A worse year couldn’t possibly happen for most of us than what happened last year, could it? I didn’t even dare to make new year’s resolutions, things were so bad. For example, I had met almost all of my very ambitious 2008 goals, but none whatsoever of my 2009 goals. So, I say, this is not the time to set goals. One can only hope that the sky doesn’t fall on our heads on top of everything else.

One of the things I should resolve is fixing the diesel heater. I’ve noticed some excellent advice on the CHB forum about how the very same issue was corrected.

John wrote:

I’m having trouble with my Espar D4L cabin heater. When I try to start it, it will usually run for about 30 seconds or a minute, blowing smoke out the exhaust like you’d expect. You can hear the flame if you listen close but the vents keep blowing cold air. After 30 seconds or so it will shut down. I turn it off, wait for 10 minutes or so and try again and after a couple of go-rounds like this it will generally catch and it’s fine.

Yesterday it behaved differently. It would run for about 3 minutes, blowing exhaust smoke like you’d expect, blowing cold air out of the vents, you could hear the flame but not strong and then it would shut down. Repeated the process a half dozen times and gave up.

I’m plugged into shore power so the voltage shouldn’t be an issue.

I’ve taken the glow plug (looks like a coil of wire surrounded by a cylindrical shield with some holes in it) out as I was told I’d need to clean it now and then but it seems clean already unless I’m not looking at it correctly.

Andy wrote:

It’s doing either a low voltage or low fuel shutdown. Maybe both.

Cycles for about 30 secs then shuts down is typically low voltage or bad glow plug. The 3 minute run suggests it’s marginal fuel. You could have both scenarios here.

Do not attempt to clean the glow plug. The heating coil is very fragile (don’t ask how I know this!!). How old is the plug? Many years ago they had a run of very poor plugs that failed rapidly. As a result I bought all I could find, not knowing that ESPAR would fix the plugs shortly after. Silly me!

Ken wrote:

Well, I have a totally different take on what’s happening. If it’s running and you can hear the flame, then the glow plug is working and starting the process. If it isn’t getting fuel properly, either plugged filter, or clogged injection nozzle come to mind. If I remember correctly my Webasto manual talks about replacing the nozzle when misfiring occurs.

If it was me I’d change the filter and then the nozzle. Or maybe even call the technical service line and see if they could advise exactly what would be causing the problem. Although I hate to resort to asking for directions……

In any event, now isn’t the time for a broken heater, at least in the PNW where todays projected high was 30 degrees.

Sandy wrote:

It isn’t that long since Espar distributed bad glo plugs. (I had two.) Those little things are expensive! Even though the plugs were bad Espar refused to exchange them or admit they were “kaput.”

The last time my Espar would start to spool up and then shut down I dug through the tool box and put the old plug back in. It’s still in there. Maybe it is safe to go buy another one now as it’s been a couple of years. If you buy a new plug make sure they are “fresh” and haven’t been sitting on the shelf for a while.”

I also think, as Andy states, the problem it may be lack of fuel or low voltage. BTW, Andy can also tell you how to clean the combustion chamber.

John then wrote:

Hopefully this little story will help someone else or at the very least create a chuckle or two.

First of all, thanks to Andy Clark for telling me how to solve my Espar no-start problems dirt simple. The fix took all of 15 minutes…….well, the fix was quick and then the fun started.

I’ve been having trouble with the D4L Espar furnace since I recently bought the boat. When you try to start it it will run for a few seconds and then shut off. According to the manual, you turn it off, wait for a while and try again, for no more than a couple of times. This has generally been successful.

The last time I tried it out, a week ago, the thing would start up, smoke would pour out the exhaust, blowers would run and cold air would be produced. After 3 minutes of this it would shut down. As per the manual, I shut it off, waited 10 minutes or so and tried again….same result, lots of noise, lots of smoke and no fire (so to speak). Now, being as its 26 degrees here at the time, shutting it off, waiting and trying again for a maximum two times didn’t seem to be giving it the ‘good old college try’ so I persisted until I ran out of time and inclination. I’d probably tried to get it to start a dozen times.

