Manual Bilge Pump Hose Connection - E38

[Theanswer]

We have a 1982 E38 and are sailing around the Sea of Cortez for a few years with our kids. Putting the boat away for the summer in Mexico I am going through everything to figure out what needs to be repaired. The manual bilge is not operating. There is a ~1-1/2" OD gray flexible hose (wire coiling to prevent crimping) that enters the bilge. It has an inch of exposure and there is a smaller, white pvc hose inserted into the larger gray hose and it looks like someone tried to silicon the seal and use a hose clamp. The white pvc hose then goes to the bottom of the bilge (without a strainer). The seal between the two hoses is broken so the bilge pump is not getting suction.

Seems like a poor system to me so I was wondering what others with the same boat have? I can always run a new flex hose all the way from the manual pump to the bilge, but access is difficult. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[markvone]

Hi,

Just saw this. The manual bilge pump hose was the first thing I replaced on my boat when I bought it in 2011. I haven't used it - ever, but it better work if I need it. I'll bet my hose was the original, white, coiled wire bilge hose, 1 1/2 inch. I replaced with the same hose not knowing any better. When I added a second, big electric bilge pump I used a clear 1 1/2 inch hose bilge with a black coil molded of the same material to the outside. The new hose has a smooth inner bore.

I have good space and access to the aft end of the hose where it exits from the stbd engine stringer to go to the manual pump so I pulled the old hose out from there. I attached a strong line to the existing white hose around a few coils and was able to pull it out into the aft storage area in one piece. I also attached a similar line to the strainer end of the old hose which was pulled through the grid with the hose. Installation of the new hose was the reverse where I pulled the new hose through from the bilge end. The hose path through the grid on the E36RH is straight and has a smooth ~ 2 inch PVC pipe for the hose to run through. The pull required wasn't too hard and I could pull a foot or two of hose with each stroke. You can pull the old hose from either end, you will need to access both ends of the hose from somewhere, one end to pull and the other end just to attach the line to the old hose and to feed in the new hose. The hoses will go thru the grid (in and out) and eventually get where they need to go even if you can only pull an inch or two with each pull stroke.

I wouldn't use anything but a single piece of hose to avoid vacuum leaks which will disable the manual pump.

Mark

 

[Christian Williams]

If the '82 E38 is like mine, the manual bilge hose runs over the fuel tank, through the battery compartment, through the settee seat and into the bilge. Replacing it requires dealing with the turns of the run.

I believe the factory put an extension on the coiled hose. The coils "screw together," as you can see in one picture. My joined hoses still work.

 

[Loren Beach]

Removing Water, by Hand

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/entry.php?480-New-Bilge-Hose-April-2016
Only really relevant part of this narrative is about the original pump having lost its ability to pull water in due to hardening of the rubber check flappers.
You can put a kit into your original pump IF.... you can get the internal parts removed. I gave up -- the ss screws were too well mated into the aluminum housing.

You are very correct about maintaining the vacuum integrity of that long hose run. I now have a smooth-bore hose all the way thru the system. I have not had to try to save the boat with this pump (and would prefer not to test the system that way) but did help de-water a 30 footer in our marina.
That boat was built in the 80's and when one person jumped aboard to use the cockpit hand pump, it refused to pull any suction. No maintenance had been done for a very long time.

A dock-side portable electric pump was enough for that particular problem. It turned out that the owner was away for a while and bilge water from the stuffing box along with some other rain leaks had filled the bilge to just above the sole. No significant rate of inflow, just a need to pay more attention to the details, going forward.

I hope that you do upgrade the whole manual dewatering system on your boat. While that pump is always going to be a "last resort" sort of thing, that's exactly when it MUST work, immediately. :0

BTW, that white ribbed bilge hose in Christian's picture looks exactly like the factory hose I extracted from our boat.

 

[Afrakes]

Rebuild

I second Loren's opinion on the pump. The manual didn't work on my 87'. I rebuilt the pump and everything worked fine. If the pump hasn't been rebuilt in recent memory then it's time to do it. My hoses, while dirty, were in good shape.

 

[supersailor]

As one whose boat was rescued from a sinking situation (salt water above the dinette table), the manual diaphragm pump and several buckets kept it afloat until the marina brought in two large dewatering pumps. Between the two pumps, the manual bilge pump and the bucket brigade, the boat was emptied in about 20 minutes. The problem was with the sink drain hose. The PO had used house under-drain fittings that were the slip type and the hose slipped off the fitting. The hose connecting the sink to the thru hull was flexible so it fell over and started the flow. Once the diaphragm pumps 3/4" (v/s 1 1/2" inflow) died, the filling became very fast.

That 40 minute period from empty to empty cost tens of thousand dollars and would have been a total write off for the insurance company ($52,000) if I hadn't done much of the work. I had no intention of scrapping the boat.

