smells, leaks and hose clamps

[Craig Cook]

There have been a few topics regarding smells from the bilge and water leaks. I wanted to share what I have found over the last few weeks that may help eliminate these. We covered the fresh water leaks from the SeaTech fittings but I discovered a few more things that are smelling up our boat. When we took delivery there were two full gallons of the 50-50 antifreeze mix for the engine sitting in the head. I thought that was very odd. The bilge also had some pretty weird colored liquid sloshing around which I have sponged out several times in the last few months. It was sort of reddish/brownish with stuff floating in it. As I was checking the SeaTech fittings at the hot water tank for those C-clips I did a general pull and twist on hoses just because. It turns out that the hose clamps on the cooling water hoses that feed into the hot water tank were just about finger tight, the hoses would have been leaking engine antifreeze every time the diesel got warm. One mystery solved.
I was running the wires from the plotter to the VHF last weekend and found a puddle of purple liquid under one of the hatch boards in the aft berth....purple??........going back to grade school, you get purple when you mix blue and red..........blue would be the deodorizer that I put in the holding tank, red/pink is the winter antifreeze. Something is leaking into the bilge back there! Sure enough, the hose clamp on the big hose connected to the deck pumpout was loose so the holding tank was dripping into the bilge under the aft berth. Mystery two solved.
This Saturday is going to be spent with a nut driver going over every hose clamp on the boat making sure they are tight. (I also discovered that the mounts for the holding tank were so loose they rattled around)
So the moral of this story is that there can be several sources of leaks and smells besides the obvious.

 

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

Great detective work! And after you've tightened all the nuts, you're gonna clean your bilges, right? Not just dump some bilge cleaner into 'em, let it slosh around, then turn on the bilge pumps and call it done, but really CLEAN 'em...and rinse ALL the dirty water out...right? And use PureAyre to get rid of any residual odors (including diesel, btw).
But first...You might want to check the hoses for permeation and deterioration...'cuz ''twould be a shame to tighten all those clamps only to have to loosen 'em all again to replace hoses. And btw, any hose connection on a line to a below-waterline thru-hull should be double clamped, with nuts on opposite sides of the hose (or at least 90 degrees if 180 is impossible.

 

[Ken13559]

One thing i learnt about hose clip is never use a large size for a small job. Although there's enough thread to tighten to a small diameter, it may not make a round shape.

 

[Craig Cook]

Peggy, I always do everything you tell me! The stuff that sloshing around in that bilge looks nothing like water, not even crusty water. If I was guessing, I would guess it is a combination of engine coolant, pink winterizing antifreeze, maybe some fresh water from those leaks and the selection of things that has been growing in that soup for all these years. No dumping bilge cleaner in there and hoping for the best. Once the boat is in the water and level on the lines I would guess more will appear. Right now the boat is tilted aft to drain the cockpit for the winter. All the water is still of at the club as well. It will be a thorough cleaning for sure. Oh, one of the undocumented features of this model Hunter is that the bilge pumps empty through a fitting that pumps the bilge water out of the SIDE of the boat onto my finger pier. I try not to do that with anything but clean water.

 

[Benny17441]

Are you kidding? Cleaning the bilge is like cleaning the inside of the garbage disposal. Just a flush here and there will have to do.