After Andy Clark so kindly told me how to clean the combustion chamber, I went down to the boat today and dutifully followed the simple directions he gave and then turned on the switch………oh mother of God !

The furnace lit up first try (something it’s never done for me )…..and started to blow smoke out the exhaust…and more smoke….and great clouds of smoke…..until the whole marina was invisible to me, and still more smoke (thank goodness the owners of none of the boats in my part of the marina were around. I burnt root piles on the farm growing up and I swear they didn’t smoke this much.

As I’m looking over the side at the exhaust, praying it will clear up, I see liquid diesel dripping out of the exhaust pipe. This can’t be good.I guess that’s what they meant when they said don’t try to start it more than a couple of times, you think they could have provided a brief explanation for the
people like me who generally think we know better.

I go into the boat and check things out and the flexible stainless steel exhaust pipe, being full of diesel and now burning, is smoking, and the boat is starting to fill with smoke and it’s getting hard to see from one end of the salon to the other.

What’s that new noise?…..oh for crying out loud…..a helicopter is hovering over the marina now to see if another boat is on fire (there’s been a few this year ) ………now that’s just plain embarrassing. I’m waiting to see if the Fire Dept shows up….I don’t think I’ll be able to show my face around here again if they do.

I continue to watch the exhaust pipe, it’s not touching anything so I’m not taking any action yet although the fire extinguisher is close at hand. I don’t have to go back out on deck to see the smoke…..the people in the next town can see it by now.

After about 15 minutes of this, the exhaust started to run clear, the furnace was purring away and it was starting to get nice and warm finally.I closed all the hatches I’d opened to clear the smoke and turned on the stove exhaust fan and eventually the smoke cleared inside as well.

The Fire Dept never showed up and in fact neither did anyone else. I’m much wiser now. I’d still do the same thing again if I was having trouble but the key here might be…..IF YOU FLOOD IT, remove the exhaust pipe at the furnace and drop the end down so any liquid fuel can be drained out.

Hopefully this will save someone from a similar experience….they may not be as lucky.

Clearly I need to find out from Andy what those steps are for cleaning the combustion chamber, but even before that, I need to find out how important the angle is from the pump to the heater and correct that first.

It’s early morning and I’m now in the process of making buttermilk fantail dinner rolls for Thanksgiving dinner, which is happening at my sister’s house this year. The fantails will be my contribution. I was up at 6:00 to begin the dough and it’s now rising in the oven, in which I’ve lit the pilot light for this purpose. It’s balmy here right now with temps in the mid-to-high 40s, and of course it’s raining with a vengeance.

I ran around yesterday looking for a muffin pan that would make 12 muffins and still fit inside my galley oven. I found one at my daughter’s favorite gadget store called Tuesday Morning, located in the Hollywood District in Portland. I’m always excited to find things that fit comfortably somewhere in the boat. This is one of those things.

Now as I sit and wait for the rolls to rise I can’t help but wonder what it is we Americans have to be thankful for this year. We’re in a recession that is choking us and out of which there seems no near relief; unemployment is the lowest it’s been in our lifetime; we’re still embroiled in a war in Iraq that was foisted on us while we were busy watching the evening lineup on TV and eating fast food, and now we can’t extract ourselves from it, even though far too many young men and innocent civilians have died or been brutally maimed by it; our public radio stations have been taken over by corporate America because we have no disposable cash to support it ourselves; our financial system has been allowed to extort money at usurious rates all the while creating phantom investments that have made our lives unbearable; most of us are scrambling just to keep a job let alone an adequate income, while being told to get out there and buy things we don’t need and can’t afford in order to get the economy going again; and we’ve lost control over the food we eat because corporate America is producing it all in assembly-line fashion using disposable workers. And the list goes on and it. It’s been a pretty bad year here, and yet all of us continue to sit in front of our TVs to watch the latest reality show or sports program in order to escape the ponderous task of actually investigating what’s being done to us, that is, of thinking. Ok ok, I’ll quit this depressing line of thought. It’s Thanksgiving, after all.

