Inregards to adding an inline strainer, I found this while browsing around. It looks like it could easily be tied in directly after the manual shut off valve on the thru hull.
Thoughts?
http://www.boaterbarn.com/jabsco_pum..._7027_prd1.htm
Printable View
Inregards to adding an inline strainer, I found this while browsing around. It looks like it could easily be tied in directly after the manual shut off valve on the thru hull.
Thoughts?
http://www.boaterbarn.com/jabsco_pum..._7027_prd1.htm
True that. I don't want to defeat the purpose of the whole mod!
I got your PM reply, but then confused myself again. In my drawing did I have the check valve in the right spot?
Placed my order with wakemakers on Thursday for all the parts to do the fill pump change-over, bag venting, and drain pump relocations. Just waiting for it to ship/arrive so I can get started on the modifications. It's a moment of anxiety and excitement. Obviously, excitement for the upgrade and anxiety that all goes well with the installations.
Another recommendation for wakemakers. Jason took plenty of time to make sure I understood what I was ordering and how it all worked within the system. Very knowledgeable
Fu$*ing Supraboats.com..... I just spent the time to blast wakemakers.com for their lack of customer service and communication, and wouldn't you know that my session timed out while I was typing. Knowledgeable.... yes.....Proficient and communicative.....absolutely not.
Long story short, I expected my order last Tuesday and it still hasn't shipped. I even went as far as to tell them to completely remove the backordered items from the order and that I would source them elsewhere. Not surprising, no response from them. In fact, it took 3 straight days of emails to get a response. Oh, give them a call you say.... been there, done that. Sat on hold until the cows came home with no mention of hours or availability. I guess the one good thing with the delay is I was able to remove the backordered part from my order today because I can reuse the parts from my original setup. Order still hasn't shipped, however.
Freakin 88 degress here tomorrow, and I have no ballast system to speak of because I ripped out the old in anticipation of the new......LAST WEEK!! Of course, my windows are still with the tint guy though :rolleyes: But who needs windshields to surf @ 10.7mph? Ballast on the other hand....
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n...r/untitled.jpg
Thanks for letting me rant, now back to my beer :cool:
Ask for Jason, hopefully he can get you going in the right direction. If memory serves me right, I did run into a shipping problem with them as well. Keep calling them and they will come through for you, sorry you are having problems. Good news is, you can install this entire system in one day no problem.
And if it makes you feel any better, I have been expecting my new guidepole covers/rub rail for my swim platform for over two weeks from Viper Customs. They just informed me yesterday they never sent it and just today I finally got a tracking number that it has been shipped!
I guess we shouldn't have waited until the last minute... huh?
I've been dealing with Jason since day 1, but just needed to vent last night. I got an email about midnight that my order had shipped, although UPS isn't showing a record of it yet, so we shall see.
80's all weekend, I better get out there
Dont worry its only March!!! You have plenty of time left to get out on the water... did you ever end up getting your windows back?
Only March??? I can't believe it's ALREADY March, heck, now April. Time flies as you age
Ballast order is on the way, UPS shows it in Nevada, so hopefully I'll have it to install this weekend.
No windows yet. I spoke with the dealer on Friday, and they said they'd be done Monday. Monday and Tuesday came and went, so I called this afternoon. Apparently the tint guy took them to his shop over the weekend, and they haven't heard from him yet. I wonder if I should start watching craigslist for my windshields?
Now we're cooking with gas!
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n...r/photo-28.jpg
For all you penny pinchers out there like me I found the Tsunami 800 for $25 this weekend at Academy Sports!
Scott,
Be careful using that black bilge line, it kinks real easy.... I dont know why they did not sell you the ribbed stuff, its a lot more durable and easier to work with.
I think you may be confusing the hose in the picture with another product, as even our standard hose is pretty resistant to kinking (it's got an internal rib to resist crushing and kinking). It's certainly not as tough as the premium hose we carry, but is more the sufficient for the job.
The hose is very similar to the OEM ballast hose in my boat. It was flexible and easy to route, and I don't think I'll have a problem with kinking. The hardest part was getting the fittings pushed in to the hoses', tore my hands up.
The system is all complete, and has been through a few lake tests. Everything seems to be working great. The only thing I'd like to change is the drain pump locations. I installed them so they have direct connect with the bags, instead of in the engine compartment, for more consistent and reliable draining of the bags. To preserve room in the rear lockers, I installed them on the front of the bag, up against the rear seat. Now the bags don't completely empty, whereas, I used to be able to get the last bit of water out of the bags while driving. It's not that big of deal, I just unhook the rear bag vent and roll the bag up like a towel to get the remaining water out and allow the compartment floor to dry from the days events. I'll try it this way for the summer, and re-assess the situation during the break in the season from Dec-Jan. :D
Hey Scott, great job. I did the same with the drain pumps, except I have mine off the back of them and it works great, I can get about 95% of the water out of the bags. Getting them out of the heated engine compartment is a great idea, and if one takes a dump they are very easy to replace this way.