As a result, I completely rewired the bilge pump system. The way it was wired before, only the bilge pump kicked in in a flooding situation. The shower pump worked only if the pressure water was on. The new way is the shower pump is wired to the bilge pump system so it kicks on automatically when the water reaches the sole level. A 110v Rule 1800 pool pump has been installed. under the galley in the bilge. It is raised about 4" so the rain water is remover without the mighty pump kicking on. That AC pump kicks out a mighty volume of water!

I came within a whisker of loosing my boat. As it was, I lost a year of use. My insurance company reimbursed me for the loss. I don't recommend this as a way to refurbish your boat. There are too many hear attacks along the way. Boat sure looks nice now, though.

If you have broken pumps or floats, fix them and fix them now so your boat doesn't look like this! Oops, it went sideways and I can't seem to turn it.

 

[Christian Williams]

I rotated it on a PC desktop. Save before uploading.

 

[u079721]

I had read many stories about people needing their manual bilge pump, only to find out during an emergency that it didn't work. So I added a step to my annual check list in which I turned off my electric bilge pump, then filled the bilge with fresh water with a garden hose, and used the manual pump to empty it. That type of realistic "insult" test is really the only way to be sure it will work when needed.

 

[Christian Williams]

And it also demonstrates the effort required, which is considerable, and eye-opening.

I think I should come up with a long handle, or handle extension, for better leverage. I don't know if it would clear the binnacle.

The prospect of pumping 24 hours a day in an offshore emergency is daunting.

 

[toddster]

It took a lot of time and head-scratching to get my manual pump to work. My big mistake was assuming that it had ever been installed correctly in the first place. Hopefully it was some previous owner that did it that way, and not the factory! I ended up cutting an extra unnecessary hole in the boat, before figuring out what was going on. And now, I'm probably going to do it again - relocating the pump to the place where extra engine gauges were once scabbed into the cockpit side, so that area needs repair anyway.

Offshore sailing rules require two manual pumps: one that can be reached from the helm station and one that can be reached from the navigation desk. (Not that I am planning to enter Arcturus in any off-shore races, but these guidelines seem worthy of consideration, at least.) I suppose the idea is that one should be able, if needed, to steer with one hand and pump with the other. (Though I doubt that many people could do that continuously.) Among the other functional transgressions, my pump was installed at the back of the cockpit, seven feet away from the tiller handle. I suppose that's fine if you have an extra crew, and/or a working autopilot, but what if you don't?

I did acquire a second manual pump, for next to nothing plus the cost of a rebuild kit, but haven't yet installed it. There is plenty of room for it under the settee next to the chart table. I'm thinking of leaving it with a long coil of extra input hose that could reach all over the boat and dewater any random isolated locker as needed.

 

[supersailor]

Christain,

It's amaizing how much energy you come up with when your dinette table just disappeared under water. It seems bountless. Of course, you pay in sore muscles for several days after. If my manual pump didn't work, I might have lost Terra Nova. It would have been close.

 

[Loren Beach]

It took a lot of time and head-scratching to get my manual pump to work. My big mistake was assuming that it had ever been installed correctly in the first place. Hopefully it was some previous owner that did it that way, and not the factory! I ended up cutting an extra unnecessary hole in the boat, before figuring out what was going on. And now, I'm probably going to do it again - relocating the pump to the place where extra engine gauges were once scabbed into the cockpit side, so that area needs repair anyway.

Offshore sailing rules require two manual pumps: one that can be reached from the helm station and one that can be reached from the navigation desk. (Not that I am planning to enter Arcturus in any off-shore races, but these guidelines seem worthy of consideration, at least.) I suppose the idea is that one should be able, if needed, to steer with one hand and pump with the other. (Though I doubt that many people could do that continuously.) Among the other functional transgressions, my pump was installed at the back of the cockpit, seven feet away from the tiller handle. I suppose that's fine if you have an extra crew, and/or a working autopilot, but what if you don't?

I did acquire a second manual pump, for next to nothing plus the cost of a rebuild kit, but haven't yet installed it. There is plenty of room for it under the settee next to the chart table. I'm thinking of leaving it with a long coil of extra input hose that could reach all over the boat and dewater any random isolated locker as needed.

Apropos emergency de-watering, we got to look around inside a new Santa Cruz 52 at a boat show about ten years ago. Just inside was a oblong opening in the cabin sole and the socket for a huge Edson pump was visible. This is the model with the four foot handle, supposedly to pump a gallon a stroke.
The rep told us that this was standard equipment and that offshore couples doing ocean crossings with that model often referred to it as their "Oh My God" pump!
At the time that boat was about $ 750K, all up. Seems pretty reasonable nowadays compared to the low quality big boats dominating the market.
(IMHO, and YMMV)

Speaking of Cat. One equipment, it was telling that Ericson was putting this level of pumping capability in their boats in the 80's. Presumption was/is that while the helms person tried to keep up with the leak, other crew are finding and patching it. Kind of takes me back to my Navy days when all ships had "damage control" training and all shore bases had "disaster control" training and duty assignments.