The good news is that I now have a fully-functional BlackBerry that I love and that does everything for me (oh consumer me!). I never thought I’d like a phone, but this one rocks. And my car is running just fine, thank you very much, after having had to replace the fuel injector pump a year ago because I’m using biodiesel, which I continue to use. My new Raritan Elegance macerating toilet is awesome, and I’ve managed to get all the holding tank smells out of the boat thanks to advice from the most amazing “The Head Mistress” website and book. I persevere with my pursuit to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible behind me. I have two beautiful daughters, one of whom is finally finding her sea legs in San Diego, while the other is preparing to sail off from here toward a big, new life and love adventure.

The bad news is that my new diesel heater stopped working about a week after getting it all up and running. I’m back to electric heaters because I’m weary to death of the effort, having spent most of this year thinking about how to install the thing. My batteries are positively beyond the point of nearing the end of their useful lives and desperately need to be replaced, and a whole new DC charging system installed.

Meanwhile, I did manage to move the boat, on a dreary, foggy, drizzly and cold day at the end of October, from the open marina at Hayden Bay to the covered marina here at Jantzen Bay, just after I’d gotten the diesel heater up and running. The weather had started to turn from its autumn-balm to its winter-miserable by then, and frankly November has been a pretty harsh month with its strong winds and torrential rains. I feel I moved in the nick of time. I’m all settled in for the winter in this cave, but regret that it is no longer possible to be warmed by the sun on those rare days when it shows itself.

My finished rolls:

This is my third day with diesel heat and I’m sold.

I spent all of Saturday installing the ductwork for the new furnace. As luck would have it, the sun was out and the boat was warm and toasty, so I could turn off the A/C power and comfortably remove the galley electric heater. I first disconnected it at the panel, then pulled the heater out of the step, then removed the thermostat from the side of the hanging locker.

I’m glad I decided to use the existing opening for the thermostat. I only had to trim the opening a little bit in order to fit in the new thermostat, and I’m sure I won’t mind having to look sideways at it, but I can imagine some future owner scratching his head and wondering what I was thinking.

I next drilled a hole in the flooring under the step for the ductwork to pass through.

The rest of the work had to do with getting the ducting over to the step. It’s never fun working in a constrained space like the engine room, but with a lot of determination along with the incentive of knowing that I had removed my only source of heat in the main cabin, I persevered. I taped all connections with 3M duct tape, and then clamped them. I used strapping to hang the ductwork along the way. I had to use a straight piece of ducting to get through the floor, and I had to put on a temporary end to get it all going.

The other thing I did was to remove the air return duct at the aft settee, cut back the duct and install a louvered cover.

Once all of this was done, I started up the heater and it literally heated me out of the boat. I had to open windows and doors to dissipate the heat.

There’s still a lot to do, but for now I have heat and I’m satisfied. Now I have to move from this, my beloved marina, to the one that has overhead protection. The rains are overwhelming to me.

Shipwright Rob and I have been going back and forth over the decision as to where to mount the dosing pump for the heater. He wanted it mounted against the aft bulkhead just under the heater. But the Espar installation instructions specifically state that the pump has to be located within 2 meters of the fuel source, which is almost 12 feet from the aft bulkhead. I argued for installing it as instructed. I won. Still, I ended up moving it twice before finally deciding on the perfect location for it in order to get Rob’s approval.

On Wednesday Rob came over and worked on installing all the fuel lines for the heater. He put in a shut-off valve at the primary fuel filter along with a check valve, then ran the line from there aft to the pump. I had mounted the pump low on the platform on the starboard side of the engine. He then built some posts along the fuel tank to which he could secure the fuel line and keep it going aft at an ever-inclining angle to the heater.

