New Ballast Install on DD.

Almost finished my ballast install from the weekend.

My biggest concern was installing everything so it could be removed one day with little scaring to the rest of the boat for when I go to sell her.

My brother in law is a plumber which game in handy for getting parts at wholesale price and having someone that could just look at it and know what needed to be done.

1) Installed brass nipple on to existing through hull. I will have to remove this when I got to do oil changes as this is the hole that I stick the oil line through. My brother in law installed a quick disconnect union so just need to grab a wrench and it will pop off. This is directly under the engine and runs to the back trunk of the boat. The pipe is 1" pex

2) You can see where Todd ( brother in law) 90'd up from the floor in the trunk and ran in and along the top of the gas tank. Again I didn't want to cut the existing floor panel here so I had a piece of ABS Cutting board plastic cut to the same shape which I notched then carpeted to look somewhat factory. In the background you can see the mounts I glued to the hull to mount our pump board too.

3) Here you can see the pumps mounted to the board ready to go in. Again a lot of the pipe and joints have been done with Pex and clamped on rings.

4) Here the board is mounted in the back corner of the trunk. The only thing left here is to add some hose on the Empty lines which we are going to attach some washer style hose. Again I was hesitant to put through hulls in which I did buy but decided at this point I am not going to do it....again because I want to be able to pull everything out one day and don't want 2 - 1" holes in the back.

5) The bag on the one side of the engine wiht all three lines. Red= fill, Black = Drain, and unmarked is vent.

6) I had a local plastic company make me this piece. My ws420 was just screwed to the underside of the dash and I needed somewhere to mount the switches so I thought this would be the best place. I already had the switches so that's why I didn't go 3 way switches. I made the template out of cardboard and took it to the platic dude to cut out for me. Turned out great. Even put tabs on the back to screw the WS420 into.

Got a Chiro appoint will be back................

Are your pumps below the waterline?

Having a hard time visualize all of this but if your pumps aren't below the water line then I see you having a ton of issues with getting them to prime.

How are you going to get the aerator pumps to prime, being that far from the water source and above the water line? I hope it works for you.

X3 Because it doesn't seem like you thru-hull is even a scupper type.

My brother in law doesn't seem to think it will be an issue but I'm sure we'll find out. Once you open the thru hull and vent the pressure will force the water in. In the 5th picture bottom right ( existing ballast hose). The top of the cream colored hose wrap is about the waterline.

It's not. Any hole below the waterline in a boat will force water in.

Good luck!

I hate to tell ya, but there's no way those pumps will prime above the water line. The water will never go above the water line because there is no "pressure", that you mentioned earlier, to force the water above the water line. The only reason water "appears" to have pressure going thru a hole in the bottom of a boat is because it's trying to get back to the level of the water. If you held the boat up at it's typical water line level, it'll only fill to the water line outside. The boat would only fill full because it's sinking; the water isn't rising.

Sad. So much work but missed one critical piece..

Good luck man - let us know how it all turns out.

Tuneman, I understand that....and never said it would fill above the water line.

If it has to be tweeked it won't be too bad to fix.

Dave, my only reason for pointing out the fact that I didn't think the intake was a scupper was that maybe if you changed it to a scupper you might not have to move the pumps. Contrary to what you are saying that "Any hole below the waterline in a boat will force water in" a regular mushroom thru-hull will not force any water into the boat. It will only let water in till the water reaches the waterline unless something else draws it in i.e. some pump that is self priming). If you put a scupper on there you might have enough pressure while underway to push the water to the pumps to get them to prime. It seems like you had planned on having to open and close the valve anyway so it shouldn't be to bad.

Some more food for thought though if you do move the pumps below the waterline, which you will def have to do if you don't try something like a scupper intake, you can run your fill lines up above the waterline and then back down you your sacs. This way you won't have to open and close your valve to operate your system. You can just leave it open all the time but the water in the lines won't fill you bags until you turned the "primed" pumps on. This is how alot of malibu's do their systems.

I'll have the boat on the water tomorrow so I'll see how everything works. If changes need to be made we'll address them. We're going to take some parts out with us so we can make some changes on the fly if needed.

Hey Dave-

It may be too late in the day, but I figured I would save you the time of testing the system on the water, as it's simply not going to work (for the reasons pointed out above).

Here are some basics for aerator (the class of pump the Tsunami belongs to) based system:

- Never use a scupper intake, all it will do is lead to your bags filling whenever the boat is driving
- Your fill pumps need to be installed below the waterline as close to the thru-hull intake as possible
- You need to use vented loops to prevent water from entering or exiting the bags passively
- Drain pumps need to be installed at or below the level of the bottom fitting on the bag, and should be as close to the bag as possible (we prefer that our customers connect them directly to the bag, quick connect fittings can be used).

Because aerator pumps are not self-priming (they are not capable of generating negative pressure on the supply hose to the pump) they'll never work correctly if installed above the water line for filling, or above the bottom of the bag for draining.

There's more info on the basics of setting up system on our Ballast Blog, and we're always happy to answer questions.

Not because of this thread but to me every person named Todd is known as Re-Todd. A few adjustments and you should be good to go. And also if you end up laying your pumps down the discharge on your pump should be pointing straight up. If you do not do this you may have problems primming even below water.

Agree with everything jason said except:

- Never use a scupper intake, all it will do is lead to your bags filling whenever the boat is driving

Some people like the advantage of using the scupper as while underway it's easier to get your pumps to prime. Granted if you do this you will always have to actuate some sort of shut-off, i.e. manual or rv waste gate or something. But by doing so you avoid the cost of vented to loops which according to the prices on your site can be damn pricey ($48!! each). Four bag system with 1" hose and that's $200 on vented loop valves alone, damn! Granted they can be found for about $30 everywhere else on the web but it still might get expensive. Also there is extra hosing involved with running your fill hose up above the water line and back down to the bag. More than one way to skin a cat but for $200 dollars I bet you can rig up a pretty could electronic gate thingy.

Personally I like the vented loop design because it's less moving parts but the other way might be easier on someones budget.

The problem with any type of valve to control flow is that really you need one for each circuit of the system. If you only have one single point of control right after the thru-hull, any time you open it to fill just one bag and the boat is moving, all of the bags will start filling (albeit at a slower rate). Vented loops are spendy (although most customers using aerator class pumps will use 3/4" hose, so they're a little cheaper), but they give you independent control of each bag, so no matter what the situation you will only have water flowing into (or out of) the bag you want.

I put a similar system into my 97 SunSport. Mine has 5 bags with a 5 pump fill manifold and an empty pump on each bag. My fill manifold is actually below the floor so I thought I would be below the water line and not have priming issues so I installed a dedicated 1.5" mushroom through hull. Even with my pumps this low I could not get the pumps to prime consistently so I added a seperate scooper/strainer deal over the top of my mushroom thru hull and now it works great. I also installed a manual waste gate valve with a cable actuator that is run up to my dash so if I want to fill the bags I just reach down and open the main valve and switch all of the pumps on. Jason is correct that with this type of system and least some water will be going to all of the bags if the main valve is open. I usually fill all of my ballast at the same time anyways so this doesnt really bother me but if I want to keep one empty I can just flip on the drain pump for that bag while the rest of them are filling. Another plus to the scooper is that it fills really quickly when on plane. Also, like others have said you may have issues with the drain pumps priming if they are mounted away from the bag. Mine are mounted right at the bag and I still have trouble getting them to prime sometimes.