Marlin winterizing questions

[ttles714]

Bought a 2001 Marlin....Starting to winterize....A couple of questions: How do you access the pump for the pressure water system ? Anything in the Aircondition that needs winterizing. Is there a way to drain the fresh water tank. ? Thanks

 

[georgemjr]

I don't own one, so hopefully some of the Marlin owners chime in. For fresh water: run the fawcetts until the tank is empty (I don't think there is a drain). Then put a couple of gallons of anti-freeze in the fresh water holding tank and run again until it comes out each fawcett including cockpit shower and, if you have it, fresh H2O washdown. There is mixed opinions on the hot water side. Some access the heater, and drain it, connect the inlet and outlet lines together to make a loop bypassing the heater and run those fawcetts to get antifreeze throughout the lines. Others just run until empty and add extra anti-freeze so that the water heater fills up with the pink stuff. This is probably the easier way, but you use a ton of extra anti-freeze that isn't necessary if you drain it. Air conditioning also has the water line for cooling, which you can put anti-freeze in, but I don't know how. I don't believe the unit itself requires any attention other than that. Again, I don't own one, so I am not an expert on the A/C. Does the owners manual say anything about it?

 

[saltypup]

Your pump is located behind the port sidewall in the aft berth. About ten screws or so in the carpeted sidewall, pop it off and the pump is laying in the gunnel.

 

[Fishermanbb]

You can avoid disconnecting anything if you do the following:

1. Buy the through hull "Plunger" that you put over your thru-hulls when the boat is out of the water.

2. Get a "Drill pump" that will connect to your handheld drill.

3. For the Fresh water follow the advice above - Empty all of the tanks, then add Non-tox to the tank (About 10 gallons). Run the non-tox until you get heavy pink out of both faucets. Also do the cockpit shower and the windshield washer. Basically, anything that has fresh water coming out of it should have non-tox running through it to the outlet point.

4. Find your A/C outlet point on the hull (Where your A/C pumps the water out). Connect the "Plunger" and the drill pump and pump Non-Tox back through the system until it comes out under the hull at the intake.

5. Find the intake thru-hull for your live well. Connect the "Plunger" and drill pump and pump non-tox through until it comes out in the livewell.

6. Empty the head and put 1 gallon of non-tox into the head and flush to the holding tank.

7. I can't remember if the Marlin has a shower sump - But if it does - Pour non-tox down the shower drain and turn on the sump pump.

8. For the salt water washdown repeat the same procedure as the livewell. Leave the washdown hose and nozzle off of the fitting.

Leave all your seacocks open and you should be fine. The "Plunger" and drill pump are cheap and you should be able to do all this in an hour. It helps if you have an extra person to tell you when the non-tox is coming out of the livewell, etc. Otherwise it is a very simple process.