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Icebox and head bilge

Captain C

Junior Member
Hello All,

I'm the new owner (about 4 months) of a 1985 32-3. I've posted some questions before I purchased the boat and the feed back was invaluable, I'm hoping for more of the same. The owner was an absentee owner, so I didn't get to ask him all the little intricacies of the boat.

How and where does the icebox drain. I've pumped the right foot pedal, and the water drained from the icebox into the sink. Then I proceeded to sail, and the icebox was filled again. And no I did not have ice in there cooling beverages. The boat did not come with a manuel, so I'm stumped on where it drains. In my research I've read it doesn't drain to the bilge.

Also, I've read that the head/shower has a separate sump/bilge. I used the manuel bilge pump and it seemed to be pumping water. But my wife didn't see any water exiting from the stern. My question is where does that water go to?

Thanks
Dave C
 

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Here's the manual from the "Downloads and Galleries" section above. Might be other useful documents in there, too.

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/vbdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=103

You may have one or two galley foot pumps. If only one foot pump, valves provide the choice between pumping out the icebox or pumping salt water into the sink for washing.

If the icebox is filling with seawater, the wrong valve is probably open.

Yes, the factory installed a separate head shower sump , bilge pump and three-way switch.

The bilge hoses exit under the stern counter, and it can be quite hard to see the discharge. Try kneeling on the dock.

I believe there is a complete plumbing diagram in the manual.
 

garryh

Member III
hi Dave... it is not really that difficult to trace the hoses/piping for these installations... a bit of investigation needed s'all. A manual would likely not help because much of this stuff has been retrofitted by PO's. The icebox situation sounds good... many of the older boats drained into the bilge and this was as cheap and brain dead as brain dead can be. Think bleeding steak, leaking chicken, broken container of milk draining into the bilge and sloshing around..! Did I mention cheap and brain dead..?
If your icebox is pumping into the sink, this is good. If it is filling when sailing, it sounds suspiciously like siphoning when heeling on a particular tack.... the icebox will be below the waterline on one tack or the other. Gotta check out the plumbing attachments... there may be a Tee in the drain line and one hose leading to a cockpit drain which you could remove.
 

bgary

Advanced Beginner
Blogs Author
On mine, there is a valve and a thru-hull under the galley sink that are involved in the process.

Normally, the valve is closed and the thru-hull is open - the thru-hull is the inlet for the salt-water foot-pump. step on the pump and seawater goes into the sink.

To drain the ice-box, close the thru-hull and then open the valve. Now when you step on the pump, water from the ice-box goes into the sink.

If both the valve *and* the thru-hull are open, seawater can flow into the icebox.

Bruce
 
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Captain C

Junior Member
Awesome...thank you for the information. And Christian, thanks for the links to thr 32 docs, will print and read them.

I'm headed out sailing today and will try to trace and understand plumbing based on my new information.

Dave C
 

Second Star

Member III
Icebox drain

In our 28+ a PO got rid of the foot pump and plumbed the drain directly to the hull valve. That valve has to be shut so the icebox doesn`t half fill up with salt water as described above! When adding additional insulation to the outside of the icebox I ran into the problem in that Ericson appears to have foamed in the drain hose; it simply exits out of the plywood bulkhead into the engine compartment. Has anyone replaced that hose under similar conditions.
 
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