Then yesterday Rob returned to bleed the fuel system of air and start up the Espar heater.  Before he arrived I finished wiring the pump to the system. I had waited to do this in order to be absolutely sure that he was going to use the location we’d settled on for the pump. I also had to replace the sight glass to the engine raw water strainer before he could proceed. This strainer had started leaking more than was comfortable for me so we had closed off the seacock. I had replaced the gasket and o-ring earlier this week, but then found I needed to replace the sight glass which was chipped. With all that done he was ready to start the engine and bleed the air out of the fuel lines.

Once he had the engine running smoothly again, he turned to the task of bleeding the fuel line to the heater. In this he ran into a few problems with my wiring work. I hadn’t understood the significance of a small wire at the panel and had left it unwired. There were 4 wires that went to the panel, and I had wired the heavier hot and ground ones. The smaller wires, red and red/white, maybe 18 ga., were a puzzle to me so I coiled them and left them there. It turned out that the small red wire needed to be wired to a separate spade fuse. I think that was the only wiring issue he had though. Still it galls that one teeny wire for which I couldn’t figure out the destination according to the supplied wiring diagram managed to keep the whole system from working. Oh, and he had to take out the check valve, which impeded the flow of fuel.

Then there was my battery issue. I had turned off the battery charger and he had been working with starting the engine all that time. The fault showing on the diagnostic display (F11) indicated that I didn’t have enough juice going to the unit (under-voltage shutdown). Well, my batteries are pretty sorry at this point. He understood that and had to turn the charger back on and wait for awhile to continue.

But after that, everything worked like clockwork. Of course, the cabin filled with smoke from burning off all the new-ness of everything, but by the end of the day that had disappeared and we were pretty jazzed about getting it going. I couldn’t even hear the pump ticking away below! Or the jet airplane sound of the exhaust as it can be heard out on the dock.

The only problem we could find was the noise the air return made.  I have the air return duct running to a 4″ vent under the aft settee. It is very loud, no question. We decided that I should buy a teak, louvered panel, install it where I drilled the hole for the air return vent, and push the ducting itself as far back as possible inside the under-settee cupboard. We think that will eliminate any noise associated with the air return. This is almost exactly what another CHB owner, Rob, had done with his air return. Very noisy indeed.

I now have to finish running the ductwork through the bilges to my vent locations, and remove the electric heater in the galley, which is where I’ll be installing the vent for the diesel heater.

Meanwhile the rains are here, big time, and I’m beginning to feel the urgency of moving back under cover for the winter.

I’ve just made the best macaroni and cheese for dinner; freshly made bread crumbs, lots of sharp cheddar and monterey jack cheese. I didn’t quite have enough evaporated milk and had to use some organic powdered milk, but I bulked it up. Some hot sauce too. Definitely calls for seconds.

The wind was up today, and the river has been very choppy all day. The boat has been jumping around in her slip all day as I worked away. I’m operating off my water tanks these days though, and I think that helps to steady the boat. It’s already back down to 58°F as I write this.

I finished wiring the thermostat connector yesterday. It was a bear getting the little pin thing back out of the connector in order to tie in the jumper. Once I got it done I finished fishing the wiring out to the back of the electrical panel, tying it down along the way.

Today I wired the heater to the breaker panel, on the switch labeled for a blower, but as I have no blower and it looks as if there never was a blower, I feel like I’m good to go. I’ve even changed the label on the switch already.

But where to put the pump? Today I asked the CHB forum for answers, and I got some great ones. I especially liked this one:

Piece of cake, here’s my thought process. I put my Webasto 2010 furnace in last year. IMHO you want filtered fuel. Your tanks may be brand new and clean and sparkley now, but what will they be in 10 years? Do you want to go back and retrofit a filter later? Do you want to have the heater injector clogged up and not working when that happens, requiring taking the heater apart also to clean it all up? My answer was no. So, I have a dedicated filter to my heater.

Which brings up the next point. Do you want a possible source of air or fuel interruption into your engine? My answer was no. Even though I have a Lehman 120 which uses very little fuel and who’s fuel lines would support both a heater and the engine at the same time with plenty of capacity, my engine supply is off limits for the heater supply. So a dedicated heater supply line was required. My boat has two ports near the bottom of each tank. One is available to drain any water or sediment off, the other is 4 inches higher and is a perfect takeoff for the heater. So, check you tanks carefully and you too may have a lower port to take off of.

