Shame some people still don’t understand the importance of the bilge blower.
But I guess it’s easy to forget. There should be some sort of ignition interlock on modern boats that forces the blowers to run for at least 10-15 seconds (better than nothing) before you can crank the engines.
We have an egg timer on the dash of our club powerboat , five mins then hit the switch . It’s surprising when three or four people are yacking , keeping time isn’t easy . Hitting the egg timer doesn’t look very seaman like , but neither does blowing up .
This talk scares me due to an incident with my Chris Craft.
Some cousins were in town and we took them for a day on the water with the first stop being the town docks in Orillia.
Returning to the boat, one cousin immediately untied the forward dock line and jumped aboard before I could start the blowers. A stiff breeze started us on a collision course with another moored boat with seconds to spare. I had those seconds to decide whether to certainly crash or only maybe blow up.
I fired up the engine counting on my OCD habit of the bilges being clean enough to eat off and we avoided disaster. My cousin seeing the panic moves on my part had the "I screwed up didn't I" look on her face. My cousin was familiar with outboard fishing boats.
While the immediate cause was on my cousin, the reality is that I failed to educate the passengers and crew of the start up procedure and general operations. It's a powerboat, not a streetcar.
Enjoy a few minutes walk while I clear the bilges and start the engine.
Person X I want you to release the bow line WHEN I TELL YOU TO.
If anyone is uncomfortable the life jackets are under the seat.
Don't flush anything down the toilet unless you've eaten it first
That's probably easy enough. Just Y into existing blower hoses to get the desired flow. Air hates changing direction so the leak when the big fan is running won't matter too much.
Bilge blowers are always installed so their intake sucks from the lowest part of the bilge. All you need is a 3" PVC flex duct and a couple of zip ties.
Bilge blowers are always installed so their intake sucks from the lowest part of the bilge. All you need is a 3" PVC flex duct and a couple of zip ties.
I know, but my response was directed at your solar powered thing - in my mind I picture it as a muffin fan ziptied to one of the air vents in the engine room, just passively moving air out from there without any ducting, so more or less sucking from up high vs down low where the fumes reside.
So you've plumbed it more or less *inline* with the existing bilge blower ductwork then is what you're saying?
I know, but my response was directed at your solar powered thing - in my mind I picture it as a muffin fan ziptied to one of the air vents in the engine room, just passively moving air out from there without any ducting, so more or less sucking from up high vs down low where the fumes reside.
So you've plumbed it more or less *inline* with the existing bilge blower ductwork then is what you're saying?
No, I just add a regular 3” blower with its own duct - something designed for a small I/o. They are near silent and since they are constantly blowing, they don’t need the high CFM you have on your stock blowers.
While connected to shore power, just leave them running. When you don’t have shore power, let the solar run it.
Other benefits: you can have auto start on your genie. They also cool the bilge so less fuel evaporates from the system.
Interesting, thanks. Will keep in mind. There's certainly lots of space in the engine room on that boat for extras, shouldn't be hard to install. Solar panel maybe not so much though, there's not really a lot of real-estate left on the radar arch.
Interesting, thanks. Will keep in mind. There's certainly lots of space in the engine room on that boat for extras, shouldn't be hard to install. Solar panel maybe not so much though, there's not really a lot of real-estate left on the radar arch.
FWIW a 4" desk fan I have runs 0.24 amps at 120 volts. That's crudely 30 watts. That load on 12 volts would be 2.4 Amps. Solar panels are under $100 if you have the space for an approximately 2' X 4' unit. 50 watt panels aren't much cheaper but are smaller
With my experience it wouldn't have been a bad idea to let the blowers run for an hour of shopping, considering I had two batteries.
She never idles , engine on one minute and go . Yes if you motor with a following sea it can be unpleasant, but there are lots of places to be out of the exhaust trail . Biggest advantage to sail over power boat style , my helm is outdoors , many power cruisers have a sheltered steering station that traps fumes . Nicest option would be a fly bridge , but parking a wedding cake in a cross breeze scares me .
I've noticed this with express cruisers - following winds at low speeds the cockpit always seems to suck back fumes, even with the front windows unzipped and open, the passthrough door to the bow open, etc. There's some weird air movement thing that happens on the water I guess.
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