ballast de-contamination help please
 

So I am going to go camping up at Lopez Lake (http://www.slocountyparks.com/inform...ggalmussel.htm). I frequent lake Piru which does mussel inspections and I have a cable, but Lopez does not accept their cable. So beyond the normal hull/standing water visual inspection and hot water bath, they require internal ballast de-contamination. I spoke to the ranger and he said it entails filling the bags/tanks with 3oz of bleach for every gallon of water.

Here is my problem, I have a Sanger V215 with factory ballast (front 500 bag and two 250 rear tanks). I thought this would be easy, fill a container with water, hook hose up to thur-hull intakes, other end of short hose in the container of water, then turn on the ballast pump and fill as if it were sitting in water. No. I couldn't get the pumps to pull water, so i used my garden hose and turned it on connected to the other hose to push water and hopefully prime it, but no go.

Any suggestions, I thought for sure my way would have worked. I do not want to undo my hoses inside because they are sealed from the factory and would have to reseal them on site and will have less than 24hrs before we are on the water. I really want to bring the boat, but if I cant figure this out then it will not be accompanying me and I will be bored :mad:

Fashion a container with one side of a short hose connected to the bottom of the container and put the other end in the ballast intake. Keep the hose as short as possible. Each connection has to be pretty much air tight. Fill the container with your solution and keep the container higher that the ballast intake. Turn the the pumps on. Water pressure from gravity will prime the pumps and they will draw the container down until its empty.

I tried that, but still didnt work, I will work on making more of an air-tight connection and give it another go-around. Any other thoughts. Also what about the front bag due to the intake being underneath the boat???? Can I fill up the tanks through the drain holes, will gravity push through the drain pump (its a two pump system, one fill one drain)

Yep all Sangers use two pump system. It would be slow going if at all to fill through drains. Filling through the overflows might be a better option. All you have to do is have adequate water pressure with little or no air coming into the intake in order for it to prime. The front intake will be more of a challenge but still do-able.

Yup, fill through the vents on the side of the boat. That should be really easy. By the way I have had success filling the rear tanks of my V215 with a garden hose shoved up the fill holes in the transom. But pouring bleech down the vent holes and shoving a garden hose in there should work super easy.

I tried moving my container off my swim platform and onto the rear sunpad, primed the hose the same way as before and what do you know it worked. Front the same way. I am super stoked and am going to use a large tupperware style 20 gallon storage container up at the lake. Thanks for all the help.

I'm sure this is a silly question, but what is a "cable" they won't accept?

when you pull your boat out of the water at certain lakes " mussell free lakes" they run a metal cable hooked together with a lead crimp with the lake name on it to show it was the lastlast your boat was in. If you go to a different lake, when you launch, the cable breaks, showing them the next time you're at a lake that requires inspection, your boat needs to be inspected. If you still have the cable on your boat, the last lake you were in was a mussel free lake, and you don't need to be inspected. I guess it's a Southern California thing, but atleast we don't have them damn flying carp!

yup, what he said