This week I came home to a couple of feet of water in the bilge. It turns out that someone must have left the forward shower faucet on and it drained all of ...
Closed Captions (CC):
[Music]
skill here at the sailing vessel
dreamchaser and in today's episode we're
gonna go ahead and work on cleaning the
bilge pump we have a primary and a
secondary and tertiary bilge pump in
this particular boat the primary one
which is the one that kicks on and off
anytime is a little bit of water in the
bottom of the bilge it just seems to
sort of be trickling out the side of the
boat when it does kick on it's not
really throwing the water out very well
so we're gonna hop down there and take a
look my guess is it's just sort of
filled up with some gunk and dirt and
garbage from the bottom of the village
so not a fun job but one that we really
need to do here we go
[Music]
sometimes people wonder just how far
does the bilge pump go in well there you
have it I'm actually standing in the
floor of them you know standing on the
base of the floor so this thing is a
little bit higher than waist level and
actually could go down another well I
guess about a foot to the another foot
to the lower portion of water and
another foot below that to the
absolutely lowest portion of the bill so
we will stop right here I went ahead and
got my scrapers and a little pail with a
bucket a bag in it and that's just so I
can get down below and get some of the
garbage scraped off of there instead of
using the towel right away so let me
show you what it looks like down there
here we go taking a look down here I'm
just aiming this street down at this
point
and again you can really see so I can
use it off to get right down there this
is the this is the very bottom of the
build and you can see that large white
sort of sock as just an oil absorber we
always keep down at the bottom make sure
and then below that is the primary bilge
pump that you can see here the secondary
on right and the tertiary on the left
small white hose their small clear one
is actually a condensation line or the
forward air conditioner this is the
forward side of the motor right here now
it's just a matter of lifting up this
bilge stock and getting it kind of out
of the way I just tucked it up here
behind the bilge pump for a few moments
and at this point it's preparing my
scrapers and starting to scrape along
the the sides and the base of the bilge
you'll notice here I started on the on
the vertical sides where there was a
little bit of buildup and just sort of
went to town I'm gonna fast-forward
through some of this because it'll take
a little while to get all this cleaned
up now that I got the base scraped out
it's in a matter of lifting the bilge
pump out of the primary sump hole and
and just getting ready to clean this up
not a pleasant job here but I started
with just getting the bilge pump into an
area where I could get to it and
scraping some of the heavier dirt off of
it before actually wiping it with a with
a towel once the outside was relatively
clean I went ahead and disconnected the
hose and removed the bilge pump from the
the hose itself just to give myself some
more room and honestly then it was a
matter of really digging around in there
something and cleaning everything out
like I said it's not the most pleasant
job in the world but it does have to be
done from time to time
they're certainly dirt gets down there
any dust or you know in our case you get
a little bit of cat hair and those
things all sort of work their way down
into the bilge and ultimately with any
liquid or water that goes in there they
flow right in the lowest part of the
sump and that's ultimately what what
ends up clogging up the intake screens
on the pump itself which obviously can
cause a problem if your bilge pumps end
up being obstructed and can't exit water
out of the boat normally it's not really
an issue but in the case of an emergency
I want to make sure I know that these
things can can pump the water out of the
boat especially if there was a through
hole that was leaking or a hose that
broke or something that you know gave me
a one-inch hole in the boat somewhere
with water flowing in once everything
was clean and I dropped it down again
and had to start all over and clean it
all off it was just a matter of
reassembling the bass you can see on the
bottom of it here there is no bass right
now I cleaned the screen and we just
snapped this back on to the intake
screen bass and reconnect everything and
we're starting to go after assembling
everything back together again I went
ahead and put about six gallons of water
down into the bilge just using a pail to
measure it made sure that the bilge pump
kicked on automatically and then went
outside and looked at the flow coming
out of the boat and it was certainly
coming out at the velocity that I would
expect where it exits the side of the
boat it was shooting out about three
feet or so which is kind of what I would
expect with an unobstructed pump so with
that we were good to go
don't forget to subscribe to our channel
for weekly updates and like this video