arks
Lieutenant Commander
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2002
- Messages
- 1,971
My Silverton is 42 years old. She has twin inboards and stays in a slip all year, so I deal with shaft packings. Last time I did them I used GFO packing (the best stuff). They’ve lasted almost 10 years but were starting to leak in the spring. No terrible, but enough to stink up the cabin.
I didn‘t want to haul out, so I decided to look into the DryBilge system. After the initial price shock, I dug a little deeper figured out that a similar setup can be coddled together using generic parts- for WAY LESS money.
Picked up a small 12V diaphragm pump, a cheap game feeder digital timer, some vinyl tubing, various fittings for the tubing, and 3 kitchen sponges. Total cost was about $70.
I found a nice writeup about this online, so it was pretty easy to put it all together. The boat has 3 bilges that tend to get wet, so I put pickups in each and ran tubing to the pump. Wiring to the timer was easy and I picked up 12V from the inverter already in the cabin. Set the timer to run once a day for 30 seconds (as a test) and discovered that was enough to maintain a totally dry bilge all summer. No dampness or smell, imagine that!
Here’s the link I used to put this all together. The pump and timer were no longer available so I found similar ones, and they worked fine.
https://lifeempirically.com/2018/03/12/build-your-own-diy-arid-bilge-or-dry-bilge-system/
I didn‘t want to haul out, so I decided to look into the DryBilge system. After the initial price shock, I dug a little deeper figured out that a similar setup can be coddled together using generic parts- for WAY LESS money.
Picked up a small 12V diaphragm pump, a cheap game feeder digital timer, some vinyl tubing, various fittings for the tubing, and 3 kitchen sponges. Total cost was about $70.
I found a nice writeup about this online, so it was pretty easy to put it all together. The boat has 3 bilges that tend to get wet, so I put pickups in each and ran tubing to the pump. Wiring to the timer was easy and I picked up 12V from the inverter already in the cabin. Set the timer to run once a day for 30 seconds (as a test) and discovered that was enough to maintain a totally dry bilge all summer. No dampness or smell, imagine that!
Here’s the link I used to put this all together. The pump and timer were no longer available so I found similar ones, and they worked fine.
https://lifeempirically.com/2018/03/12/build-your-own-diy-arid-bilge-or-dry-bilge-system/
