Association Forum - Automatic Bilge Pump on C250 WB

Assn Members Area · Join

Home.

Association Forum

Ships Store

Cruising

Racing

Technical Tips

Photo Gallery - New

Boat Search - Updated

Manuals & Brochures

Swap Meet

Links

Officer Flag Line & Staff

Bylaws & Constitution

Members Area

Join the Association

Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.

Association Forum

Username:	Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

All Forums

Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

Catalina 250 Specific Forum

Automatic Bilge Pump on C250 WB

New Topic

Reply to Topic

Printer Friendly

Author

Topic

doublereefed
Navigator

Member Avatar

167 Posts

Initially Posted - 03/22/2018 : 14:52:00

Greetings all, the sailing season looms large, I can't wait.

This season I have lucked out and have secured a mooring ball, allowing me to keep the boat in the water. I think I should rig an automatic bilge pump. Has anyone done this on a WB? Not much bilge to speak of.

Thanks,

-Richard

'95 C250 WB #61
Midway, UT

Russ.Johnson
Commodore

Members Avatar

USA
833 Posts

Response Posted - 03/22/2018 : 17:26:29

Richard,

Yes, I installed an electric bilge pump on my C250WB.
I keep the boat on the trailer, so I ran the power through a switch on the electrical panel.
I power on the pump after launch.
Please use tinned wire so it won't corrode.

The thing to consider is the bilge pump plumbing.
I wanted the manual and electric pumps to have separate plumbing, so they wouldn't interfere with each other.
I added a tee to the galley sink drain and looped the hose well above the waterline.
The top of the hose is mounted under the countertop.
That way the sink water doesn't go to the bilge and when healed, the bilge hose stays above the waterline.
It's pretty easy to route the hose from the galley sink to the aft bilge.
I don't have any pictures, but the next time I'm at the boat I'll post them.

Russ Johnson
2005 C250WB Hull 793

doublereefed
Navigator

Members Avatar

167 Posts

Response Posted - 04/25/2019 : 13:01:08

Hoping this comment will put this thread back in play. I didn't ever get the pump installed last season... dangerous living, but had not problems on the mooring ball. I need to get it installed this month though. Russ, I explored the plumbing option you mentioned above and it is how I will do it. Thanks for the detail! Now the problem is... I can't figure out the best pump. I would like an automatic with the switch built in, but they get really bad reviews. In particular, the systems with the motor sensor that spins the impeller every (2 1/2) minutes and if no resistance it shuts off. I like the idea... but the review are universally bad. So, with that, two questions:

1) Is there a generally recognized great pump and switch option? What is a good GPH rating? The bigger the better?
2) [Forgive me, the boat doesn't come out of storage for 2 more weeks at the marina, so I can't just go look]: I plan to install this in the C250 WB bilge, which is really just a shallow pan under the aft lazarette. What's under that pan... is that the hull or a pan, or? The manuals show screwing the pump basket down... but I think that's the hull in that area.

Thanks!

-Richard

'95 C250 WB #61
Midway, UT

islander
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
3992 Posts

Response Posted - 04/25/2019 : 14:14:23

About bilge pumps. Bilge pumps are intended for occasional water like a slow drip or rain water. No bilge pump can keep up with a broken hose or thru hull. Having an auto bilge pump can also lead you to believe that you don't have a leak because it keeps the bilge dry. When you look maybe there is a tiny bit of water so you don't think much about it when in reality you could have a cracked hose or a leaking clamp that would have filled your bilge alerting you that something was wrong. Many bilge pumps have sunk boats because the owner was never alerted to the impending catastrophic failure.

Scott-"IMPULSE"87'C25/SR/WK/Din.#5688
Sailing out of Glen Cove,L.I Sound

Russ.Johnson
Commodore

Members Avatar

USA
833 Posts

Response Posted - 04/25/2019 : 16:07:20

Richard,

I used a bilge pump with a separate float switch.
The C250WB is pretty flat under the stairs and the bilge pump won�t get all the water.
Every time you visit the boat, put your hand in the bilge.
If there�s any water, you have a problem.
Rain water will be in the cabin and doesn�t even make it to the bilge.
It not like the C250WK that has an access plate in the cabin sole.

Under the stairs is the hull and forward is the ballast tank.
I wouldn�t put screws into either one.
I mounted the pump and switch to a homemade frame and pressure fit the frame into the bilge.
There is nothing drilled or screwed into the bilge.