Heres a couple pics of the rear drains and the flexible upgraded line I really like.
Travis -- (I see your shower in there!)
Did you wrap those hose clamps with tape or something? Those look like a BAG slicer in
these pictures ...
They are wrapped with some heavy duty black gorilla tape, still not happy with the results, ran them all last year with no wraps and did not have any problems. The lower ones are turned so nothing sharp can touch any of the bags. I thought about ordering the clamps/tool and re-doing them, just have not had the time to get to it.... probably will be my winter time project this year.
Has anyone done this in a 24?
I have all the goodies but after looking at the space it looks tight for the 3 pumps, manifold and ball valve.
I, too, doubted the fitment in my 22 and contemplated ditching the ball valve to conserve space, however, was able to get it all in there.
Mock-up the manifold and pumps and get creative about the space. It looks like Fmans' is running towards the rear of the boat? I've got my manifold running towards the front of the boat at a ~20 degree angle towards the port side, with one pump straight up, one pump at a ~45 degree angle, and the last pump flat coming out of the manifold end. I did have to cut down the height of the thru-hull so the manifold would sit tighter to the bottom of the boat. It's pretty tight, but just fit. I'll take some pictures next time I uncover the boat.
Like I said, I thought about losing the ball valve and running one of the manifold T's straight off the thru-hull, then having one pump lay horizontal towards the transom, and the other two pumps towards the bow with one vertical and one horizontal. But, alas, I thought it would be best to keep the valve just in case.
As long as your drain pumps are working fine, I wouldn't bother swapping them out at this point. What I did do, however, is re-locate them so they are directly connected to the bag. My rear drain pumps would not work consistently, and in speaking with Jason @ wakemakers, it was suggested to relocate them. This will help remove the possibility of an air gap forming in the hose from the bag to the pump, and make them more reliable. Wakemakers made up the new direct connections for me. They are @ the very bottom left of this picture. I didn't need one for my center sac because it was already done.
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n...r/photo-28.jpg
If you're having problems with your drain pumps working reliably then relocating them will solve that problem (especially for the left rear bag).
If your drain pumps are working at all then you need to replace them.
Hey Jason, by relocating the rear drain pumps, do you mean screwing them directly to the bag, as I have seen you suggest before?
Thanks.
Used my new system this weekend and it worked great with one pump running, but when I turned on a second it really decreased the water flow. Wondering if its the valve on the intake not allowing enough water in?
Hey Jason, any chance of getting a group buy discount for us Supra owners on the 1100lb sac? :D
Thanks for the help guys, Jason i'll be waiting on the UPS man...
Steve,
If I am not mistaken you should be able to get about 40 GPM out of a 3/4" intake, so it should not slow down too much when all three pumps are running.
However, the 800's are rated for 13.4 GPM but after all the friction loss and going through the vented loops, I am only getting about 10 GPM into the bags. I will say after two seasons without the sprinkler valves it has been working awesome, reliable and simple.
I must say, I've been very pleased with the upgrade in the 3 months I've been using it. I haven't measured/calculated the GPM, but it is much better than the sprinkler valves, and that's good enough in my book. If I were to do it over, I probably would have added a 2nd thru-hull and separated the rears from center pump, and gone with the 1200's vs. the 8's, although I haven't done the calculations to make sure it would be much more efficient.
Only problem I've been experiencing is surging with my center pump. There are times it won't pump a solid stream of water, it more or less spits and surges. The bag eventually fills, but I need to find the time to look in to the problem.
Should be getting at least 30 GPM with all three pumps running, the stock system only had a 20 GPM rule, which did not even put out close to that.
As far the sputtering on the center pump, sound like you are getting air in the system somehow. Does it do it all the time, or just when you put the boat in the water? When you put in the water you should be able to see water in all three lines above the pumps.
Thanks Travis, I'll take a look next time I'm out.
I'm always just so excited to get behind the boat that I keep telling myself I'll look at the problem later.
First off I just wanted to say how awesome this thread is, great work guys there's a lot of great information in here. Although I'm not doing an "upgrade" to an existing ballast system, I am planning on installing a similar system and I just want to run it by all of you for advice, do's, don't's, and tips. Basically just to make sure I have all the bases covered, right materials etc.
