After reading your post I decided to forgo check valves on both primary and secondary bilge pumps and had the same experience with recycling bilge water. Installed Whale Gusher check valves this spring and they both leak. It takes about 30 minutes for leakage to top the electronic float and cycle up pump.
Anyone have recommendations for alternatives? Not a lot of reviews of check valves or non return valves. Bruce S/V Gyrfalcon C&C 29-2 Kootenay Lake, BC ________________________________ From: Randy Stafford <randal.staff...@icloud.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2018 9:26 AM To: cnc-list Subject: Re: Stus-List I am so done with bilge pumps... I’ve had mixed experience with Rule pumps in three years on Grenadine. She came with an old Rule-Mate 1100 that still works as intended. Before the 2017 season I added a second Rule-Mate 1100 under the mast step, and it came from the store with an inoperative internal water sensor, so automatic mode was useless, and reversed internal wiring or impeller so that it just churned the bilge water instead of pumping it out the discharge hose. And yes, I’m certain I wired it correctly - this past offseason I unstepped the mast and put in a replacement new Rule Mate 1100 which works as intended on the exact same wiring - which I’d completely replaced before the 2017 season with right-sized / oversized wire. There are a lot of negative reviews of these Rule-Mate pumps on westmarine.com<http://westmarine.com> (one of them mine, the most-liked negative review there). On a related topic, when I overhauled the bilge plumbing before the 2017 season, I chose not to install check valves in the discharge hoses because I was pretty influenced by http://www.yachtsurvey.com/bilge_pumps.htm. I wrote a long post to the list about my thought process - http://cnc-list.com/pipermail/cnc-list_cnc-list.com/2017-March/091421.html. Turns out I drained my batteries twice last season from a cycling bilge pump, because I didn’t manually pump the bilge often enough. And that sucked - I had to pull the batteries out, bring them home, put them on a charger, take them back and put them in, etc. Fortunately I didn’t kill the battery life with those mistakes - they’ve been working fine. Pain is a great teacher, so this past offseason I relaxed my principles and installed Whale Gusher check valves in the discharge hoses. Now I’m worried that the little rubber joker valves inside those check valves will fail and lead to pump cycling again. The big rubber joker valve in my Jabsco head only lasts about a year, I’ve found, after which it leaks and allows backflow. Cheers, Randy Stafford S/V Grenadine C&C 30-1 #7 Ken Caryl, CO
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