Bilge Pump, Period
I’m not only enthralled and obsessed by boats, I’m intrigued by all aspects of them. Especially, the simplest, most basic aspects of their accouterments and accessories—say, the lowly bilge pump for example. If you have a boat filled with air and some air escapes and it is replaced by water… saltwater… that’s a bad trend. You need to, ASAP, remove said water and replace it with air. Simple, right? And universal too—because all boats need to have a method to rid itself of water—regardless if the owner is rich or poor, smart or stupid, technical-oriented or goofy.
Water removal devices are useful for boaters to have, understand, and utilize.
Let’s start with a discarded bleach bottle and a dinghy. A bleach bottle isn’t a bailer until someone cuts off its bottom. This enables it to scoop water, no small feat. In fact, many knowledgeable, experienced skippers will tell you—half in jest and half seriously—that the best water removal device is a scared man with a bucket.
But it is important to bear in mind that a bleach bottle with its bottom cut off isn’t a bilge pump until power is applied—muscle power. Plus, while cutting off the bottom of the bleach bottle achieves the goal, there’s a particular shape that’s more efficient, more ‘scoop-ish’ than merely bottomless.
Gilding the lily? Maybe.
Nonetheless, if someone gives you a brand new 14-foot runabout or decked-over 22-foot sloop, you’re going to need a bilge pump, period.
The first thing you might want to do is figure out how to power the bilge pump. Nuclear fusion, while long-lasting, probably has too many drawbacks to consider. So it would be wise to look at the solutions other boaters have made—and go with a 12-volt electric pump.
Great!
Where?
One way is to spit or pee or vomit and watch where the fluid runs to. A fluid (water in particular) seeks its own level. Put the pump in the middle of the deepest part of the bilge surrounded by water and that’s usually a good choice. Except on a sailboat. Sailboats heel. And it is possible to have your bilge pump in the perfect spot at the dock—and a less-than-perfect place while sailing. Your bilge pump can end up totally dry and entirely away from the bilge water when you need it most, out sailing.
Hmmm.
Wait, it gets worse. Cats.
Catamarans need two bilge pumps with no co-mingled plumbing.
Trimarans? Yes, tris can be an even bigger challenge!
Worse, chances are that your bilge pump packaging is the worst liar in the marine chandlery where you purchased it—and that’s saying something!
Let’s say the RUDE 500 that you buy claims to pump 500 gallons an hour, hence its name. It doesn’t. That’s at ‘zero head,’ or barely above the water it’s pumping. Pumps, to be truly useful, must pump (beneath the waterline but inside the air-filled boat) from the lowest part of the bilge to well above the design waterline if it is a powerboat. But that will sink a sailboat because the moment the sailboat heels, the seawater would back-siphon into the boat and sink it.
Oops. A common solution is to put a one-way valve in the output hose. WRONG! This works for a few days, weeks or months until it gets a speck of bilge grunge stuck in it, and then leaks ever faster. The result can be that the boat sinks while under sail.
Worse, most boats don’t sink at a steady speed for many reasons—for instance, their (galley and head) sinks. The lower the boat goes, the more items leak (like head joker valves that experience two or four times their normal pressure), and the more the vessel wants to freight-train straight to the bottom.
So, check-valves are absolutely out—one just sunk a newish 56-foot aluminum yacht in our harbor.
Another solution is to put a giant loop in the bilge output hose. But even this, if a siphon begins, can sink the boat when the pump shuts off. So, the best bet is to install the loop and then place a siphon break at its apex.
That way, when the pump shuts off, some of the water in the hose falls back into the bilge and some falls into the ocean—but the boat doesn’t back-siphon and sink.
Cool!
Alas, the higher the loop the safer it is. But it pumps less water because it is fighting gravity all that way.
And here’s the first horrible realization of the simple-but-undeniable fact that everything on a boat is compromise: Sometimes there is a bad and simple compromise and other times a good and complicated compromise—but there is always a compromise unless the skipper’s ignorance exceeds the hours-per-gallon rating of this pump.