I'm including two pics; one of the "diagram" I've created for what I want to do and a second that acts as a key for the diagram and a list of materials. Do I have all the materials included? Does the diagram look correct? Do I NOT need any of the materials?
FMan, how much did your brass manifold cost you? Anyone have the PVC one from wakemakers and if so, any problems with it? Thanks for the help, hopefully these pics work.
http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/z...ast_Page_1.jpg
http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/z...ast_Page_2.jpg
FMan, how much did your brass manifold cost you? Anyone have the PVC one from wakemakers and if so, any problems with it? Thanks for the help, hopefully these pics work.
I would just go with Wakemakers and save the money, I cant remember the cost but it was pretty expensive because of all the brass pieces.
I am getting ready to install a similar surf system in my VLX, I also found out wakemakers has changed up a couple items. You will need a one way check valve on the fill lines to the bags, apparently when the boat is driving it is sucking water out of the bags once water is filled in them. The water flowing under the boat creates a negative drag and pulls water out.
They are also not recommending using "vented loops" anymore. If you run the fill line up and over the rear compartment area (as high up as possible) you will not get any water in the bags when driving the boat.
They also are now selling the RULE 1100GPH tournament series ballast pump, which has a 3/4" NPT thread to 1" outlet. I am going with these pumps, they put out about 18GPM which is really good, you will fill a 750lb sac in about 5 minutes. Also going to use them for the drain pumps. I think they run about $50 a piece.
Chris-
Your diagram looks good, and I don't see anything I would recommend changing. We have a lot of customers doing simple aerator pump based ballast systems like this, so I think you'll be really happy with the results.
Just a couple of comments:
- With only two fill pumps you won't really need a "manifold", you'll basically just need to split the supply to feed two pumps using one of our intake tee fittings.
- As long as you have a ball valve attached directly to your thru-hull you don't need to use bronze (definitely don't use brass in a boat, it will corrode), and plastic is cheaper and lighter.
- Depending on what size pumps you're planning on using for filling that may necessitate upgrading to a larger intake.
- You have a check valve between the fill pump and bow bags, but you're missing one between the fill pump and rear bag, so add one more to your parts list.
- Assuming that you will always be filling and draining both bow bags at the same rate (since you have a single common fill pump), you could combine the two vents and two drains together, instead of combining the vent and drain from each bag. That would allow you to lose the check valves, which would reduce your cost by ~$30 (if you buy the check valves from us).
Careful making blanket statements with the information we give you, our conversation regarding check valves vs. vented loops was specific to your setup, and certainly doesn't apply to all systems. :D
We've been really impressed with these pumps so far, and while they're a little more than a 1200GPH Attwood Tsunami, they don't require any additional adapters to install (so the net price is essentially identical), take up less space, and they include both the straight and elbow discharge fitting, which is a huge advantage when installing the system.
JasonWm,
Could you post a link for what you would recommend to take place of a manifold? I'm not quite following you.
Thanks for the heads up on the check valve. I made a conscious decision to remove that because I was simply thinking that when on plane the sac would be lower and water wouldn't rush out. But I completely forgot to take in account when the boat is just sitting at idle and the bag is higher, as well as negative pressure from water rushing past that hole. Silly...
Anything else guys? Still looking for two bags, between 200-400#'s if anyone has some or sees some for sale.
Also Jason, the reason I have two separate systems set up for both bow bags is because I want to be able to remove one and keep the other. I don't do a lot of surfing, but when I do I would like to be able to remove that front right bag, set it beside the engine on the port side and fill it up. I was planning on having a valve that I can manually turn off and on on that front right bag so that I can fill just the left and not the right. Then, I was going to have a T-Joint before the stern sac with another manual valve after it so I can close the valve and connect the second hose of the T-Joint to the bag lying on the floor and fill it up. (I would just have that second hose lying beside or on top of the stern sac when not in use).
Does this make sense? Do you think that system will work? I'm just trying to avoid buying a fourth sac and a $100 Tsunami pump to manually fill a sac for surfing.
All of that said, if I leave everything the way it is right now, are the check valves even necessary on the drain lines?
I didn't read everything , just looked at the diagram and see no reason to have the check valves on the drain lines at all.If anything you want them on your vent lines and even then , with the y connector they probably are not doing much as you are going to eventually drain the bag anyways. You may want to route your rear vent line forward to prevent siphoning during a surf session or you could just put a cork in the thru hull on the surf sides to prevent this. You also only need 1/2" vent lines, but then you need a 1/2 / 3/4 y which may be hard to find or you could just go all 1/2 vent discharge as time is not usually a matter when draining. Just an opinion .......:)