items.marco.it/en/products/pumps.html


Cheers,
Juhana

I paid top dollar for the top of the line Marco variable speed pump with special rubber isolation feet and at the same time relocated the pump from the other side of a bulkhead that makes up the main cabin beds headboard to an enclosed compartment 20' away. And it's still almost as noisy as the old piece of crap Jabsco was, at least to our mid 40s, no hearing loss ears. Best I can tell the plastic water pipes not only conduct the noise throughout the boat, but amplify and reverberate it like a medieval cathedral pipe organ. And no, in 40 some years I've never left a tap on and needed a pump sound to remind me to turn it off, and the bilge pump alarm does the job of alerting me to a hose break far more effectively than a pump sound! So I don't appreciate the sound and can only tell you what I tried which didn't work so the OP can avoid the work for nothing. If I decide to attack it again I think I'll try to attach a short section of soft tubing on each side of the pump to attempt to stop the conduction and build a foam enclosure around the pump itself. For now our family of 4 just wakes everyone up when running the water to flush the toilet, wash hands...at night or when the early risers take a shower or start cooking. Would love to hear actual solutions though if anyone has them!

[ggray]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Plumbed into the same system is my Whale foot pump.. all outlets - both Hot and Cold - are served by both...

Do you mean you can use your foot pump to supply both hot and cold water with your foot pump(s)?

[BobFord]

I agree that it needs to be heard but tone it down with a casing lined with sound absorbing foam.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

I paid top dollar for the top of the line Marco variable speed pump with special rubber isolation feet and at the same time relocated the pump from the other side of a bulkhead that makes up the main cabin beds headboard to an enclosed compartment 20' away. And it's still almost as noisy as the old piece of crap Jabsco was, at least to our mid 40s, no hearing loss ears. Best I can tell the plastic water pipes not only conduct the noise throughout the boat, but amplify and reverberate it like a medieval cathedral pipe organ. And no, in 40 some years I've never left a tap on and needed a pump sound to remind me to turn it off, and the bilge pump alarm does the job of alerting me to a hose break far more effectively than a pump sound! So I don't appreciate the sound and can only tell you what I tried which didn't work so the OP can avoid the work for nothing. If I decide to attack it again I think I'll try to attach a short section of soft tubing on each side of the pump to attempt to stop the conduction and build a foam enclosure around the pump itself. For now our family of 4 just wakes everyone up when running the water to flush the toilet, wash hands...at night or when the early risers take a shower or start cooking. Would love to hear actual solutions though if anyone has them!

A device called a pulsation dampener will take some of the hammer out. You can find a similar device which might work, which are used to take water hammer out of domestic pipe runs, in a plumbing shop. You need to mount them on the discharge of the pump as close to the pump as possible.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by ggray

Do you mean you can use your foot pump to supply both hot and cold water with your foot pump(s)?

Yes, but don't ask me exactly how it is plumbed in... its about 10 years since I last had to worry about details like that.... and hopefully another ten before I have to revisit those issues....

Essentially both pumps ( foot and 'lectric ) are 'upstream(?) of the calorifier and the feed to the cold water taps/faucets..... ie between the tank and calorifier/cold water taps.

Standard Westerly fit...