It takes a lot of effort to make things simple.
The simple version is to flip a switch to pump out the 250-or-so litres of water ballast when packing the boat away after a sail. But this means electrics and a 12V pump. I already had the battery and switch-board, and a pump that had been salvaged from a warrantee replacement on our caravan. Even if it did not work perfectly, I could use the pump to plumb in the connections and get everything working before getting a "proper" pump. However, I needed somewhere to put the pump, and screwing it down onto the sloping, curved hull was not only difficult, but it also meant drilling holes into the hull, which, I had decided, was strictly forbidden.
So, the first stage was to fit a floor into the port side locker, where the current hand pump was fitted. Having watched plenty of social media videos of boat-builders, I first made up a template using thin strips of scrap ply and other assortments. Then, I cut another template using MDF from an old door skin. Incidentally, if you have ever wondered where that musty smell in old houses comes from, just cut up a piece of ancient MDF door-skin. MDF is horrid stuff and should never go anywhere near a boat permanently, but it is useful for cutting templates.
Having made a flat template for the floor, the next challenge was finding a way to fix it (without drilling holes) from underneath, which was inaccessible when the floor was sitting where it should go. I got some 30x40mm softwood from the Big Green Shed and formed it into shelves and wedges that the floor would sit on. These, I jiggled into position and poked and prodded until they seemed to be in the right place. I formed the wedges in two layers, the bottom layer being glued to the hull with Sikaflex 291, and screwed the top layer onto the bottom. This proved a good decision, because I removed the top layer and adjusted its height by about taking off 10mm with my stupidly cheap Aldi Bench Saw. I finally cut the “real” floor from 6mm plywood. The floor took two to three part-time days – nobody said that boat-work was quick.
The next stage was to plumb in the pump. I wanted to keep the hand-pump fully operational for when (not if) the electrics went AWOL, which was doomed to happen at the most inconvenient, life-threatening time possible. The hand pump not only emptied the ballast tanks, but it also pumped out the bilge which is an operation I have never performed, but was essential nonetheless. So, the electric pump needed to be plumbed in such a way as to keep all the current bits working, but with the option of bypassing the hand-pump.
The Jabsco hand-pump (which has the blue ring in the photos below) and connecting pipes were 1½-inch, but the Shurflo electric pump accepted ½ inch. The Chandlers had 1½-inch to 1-inch reducers and 1-inch to ½-inch reducers, but no 1½-inch to ½-inch reducers. The Chandlers also had a selection of tees, elbows, stop-cocks and hose-clamps. This amounted to a grand assembly that cost about $280 and had the following.
- 2 x 1½-inch tees with 3 x 1½-inch hose-clamps each
- 2 x 1½-inch to 1-inch reducers with 1 x 1½-inch and 1 x 1-inch hose-clamps each plus short lengths of 1-inch pipe
- 2 x 1-inch to ½-inch reducers with 1 x 1-inch and 1 x ½-inch hose-clamps each
- 2 x ½-inch stopcocks with 2 x ½-inch hose-clamps each
- 4 x ½-inch elbows with 2 x ½-inch hose-clamps each
- 2 x ½-inch screw-in connectors with 1 x ½-inch hose-clamp each
- About 0.25m of 1½-inch pipe, 0.25m of 1-inch pipe of 2m of ½-inch pipe
Cutting and fitting the pipes took about three part-time days with more boat-yoga than I would have liked (I don’t like any boat-yoga, by the way). The photos below indicate, deceptively, more space than what is available. By the time you get your head and hands into roughly the right place, you find there is little space left for your rib cage, or legs, or other essential body-parts. It also needed more trips up and down the ladder between the boat and my workbench than I would have liked, especially as I usually forgot to get the one thing that I needed most from either one or the other.
The assemblies of reducers, elbows and stopcocks took up a surprising amount of room and needed the relocation of the two-way valve (to the left and below the Jabsco hand-pump) and the hand-pump handle. After tightening the final clamp, I filled the tanks with a garden hose to check for leaks. I found none, until I tried the hand-pump, only to find an annoying drip directly aimed at the electric pump, caused by a split in the elbow connector that had developed from my cack-handedness. I went back to the Chandler for the third day in a row, ordered a new one, and bodged a repair on the cracked elbow with some glue and another hose-clamp. The repair worked, and I pumped out the tanks by hand, noting that it took about 160 hefty cranks of the handle, which fully justified my attempts to install the electric pump. The next step will be to wire it in, but I think I’ll go sailing, first.
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| Lower layer of wedges and shelf glued in place with white Sikaflex 291 |
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| Upper layer of wedges and shelf screwed onto lower layer |
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| Completed locker floor |
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| Plumbed-in pump |
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| Top view of pump assembly |