Could you tee in after the Racor and supply your heater that way. Yes! and you probably would never have a problem if you did so carefully and properly. But, Mr Murphy works in devious ways and I like to thwart him when I can.

The length to the furnace should not be a problem. I presume your heater is in the engine room, so the longer run won’t be as much of a problem as a rise in height would be. Remember the heater is using fairly small amounts of fuel so no problem running 15 feet.

Ken Buck
40 Puget Trawler
Puyallup, WA

Other answers all assumed I could pick up at the tank on a stub that my tanks simply don’t have. But this one was also very relevant:

I tee’d my main fuel feed ahead of the RACOR primary filter and ran a parallel RACOR filter with valves on both the input and output of the parallel one. In the event of a plugged filter I can simply switch from one filter to another.

The ESPAR D-5 fuel feed is taken from the output of the parallel RACOR before the output valve. No problems with air entrainment or anything like that. That’s because the filters are below the level of the bottom of the fuel tanks and therefore are always under positive pressure whether or not the engine is running.

Works for me, and has for 20+ years.
Andy Clark
ANTARES
1978 34 CHB DC
Home Port Everett WA

I explained that I didn’t have a anything to tee into at the tank except the fuel supply line to the engine, unless I could do something with the fuel gauge sensor, but that I did have a stub at the filter. I included a few links to these pictures.

Ken wrote this to me:

Shoot, you got it made! Take the filter tee and you’ve killed two birds with one stone. Make sure everything is pipe doped and go for it. If you ever have a problem that seems to be air in fuel related be sure to think of this connection. Better yet, put a valve on the heater supply right there at the tee and you can isolate if/when needed. If you just don’t have a spare tap off the tank, then use what you have.

One bit of unsolicited advice which you may already have planned is to label every valve. Even though one can trace it out put a label on it. For example: “direct from port tank, normally open” or “to espar heater, normally open” or “open to bypass filter and supply unfiltered fuel to engine, normally closed”. In 5 years you will forget exactly how you plumbed it. Or someone else will need to run your boat, or the new owner will have a problem, or some other unexpected thing. While it’s fresh in your mind is the time to put on labels and make a line drawing of how the system is set up.

So I asked about check valves, just to be sure, and Ken wrote me this:

It appears you have plenty of capacity in the hoses you have run for routine use. The time you would need a check valve is when the Racor is clogged and the engine is pulling hard for fuel. Then the engine would try to scavenge fuel from your heater line. A check valve there would potentially keep you from sucking air at that time. (assuming you normally leave the heater fuel valve open,(I do on mine) or that the heater is operating when this happens)

The potential I see is that you could take on a load of questionable fuel, the Racor starts to plug with the water and debris. As the engine continues to pull trying to get fuel, it will find that it’s easier to draw from the heater line than thru the Racor. Unless there is some type of check valve it may eventually get air. Then your problem is not just changing the Racor filter, but also bleeding extra air out of the system, probably thru the injector pump. This takes more time while you’re bobbing in the middle somewhere.

You have valves on both sides of your Racor which means you can change filters, bleed thru the top of the Racor and probably get away without bleeding the injector pump should you suffer an unexpected need to change filters when underway.

That’s the long way to say yes, I’d put one in if I was plumbing your system.

So this gave me what I needed in order to mount the pump and plan the wiring to it. I mounted the pump 4-1/2 feet from the filter, so that it’s located right in front of the engine. It is 9 feet from the heater. That works for me!

Oh, and did I mention my water heater is leaking? Started to look at new ones.

I’ve decided to install the thermostat for the new heater in the same location as the current thermostat for the old electric heater. It wasn’t an easy decision because it means I will have to install it vertically, instead of horizontally as it’s intended. But in the end I don’t want to add a hole in my furniture and it really won’t matter much. Isn’t everything sort of unpredictable on a boat? Anyway, this is located inside the starboard saloon on the hanging locker above the set of drawers.