Russ Johnson
2005 C250WB Hull 793

wm36
1st Mate

Members Avatar

USA
69 Posts

Response Posted - 04/25/2019 : 19:23:38

I have been interested in doing this also. As I am still a fairly new C250 owner, I don't understand the construction of the 250 enough to know how to route power from the electrical panel down to the bilge. Is there a direct route? Or do you go all the way aft and follow the plumbing for the manual bilge pump?

Wayne & Lynn
Hillsboro OR
1995 C250 WB #151

Russ.Johnson
Commodore

Members Avatar

USA
833 Posts

Response Posted - 04/25/2019 : 23:11:41

Wayne,
I routed the power to the aft then followed the factory bilge hose.
Russ

Russ Johnson
2005 C250WB Hull 793

OLarryR
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
3367 Posts

Response Posted - 04/26/2019 : 04:29:31

Scott had good comments regarding the use of a bilge pump and what it can and cannot do. I keep my boat in it's finger slip all year round. I do not have an automatic bilge pump. I have once in a while given it some thought but decided not to do it. (My seacocks are always in the shut position.)

At my marina, there are 300 slips and 90% are motorboats. It seems the major benefit of an auto-bilge pump is for those that have an inboard/outboard and the shaft seal, etc allows some water leakage into the bilge and so those boats, the auto-bilge pump will occasionally come on to dewater the residuals. This is not to be confused with some motorboats where the perception is that their auto-bilge is almost always running but turns out that it is not the case but because they leave their Air conditioning on all the time, the water is flowing inboard and then outboard for cooling purposes. Over the past 10 years, there have been one or two sinkings. The one I recall was a small motorboat with no auto-bilge but also did not have a cockpit above the waterline where rainwater would drain via the scuppers. In this case, the guy did not regularly come down to his boat to scoop the water that collected in his open cockpit boat and it eventually filled up with snow or rain or both and sunk...with it's bow line the only thing visible - still attached to a dock cleat. There was another boat, a larger motorboat, that developed a crack in the water intake pipe for cooling his inboard. This was during the winter and the marina operator was investigating because the owner was not around and the boat was starting to list more and more. It appeared the owner had some kind of thermo-heat protector on his inboard for the winter but a deep freeze probably cracked the pipe just inboard of the seacock which was open and the pipe near the seacock was not thermo-heat protected. If the marina operator had not taken action to investigate, the bilge pump was not fully handling the leakage and the boat would have eventually sunk.

My thought is that having a boat on a mooring poses addl issues and I am wondering as to the benefit of an auto-bilge if you do not have dock-side AC to continually charge the batteries onboard. Unless you visit your boat often to square away any deficiencies, your battery(ies) will eventually run out of juice if you develop a deficiency whereby water needs to be drained continually. If the seacocks are normally left in the shut position, and you have an outboard versus an inboard, then the only water that should enter the boat is either none or occasionally some seepage from a rain that gets past fittings. This type of leakage is generally very minor and should be investigated and minimized before it ever could become an issue where a bilge pump is needed. If a seacock or the attached piping/tubing developed a crack, depending on the leakage rate, the auto-bilge may not be able to keep up or the batteries would eventually run down.

So, I am wondering why if on a mooring you believe you need an auto-bilge pump and if needed, how long would one expect it to run without charging the batteries ?

Larry
'89 Robin's Nest#5820, Potomac River/Quantico, Va
http://catalina25.homestead.com/olarryr.html

k3fuller
1st Mate

Members Avatar

USA
73 Posts

Response Posted - 04/29/2019 : 08:42:03

Since my boat is in a slip much of the year I have an automatic bilge pump in my WB. It's a Rule 1500 with an external Super Switch wired directly to the battery with a 15amp inline fuse. For discharge I put a 'Y' valve on the existing manual bilge pump hose and a check valve. So one could use the manual pump in the cockpit or the auto-pump. It's only turned on once when I was sailing and I didn't have the WB valve closed and sealed tightly at the top so water sloshed into the bilge kicking it on a couple times. Other than that it's dormant. I leave the wooden cover off the bilge access so that the rainwater/condensation that does make its way down there for the most part evaporates.

2004 250WB #781

doublereefed
Navigator

Members Avatar

167 Posts

Response Posted - 04/29/2019 : 09:37:50

Russ, Larry, All - my overall plan is to install a Raymarine wireless wind/depth/speed. The depth/speed transducer is a through-hull design. That will be followed by a fish finder transducer although some of the candidates do not require drilling the hull for the sensor.

Drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat is what started me down the road to installing a bilge pump. I fortunately have a very dry boat... not too worried about rain, etc.

Thanks all for the tips and specifics.

'95 C250 WB #61
Midway, UT

Topic

New Topic

Reply to Topic

Printer Friendly

Jump To:

Association Forum

Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.