Bilge pump

G

gwwannabe

GreatGrady Captain
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Piankatank River, Gloucester, VA
I have a '93 Gulfstream which I bought 11 months ago. The former owner replaced the forward bilge pump as part of the sale. This past March, when I was checking everything out in preparation for the season, I found the pump was not working. After checking everything I could think of, I pulled the pump out of the boat and bench tested it. The motor is dead. This is a Rule 1100 GPH electronic sensing automatic pump. When I read the specs on this pump, I learned it cycles on every 2 1/2 minutes to see if any water is present then cycles off. Most of the time, my boat sits on a lift with a significant fall toward the stern. No way any water can collect around this bilge pump. This constant cycling can't be good for the pump when it's dry 99% of the time. I'm thinking about replacing this pump with one that has a built-in (automatic) float swith or even one with an external float switch. What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Gary
 
You are right. That pump is designed for a leaky wooden boat. A pump with a float would the best one for that situation as the forward one is just really a back up anyway. You should aready have 3 wires to the foward pump with an auto position, off, and on position on your forward bilge pump switch so hooking a float switch pump is easy. This is also true for the aft pump.
 
If you buy the auto pump and are asleep at the anchor, you will hear bzzzzzzzzzzzzz every 2 1/2 minutes. Could be pretty annoying.
 
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