I will be taking out this heater altogether. This will leave a large hole in the teak step which I will have to patch, and then I’ll cut out the circular hole for the new vent.

I ran the thermostat wiring through the engine room and up into the hanging locker, and then cut it to length. I started to wire it to the connector but didn’t quite finish.

It’s a very delicate and unfamiliar operation, and after I’d gotten this far I realized that I needed to include the jumper on the brown wire which means I have to pull that wire back out of the connector.

On a side note, my water heater has started to leak. I’m bummed, but not discouraged, because it looks like it’s umpteen years old. Note to self: Need a new water heater.

I’m quitting for the day. I’ve been working on the heater installation for over four hours on this, my day off. The nights are dipping down into the 40s (F) these days, and I’m reduced to turning on the electric heaters. There’s more of an incentive to get this project finished.

Toward that end, I’ve decided to get help with the fuel component of this project. I’m going to continue on with everything else.

Today I’ve cut the exhaust hose to fit and attached it to the thru hull with a T clamp (very expensive little critter that is) after getting the insulation sleeve on it with a lot of trouble. My arms feel quite like overcooked, wet spaghetti noodles. I’ve installed the combustion air hose, and left it to draw air from the bilges.

I’ve also worked through the electrical system. Much of this has to do with deciding on a location for the thermostat and on the final location of the fuel pump. The only curious part of the wiring scheme to me is with the line to the DC source, which has two additional small wires, and I’m not at all sure what those are for. I think they’re for the light in the thermostat, but I’m too tired to think about it right now.

The day has turned sunny and warm and I’m quitting this for now.

I installed the exhaust thru-hull yesterday, no small undertaking to be sure. I also drilled my first holes for the air return duct for the furnace. I had help with everything, from being able to see another trawler installation thanks to the CHB forum exposure, to help with fastening the thru-hull and finally with help for drilling big, 4″ holes in totally inaccessible areas of my boat.

The hole in the hull for the exhaust had to be drilled at almost a 30° angle so that it would have the same angle as the thru-hull, which angles upward from outside the boat so that water doesn’t collect inside. I used a tool to set the angle for my drill but couldn’t find a chuck key to tighten the hole saw bit and spent a large part of my morning looking one, and finally buying a new one. I tied everything to the boat before doing anything at all just in case something slipped from my hands. It went well except I wanted to take a picture of the thickness of the fiberglass before installing the thru-hull and forgot to in the end. It’s only like 1/2″ thick though.

Inside I will need to move the fuel vent lines as much out of the way as I can before I attach the exhaust hose, which will have an insulation sleeve over it.

You can see the angle of the thru-hull here. I used a spacer around the pipe to get the same clearance all the way around before securing it. It needed to have 3/16″ clearance all the way around from the hull.

The air return work seemed far less stressful by comparison. I decided to have it come up into the cabinet below the starboard aft section of the settee. It meant crawling into the cabinet with the hole saw and trying to get through two layers of flooring well enough to put a vent in there. I have some strapping in my garage that I need to retrieve to tie all my ducts up. There is a small hole visible under the air duct in the cabinet that was originally for a remote control for the auto pilot unit. I took it out and will replace it with a DC outlet instead.

Oh, and then I had this made by Leonard, which will handle the direction the exhaust takes upon exiting the boat.

I’ve decided to have Rob hook up the fuel components though. It’s just not that straightforward to me.

I started the day yesterday by meeting with Leonard to talk about a pipe elbow for my new heater exhaust. It was pouring down rain but we managed to come to a consensus as to what would work, and he is going to fix something up for me. He also confirmed that I don’t have an extra pick-up tube in my new tanks and will have to tee in to the fuel line on one of the tanks. I’m going to call Hugh Brock to get further guidance on that. Leonard thinks I shouldn’t use the plastic tee that came with the heater, but should instead buy a metal tee from Premier Rubber, which makes perfect sense to me.

