This is what I do and it works perfectly. Buy a galv iron pipe nipple the size to best fit through the seacock and thruhull about ten inches long , or long enough to go completely through the seavalve/thru hull to the outside with a little left over.
Buy it at a hardware store that has a pipe threader. Have then cut off threads from one end of the nipple, the ream the hell out of the pipe (the reamer is on the pipe threader, it is a conical cutting device usually used to remove the burr left by the pipe cutting tool) until the end of the pipe is a sharp circular cutting edge. Put a pipe cap on the other end (with thread sealer) and buy two spiral clamps, one to fit the pipe plus 1/4" more dia, and one to fit the inboard end of your seacock plus a little. On your way home from the hardware store stop by a motorcycle shop and obtain a scraped out innertube about 2" or 2 1/2" dia. Remove the hose fitting from the seacock and put the sharp end of the pipe in there. You could at this point simply wrap a towel around the pipe at the seacock, open the seacock and ram the pipe through, rotating as necessary, cutting all the debris away. If the debris is stubborn you can make notches in the sharp edge of the pipe essentially making a knife into a saw. Or you could use a piece of the inner tube to make the seal with one end spiral clamped to the cap end of the pipe and the other clamped to the seacock. The main thing is using a pipe size that will go through the seacock/thru-hull OK. This technique also gets rid of shellfish in the plumbing too. I have made a set of these reamers to fit all my thruhulls. Another technique that will blow the grass out is to blow the grass out with compressed air, a method perfected by Ann-Marie. The plumbing must be set up for it and you must have a source of compressed air. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek 30 07.695N 081 38.484W > > This month we're having a lot of trouble with the generator > through-hull, almost daily. > > I'm in an anchorage that clogs the generator through-hull too > frequently... The problem is eel-grass and kelp, clogging the hole at > the hull. The stuff doesn't even reach the raw-water strainer! > _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
