All about boat bilge pumps. How and why to do a quick check to make sure it's working.

hi I'm Wayne the boat guy and in this video we're going to talk about bilge pumps [Music] it rained a bunch last night and I keep my boat in the marina so I actually need to go take a look at it this mortar just to make sure everything's okay and my boat's not full of water when it rains pretty significantly if you keep your boat in the marina it's really a good idea to go and take a look just to make sure it isn't filled up with water so one of the first things I look at right here is I'm looking at my boat and I can see that it's not sitting any lower in the water than it normally is so we hop on our boat and we walk back here and let's take a look at the bilge well there it is kicked on which is great boys a lot of water running out of it right now what's really good is if you hop on your boat and you hop near the back and the bilge pump comes on that's a good sign if you can see that or not but the water is slowly getting lower down here and the bilge so why it's a good thing that when I hopped on my boat and I walk toward the back that the bilge actually kicked on is that tells me a couple different things number one my bilge pump is working number two my float switch for my bilge pump is working now it might not be working perfectly but it is working last year my bilge pump switch was not working properly matter of fact what happened is my bilge pump kicked on and it never shut off so it just kept running and somebody down here at the marina heard my boat making a humming noise let me know about that I came down here and I heard the bilge pump just sitting here running and there was no water pumping out of it and I wiggled things around or whatever found out that the switch was bad and I replaced my bilge pump switch but since then I've been a little suspect of the bilge pump switched and I put in there because there's a few times where my bilge pump seems like it's been quite full and the bilge pump hasn't kicked on mine now has been running steadily for over a minute so I'm still not convinced that my belch pump switch is working properly however I do know that it was able to make the bilge pump kick on so here's our bilge pump works if you have a boat like mine it finally kicked off who if you have a boat like mine when it rains even with a bimini top or anything like that all the rain comes down right here on the floor of your boat the bilge is an open hole in the back of the boat that opens up into the lower section of the boat and that lower section of the boat is where the water goes the water goes into there and then that pump pumps it out the drain plug in the back of the boat plugs that off in the wintertime when I have my boat out of the water I take that drain plug out have my boat tipped up enough so that way the bilge is completely empty so there's no ice in there there's no moisture sitting in there over the winter it's all nice and dry underneath but when the boats in the marina during the season and that drain plug is in the water from rain and everything else washes down into that bilge and then the pump pumps it out now your bilge never needs to be completely empty matter of fact a little bit of that water in the bottom of the boat kind of acts as ballast and helps keep things good but you also don't want that to fill up or the bilge pump to stop working if you develop a leak in your boat or your a wave crashes over and a bunch of water were to wash down into there you want that pump pumping that water out you don't want that filling up in here and getting up on the floor of your boat if it gets under the floor of your boat now you're starting to sink you've got a big problem so it's important to know where your bilge pump is how it works how to check it to make sure it's not blocked with any debris or anything like that make sure it's working properly now that mine has finally shut off if you can see or not but the water level is still down there but that is very low if I were to stick my finger in there there was probably about an inch of water down there and that's okay so there's allowed to be an inch of water in the bottom of my boat bilge pump doesn't pump the bottom of your boat dry so this is the bilge pump underneath of here this is the tube where the water runs out these are the electrical wires that run the bilge pump and the bilge pump switch which is located right there it's a float switch and what's really cool about that is that I can reach in and activate it with my fingers and hit that float switch on now if you notice when for I activated the float switch on it did stay running it didn't switch off right away that's a little bit disappointing which is why I come down and check my bilge pump periodically larger boats that have more deck areas may have multiple bilge pumps because there might be a hole where the engine sits and there might be a bilge pump in that area and then there might be another one back towards the back of the boat sometimes they have a standard bilge pump and then a backup the setup on my boat has an automatic switch and the bilge pump is wired to run even when the boat is off and the key is out and the main power is turned off and then also I have a manual switch on my dash where I can switch it on and run the bilge pump at any time so right now I just switched on my bilge pump and of course it didn't pump anything out because there's not enough water in here to pump anymore another thing that's important is to make sure that your bilge is kept clean and by that what I mean is that you do not let fuels and oils get into your bilge if something like oil or gas gets into your bilge you need to soak that up and get that out of there and dispose of that properly because otherwise that's pumping out into the river ocean stream lake that you're in one of the things I check for is I look at the water down here after my bilge pump has run and there's no sheen on the water so therefore there was nothing there's no oil or anything like that that came out which is great so I hope this video was a little bit helpful for you told you a little bit about what goes on with bilge pumps and bilges in a boat and I hope these birds don't hit me in the head that keep on trying to fly around and threaten me please be sure to LIKE comment subscribe and ring that Bell so that way you get notified whenever I come out with new videos thanks for watching and have a great day

Channel: Wayne The Boat Guy

Views: 22,073

Rating: 4.8394647 out of 5

Keywords: bilge, bilge pump, boat bilge pump, water in my boat, bilge water, bilge float switch, bilge float, rain in boat, install bilge pump, bilge pump installation, reason for bilge pump, do i need a bilge pump, what is a bilge on a boat, what is a bilge pump used for on a boat, what is a bilge pump, what's a bilge pump on a boat, checking bilge pump, how long should a bilge pump run

Id: b3kvoTx5AeU

Length: 7min 45sec (465 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020