I’ve been trying to work out how to add a second, smaller bilge pump to my system for some time now. The challenge was that I didn’t want to add another hole in the boat in order to accomplish that. My one and only pump up to now has been a 2,000 gpm pump with a separate float switch. I couldn’t seem to position it so that it would take care of that last little few inches of water in the bilges. Huge irritation.

I talked to a few people and looked at ABYC rules and couldn’t seem to grasp how I could use one single seacock for two separate pumps. ABYC states that you can as long as there are no check valves in the hoses, and there is a system in place to prevent water flowing back through the hoses to the other pump, more or less. It states that manifolds can be used, but I couldn’t find an example of that anywhere. I did however find a post in the sailboatowners.com forum from Gord May, where he writes on the subject of manifolding multiple discharges:

You can either provide a separate thru-hull for each discharge, ~or~ manifold several discharges together, as follows:

From ABYC Section H-22.8.8 (Electric Bilge Pumps) “If the discharges of several pumps are manifolded to discharge through a single thru-hull fitting, the system shall be designed so that the operation of one pump will not back feed another pump, and the simultaneous operation of each pump will not diminish the pumping capacity of the system. A check valve shall NOT be used in the discharge manifold system.”

In practical terms, this means that the two discharge hoses must have a backflow prevention trap (like a vented loop), consisting of loops (in each pipe) above the level , (and hydraulically ahead) of the manifold and thru-hull. The loops should be about 18″ higher than the thru-hull, to assure no backflow. Because of the difficulty in achieving this, most boats have separate thru-hulls for each discharge. The single thru-hull should be about 1.5 times as large (diameter) as the (2) discharges (ie: 2 x 1″ pump discharge hoses require minimum 1.5″ diameter thru-hull).

HTH, Gord May

I interpreted this to mean that the manifold would be a y-valve, and each hose needed its own vented loop. My seacock is 1-1/2″, to which the existing 1-1/8″ bilge hose has been adapted down to fit. The new hose is 3/4″. The two hoses combined obviously don’t meet the requirement for the size of the thru-hull, which would be over 2-3/4″, and I don’t have the 18″ clearance for the vented loops in that area of the hold, but I was willing to give the whole thing a try nonetheless. If we go down, we go down together.

Desperate, I ordered all the parts I needed to accomplish this. The final part came in this week, the y-valve, and I spent today working on the project.

There are a kazillion clamps in the system, and I am now convinced that I will make the additional hole in the hull at the next haulout, but for now I think I can squeak by.

I connected all the hoses and wired the new 500-gpm automatic pump directly to the battery, and once that was done I stopped for the day. I will wire the big pump to the panel tomorrow after I secure it in the bilge.

The new pump is located as far forward in the bilge as I can go. Just forward of it is the decommissioned, original holding tank. The brown/white wire is not being used because it’s for the manual operation of the pump. I am using only the brown automatic connection given that the pump is wired directly to the battery. There was 2″ of standing water in that section of the bilge when I wired the pump, and the pump successfully cleared most of it out. At least, I’m pleased.

The vented loops are tucked up under the galley as high as I could get them, but certainly not the 18″ above the seacock that is recommended.

The hoses then connect through the y-valve and continue to the seacock.

I haven’t reconnected the big pump to the panel yet, as I need to secure it to the hull first, and it was getting late and I was tired and hungry, so I quit for the day. There are tools and pieces of hose everywhere.

I made a wonderful spaghetti dinner for myself, with reconstituted mushrooms which I hadn’t tried before. They were okay. Fresh mushroom are better though. Then some of my daughter’s homemade pistachio ice cream, nutty and delicious. She’s a better cook than I am.

I just received these pictures from another CHB owner who had worked out the issue of having the heater exhaust exit out the side of the boat.

He wrote this about the pipe:

Note the pipe diameter is widened at the end that fits over the pipe exiting the boat in the starboard hull.  I added the chain later, but the loop was welded onto the pipe.  I put a clear tube around the chain to keep it from scratching the brightwork.

Thank you, Dennis!