Practical Sailor had an article recently about bilge pumps and I have three questions. 1. They recommended two electric pumps: a lower capacity automatic as deep in bilge as possible and a second higher capacity wired to a switch higher up. I am unconvinced by the logic. I have had an automatic pump get stuck on, so it ran until the battery ran out of juice. I worry that will happen more frequently with a deep automatic in the part of the bilge that will most frequently have water and crud. I would argue for the opposite setup so I can pump out incidental rain water etc. at my discretion but the automatic will kick in when there is high water. 2. On my boat, I have a small floor panel I can remove to access the bilge and my current pump (Whale super-sub which is the only pump I found that fits) is deep in the narrow bilge there. If I were to try to put a second pump in, I think it would have to be somewhere else which means under the flooring and inaccessible which seems like a bad idea. That flooring is a PITA to remove, since it is screwed down and to remove the flooring adjacent to the small panel, where a pump would make sense, I have to unbolt and support the table because the mast runs through it and the table bolts to the flooring. That takes about 30 min minimum so I don’t think that is a good place for a pump one wants to access with some ease. I could put it further back under the rear flooring which is more easily removed, but it would have to be a pump that sits low to fit. Have others modified the floor attachment to make access to the space underneath easier? 3. If one has two pumps, it is OK to tie the outlets together through a Y valve with check valves?
David Knecht S/V Aries 1990 C&C 34+ New London, CT Dr. David Knecht Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of Connecticut 91 N. Eagleville Rd. U-3125 Storrs, CT 06269-3125
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