Oh, float switches allow owners who live ashore to visit with their families—and thus are popular in most marriages. But the amount of water and weight in the hose of a bilge pump system matters—as does the shape of the bilge.
Huh?
Okay, let’s say you put a well-engineered bilge pump and float switch into a barge and it rains—it should work perfectly. But put that same perfectly-engineered pump with a switch into the narrow V-shaped bilge of a sailboat and it won’t work. It will recycle and run the battery down. Why? Because the column of water will be still rising in the hose when the switch shuts off from lack of water. The water in the hose will then flow back into the bilge, sometimes with enough volume to trigger—and endlessly re-trigger—the pump back on. Yes, you could make the hose smaller but a better solution is to elevate the pump a bit.
Another factor that’s important on some boats—wooden vessels in particular—are limber holes that allow one bilge compartment to drain into another. I’ve been on an old wooden schooner where the floorboards were floating while the pump was sucking one single compartment dry.
This can be a real problem and back-in-the-day we used to have bilge chains on springs that you could easily yank on the chain and clear the holes of debris.
Sinking, whether in harbor or offshore, is instructive. I’ve sunk a number of times—what a learning curve! And, as my wife calls it, “…a damp shame!”
Once your floorboards float and all your can goods, blankets, clothes, pillows, bras, and condoms start floating around your vessel and eventually swilling around your bilge pump—you have a BIG problem, me son. One woolen sweater can stop, or reduce, the water flow so much that the pump is useless.
So, the idea of placing your ‘main’ bilge pump in a large wire cage—or in a compartment with lots of screening where almost nothing fabric & floating can clog it—is a good one.
Obviously, bilge pumps should be fastened down. And just as obviously, bilge float switches should be oriented fore and aft so they don’t refuse to turn on during one tack and refuse to turn off on the other!
One bilge pump system is fine for a dock queen—but the vessel that I circumnavigate aboard has two bilge pumps with float switches, and a third (diaphragm/non-impeller) pump to suck the last few drops of water out of my bilge.
One thing I know about sinking is that visible water coming into your vessel is very easy to stop but large quantities of water gushing underwater is almost impossible to locate. Thus, I have a bilge alarm that sounds an alarm if I get a small amount of the water in my bilge—so I can stay ‘in tune’ with my stuffing box drip, for example.
Major hint: Once you think you might be sinking, make regular marks (with a pencil, pen, or ax) to know if you’re winning or losing the battle.
Now a bilge pump has water heading away from it but it also has electricity coming inbound—and the subject of electricity and bilge pumps is far more complicated than the pump’s plumbing.
That’s right—more complicated! In fact, electrical failure is far and away the major cause of non-working bilge pumps.
My experience is that few bilge pumps—very few bilge pumps installed by manufacturers and expensive shipyards with excellent reputations—are installed with adequate thought. Sure, they might work at the dock—but they’re really, really needed offshore, on a dark night, with a low battery—while Satan swims alongside.
If you’re still reading this, thanks. And congrats. You’ve got what it takes to be a good ship’s husband.
In the last 64 years of living aboard and ocean sailing—and during my four circumnavigations—I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And tried to offer few excuses. But I’ve always attempted to learn from every single stupid thing I did.
That’s right—my wife isn’t amazed at how often I goof up—only on why I’m not an Einstein yet.
The most important thing that a sailor can know when they install a critical piece of gear on their boat is this: that there are a lot of considerations to take into account. Think—layers of an onion, many of which will make you cry. And if that thought interests or intrigues you, you’re going to be a happy cruiser. But if that thought doesn’t fit in with your Pina Colada and happy-hour lifestyle—well then, good luck pal!
(Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander are currently celebrating their 54th anniversary aboard their 43-foot ketch in southeast Asia—a cruising ground which is, Fatty thinks, “somewhere between Japan and Africa, give or take.”)
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