I've pinked - now what??

[DaleM]

This is my first year with a boat and I'm shutting things down for the season. I've done a good bit of reading and shot a few questions out around winterizing the FW systems. The process seems pretty straight forward - here's what I did:

Drained and bypassed the HW heater (2-90deg union elbows and small line) per the manufactures recommendation which doesn't drain 100% but is apparently ok per the manual.

Drained the FW tank by running the pump for a good while and while I was underway to shake things around.

Took a compressor and connected to the dock-side water inlet and blew out all lines.

Disconnected the FW pump feed hose (from FW tank) and using a long section of hose put the other end directly into a gallon of pink AF.

Turned on FW pump and went around opening facets (hot and cold) until pink flowed. Flushed toilet. Dumped pink down the shower drain, etc etc. I'm leaving the FW pump feed disconnected from the pump for the winter.

I still have the AC left and the generator to take care of.

My question is - once all of the facets are flowing "pink", should I then OPEN all the facets and leave them that way for the winter?

Once I pink the genset and the AC unit, should I open the seacocks when it's finally up on land to let things drain again and then close them off?

If I leave them open that stuff will drain out but that doesn't seem like a bad thing because the flushing WITH pink should offset the water and the only stuff left pooling in the lines would be AF.

Am I offbase in my thought process? What do the "pros" recommend?

Thanks!

 

[katricol]

yes to both questions. open them up.

 

[DaleM]

Perfect, thank you! She's ready to go up on blocks (damn it!)

 

[mstaglia]

I also blow out my water system a second time to remove the pink stuff and cut down on the Smell of pink in the spring. Don't forget your shower sump and drains in your sinks.
Mike

 

[DaleM]

Good idea. I have a small enough compressor that I used initially. I will probably go back up when it's on blocks and blow everything out with it just to clear it out by connecting to the dockside water inlet.

I did dump pink in the sump by way of the shower drain, AC condensor collector and ran the mid-cabin bildge. After that I sucked what the bildge didn't get with the shop vac.

Oh, I plan on taking the shop vac up and sucking out the ER bilge pumps from the outside just to clear water from them.

Any place else??

 

[Stray Cat]

With your shop vac, suck out the through hull fitting for the relief valve on the water heater...(I manually pop my relief valve a couple of times during the summer and always get some water out with the vac) If you're sucking out all of the through hulls, just make certain you don't go sucking on the vents for the fuel tank(s).

 

[DaleM]

I've thought about the fuel tank vent. I need to locate it - due to a problem that is messy to discuss I figured out where my holding tank vent is! It's the small round metal "slug" looking thing on the right side, near the back. I have to look up the fuel vent.

 

[DaleM]

I've been digging through the manual. It looks like the fuel vent is one that vents up to the fuel filler cap on the 280 DA. It doesn't look like there's a thru-hull vent specifically for the fuel tank which seemingly makes sense. Do others agree with this this?? The only thing that doesn't make sense for my boat is where they show the generator exhaust opening - which is on the port side of my boat. They show it on the starboard side in the manual.

 

[Stray Cat]

Your generator exhaust has (should have) a little flapper on the through hull to let water out, but not back in. Sorry, I can't help with your fuel tank vent...my manual had the fresh water tank vent and my port fuel tank vent reversed. I'm glad I remembered where water came out when I overfilled the tank.