I also really like Steve's common sense approach to the need to test the system. He may be a "former" Ericson owner, but his Ericson Wisdom is very current!

 

[u079721]

......I also really like Steve's common sense approach to the need to test the system. He may be a "former" Ericson owner, but his Ericson Wisdom is very current!

Well I can't take too much credit for that idea, as it came directly from my experience as an industrial process chemist. The huge storage tanks at our plants were all fitted with overflow alarms to prevent them from being overfilled into the dykes from the rail cars and tank cars that delivered the raw materials. (You REALLY don't want that happening with concentrated sulfuric acid.) And the requirement was that the alarm function be periodically "insult" tested with an actual controlled overfill - it wasn't enough for someone to just lift up the float to show that the alarm went off. (This was usually done with just water.) You also had to demonstrate that the overfill pipe actually worked too. So the idea of using real life insult tests seemed like a good idea for the critical bilge pump functions aboard our boats.

 

[bgary]

function be periodically "insult" tested

Early in the days of e-commerce I was part of building a site for a clothes company. We outsourced the actual web-hosting to a company near Ann Arbor.

As part of the contract, the hoster was required to test the power fail-over at least once a week, ensuring that the site would stay alive even if the building power went out. The CEO did this by walking through the server room at random times and hitting the master breaker, which tripped with a big "clunk" sound.... and then the UPSs screamed until the generators kicked on, and all was good.

I thought it was amusing (?) - okay, I have a warped sense of humor - the way people in the room flinched whenever they heard that "clunk".

So it might have been fun, occasionally, to drop a book on a desk just to see all the people jump.

Okay... *I* thought it was funny. Others, maybe not so much. But now "insult testing" is a term that makes sense.

 

[Kevin A Wright]

Having had to make a 5 hour run while using a manual pulp to stay afloat I'm a big advocate of keeping the manuals in serviceable condition. We were cruising with an elderly friend after his wife/crew had passed away and I'd loan him my friend during the day to help him sail while I single handed. Hearing a shout from the other boat I turned to see them sailing away on the opposite tack towards Saltspring Island. By the time I turned they were about a mile distant and all I could see was someone"s back in the cockpit going up and down in what looked like a CPR motion. Was a pretty tense stern chase for awhile and I caught up with them just before they pulled onto a tiny dock on Saltspring and I saw two heads pop up.

What I'd seen was my crew working the manual bilge pump. The other boat had an older 'dripless' shaft log seal that used ATF fluid from a reservoir to stay dripless (his wife didn't like musty bilges). Evidently the line on the reservoir had come loose or broken and dumped a quart of ATF fluid over the rubber bellows that connected this contraption to the shaft log. The rubber softened to the point it just slipped off the shaft log and the ocean was coming in. Fast. Of course this is in a totally inaccessible spot and my older friends eyes were not good enough to see in there anymore. My younger friends eyes were good enough but his arms weren't long enough to reach. Thank God when I transferred over I could do both and finally managed to get the bellows back on the shaft log, although tightening the clamp just squeezed out the rubber like playdough and everything was as slick as a couple of jello wrestlers in July. When I got the flow stopped the water was calf deep in the cabin and about an inch shy from the tops of the batteries.

The next problem was that the closest haulout was on the exact opposite side of the island, about 5 hours away. We got them on the phone and they were leaving promptly (in about 5 1/2 hours), so we pumped for a half hour till the water was down to a better level and then took off with my crew following in my boat and me staying aboard to continue to pump her out and monitor the shaft log which I expected to slip off again at any moment. Got to Maple Bay just in time and they put her in the slings for the night and hauled her the next morning.

Needless to say he was never able to talk me into one of those 'wonderful' dripless seals.

It just so happens that I went down to my boat a few weeks ago and found one battery dead. Seemed odd and turned out the switch on the auto bilge pulp had shorted and drained it. Was just a little bit of rainwater in the bilge and I went to the manual which I use regularly to keep it lubed, and the flappers had dried/stiffened and it wouldn't suck. Of course I was leaving on a 3 week business trip the next day. So my trusty crew got to keep watch until I could get back and start the repair work. The electric Rule was a cinch. The manual Whale gusher 10 is a royal pain in the .... to access. Once I got it out was easy enough to rebuild, but will be a two man job to get back in.

Hey life would be too boring without a boat.

Kevin Wright
E35 Hydro Therapy