I decided I would do more to plumb in the ballast this year so it can be filled up a bit quicker. My system is set up with a 400# bag in the rear ski locker, a 400# bag under the rear seat, and a 350# bag that fits under the cooler down in the bilge in the space I opened up during the rebuild. A lot of times we put a 250# bag right in front of the engine too. I have a Simer pump mounted up under the helm (not in the bilge), and that pump is all plumbed to a through hull fitting and wired into a fill/drain switch. Until now, we've just had a hose off the Simer that we manually connect to each of the bags for filling. I didn't want to add more pumps (yet), but wanted to process to be sped up a bit. So, I made a PVC manifold to distribute and control water flow to each of the bags independently. Each bag will be plumbed in with a fill/drain and also a vent line. This should speed it up significantly.
Here is the manifold finished and ready to be installed.