Blowing out the water lines

Been doing my water lines that way for years, both on the 280 and the 40. Granted it takes longer on the 40 but the same basic process still works. I made a custom-built hose connection to go between my water inlet and the air compressor I use. A few things to remember: 1) drain and bypass the water heater first. 2) You MUST do each line AT LEAST twice (each one at a time) 3) work from a checklist as it is easy to forget one of the many water connections on our boats and 4) no more than 40-45psi at the air compressor regulator.
 
I litte confused when you say water inlet , there"the inlet were we fill the holding tank and inlet at stern of the boat for hose connection ?
and do i have to put a bypass on water pump ?
 
I have winterized the pump along with the water tank. Drain the tank, add couple of gallons of antifreeze, then run the pump from one of the cold water lines like the cockpit sink to get pink into the pump. You could also manually disconnect the pump and drain the lines that way. I have done it both ways depending on how much antifreeze I have. If you are going to add pink to the tank though it might actually be easier to add more and then pump it through each connection in the system rather than play around with the air compressor.

The inlet I meant was the water hose inlet used to run on dockside water. Instead of connecting that to water, you will be connecting it to pressurized air which will displace water from the lines throughout the boat.
 
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You can get one of these adapters that screw into the dockside water inlet, then put the air to it. http://www.rvwholesalers.com/catalog/brass-blow-out_plug-09-0214.html Those adapters are made of different materials, etc depending on where you look but they all do the same thing. It gets cold up my way so I actually blow out the lines with air and then run the pink through just in case there is some water laying in a low spot somewhere. I also just blow out the AC lines by putting air into the AC discharge thru hull fitting, you can see the water come out the water pickup seacock.
 
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shore1 said:
Has anyone every blown out the water lines, instead of putting the pink stuff in them ??
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Blew mine out on the 330 for the first time last year. No more pink stuff for me! It worked great and I didn't have to unplug the screen filter on the fresh water pump at all this year. Last year I had to clean the screen 4 times do to using the pink stuff. Just do as Gerryb says and it works fine. I did mine the same way, hooking up to the hose inlet for dockside water and using air pressure of 20 psi.
 
I blew mine out last year, No problems. Blew the water heater out and un-hooked the water pump and blew air through all of the lines one at a time. (wife opened up various outlets starting with the nearest. Don't forget the transom shower if you have one.

LK
 
Woody said:
You can get one of these adapters that screw into the dockside water inlet, then put the air to it. http://www.rvwholesalers.com/catalog/brass-blow-out_plug-09-0214.html Those adapters are made of different materials, etc depending on where you look but they all do the same thing. It gets cold up my way so I actually blow out the lines with air and then run the pink through just in case there is some water laying in a low spot somewhere. I also just blow out the AC lines by putting air into the AC discharge thru hull fitting, you can see the water come out the water pickup seacock.
Click to expand...

+1 for all of the above, except the AC. I just drained the sea strainer, and then pumped the pink stuff backward through the AC discharge port on the hull side until deep pink shot out the bottom of the boat (out of the water). I was also surprised how much clear water got pushed out of each waterline as I pumped the pink in after blowing out the line. I will say that I drained, then bypassed the HW heater. Pumped out as much fresh water as possible from the FW holding tank, then added a bypass in so that I could pump directly from a pink stuff bottle without having to contaminate the FW holding tank (takes too long to get the pink flavor out of the FW tank in the spring). Here's the camco bypass. This link is to a camping site, but the same equipment (which you can get at WM or wherever you chose). http://www.rvpartscountry.com/PumpConverterWinterizingKit.html
There is also a HW bypass kit, but I just connected the incoming and outgoing tubes with a piece of PVC seen here http://clubsearay.com/showthread.php/458-300-Sundancer-questions?p=620545#post620545.
 
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JimfromMD, I do a similar thing to bypass the water heater. I used a water supply line like under a sink. I thought it would be easier to use because of the flexibility...just an idea to share.
 
i use the exhaust from my wet/dry vac to blow out the water lines....i use my hand to cup around the joint between the vac hose end and the water line to make a kind of 'adapter'....this works very well since the exhaust from the vac is high volume with low pressure....i also use this method to blow out the water from the exhaust components and engine as much as possible....i do not use antifreeze for winter storage...i just get all the water out of the fresh water system, toilet, bilge and engine and call it good....air doesn't freeze so that is all the freeze protection needed.....

cliff
 
Woody said:
JimfromMD, I do a similar thing to bypass the water heater. I used a water supply line like under a sink. I thought it would be easier to use because of the flexibility...just an idea to share.
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So I started down that path but was having trouble finding the connections at my local Ace/Home Depot. I picked up a bypass kit similar to the one I got for the fresh water tank and tried to install it. Come to find out the connections were getting too close to my starboard motor. Anyway, long story short, and full confession.... As I was laying over the motor trying to get to the HW tank... I saw something laying behind the tank on the ledge... Come to find out the previous owner made the device I posted the pic of, and had just layed it on top... which then fell behind. So my work was done for me! :)
 
Thats exactly why, i want blow the lines out , and empty out the holding tank ,you never really get rid of that smell from the antifreeze .
 
so how do you know you got all of the water out of the tank? how and why do you disconnect the water pump to blow the lines out?

thanks
Anthony
 
AFD said:
so how do you know you got all of the water out of the tank? how and why do you disconnect the water pump to blow the lines out?
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Once the water pump isn't pushing anything out of the lowest line in the boat (transom shower, probably), the tank is as empty as you can reasonably get it. The pump acts as or has a one way check valve, and blowing compressed air from the city water hookup hits all of the lines on the other side of the pump, so I don't think you have to disconnect it.
 
didn't think about the valve in the pump.
 
All this blowing out sounds like a lot of trouble, and you can end up leaving water in the system if you're not careful. What's the big deal about simply running pink through the system ?? I've done it now for three seasons and had no problems.
 
I run the tank as low as possible, dump a couple gallons of pink in, run the faucets and toilet one at a time and call it a day. In the spring I run a couple tanks of fresh water with about a cup of bleach in the first one and all is well. We don't drink the water. We only use it for washing etc. so it works for us. My water has no odor.
 
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