Hand/Stirrup Pump for Emptying Built In Water Tank

[Bosley Dave]

I'm planning to clean out/treat the water tank on my boat which involves filling and rinsing the inbuilt stainless steel tank a number of times. Can anyone recommend a decent/cheap hand pump (or even better - electric pump) I can use to help speed up the process - it would need to fit through the filler hole in the deck which has a c.1.5 inch diameter. 

 

Thanks 

[pearley]

Wetvac and a length of plastic pipe.

[springy]

How big is the tank - you are unlikely to find any sort of hand pump which will deliver much more than a couple of litres/stroke - even a relatively small tank is going to require an extended period of hand operation to empty by hand. A wetvac may be a good idea as it will be useable for other things but will need emptying every 20 litres or so, any electric pump will need to have a decent duty cycle as you will probably need to run it for quite a long period - maybe an hour at a time even for a moderate sized tank.

 

springy

[David Mack]

Surely you can empty most of it by simply running a cold tap and using your existing water pump.

[Annie cariad]

Amazon bought a stick battery pump to transfer diesel from Jerry cans to tank no drama 

[Momac]

50 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Surely you can empty most of it by simply running a cold tap and using your existing water pump.

You beat me to it.

[blackrose]

5 hours ago, Bosley Dave said:

I'm planning to clean out/treat the water tank on my boat which involves filling and rinsing the inbuilt stainless steel tank a number of times. 

 

Why are you even bothering? I thought the whole point of stainless tanks is that they were maintenance-free?

 

If you want to you can chuck some sterilising fluid in the tank and rinse it out but in my experience that's generally unnecessary and a waste of time too.

Edited April 3 by blackrose

[truckcab79]

I bought a tiddly little 12v pump from Halfords. Thinks it’s meant to be a drop-in caravan water pump. Bought it to get the water out of my bilge that the main pump isn’t low enough to clear.  It’s brilliant. Less than £15 if I recall.l and about the size of my thumb. Wrapped it in a bit of gauze as a filter and tied it to a bit of 1” overflow pipe.    Works a treat.  

[Momac]

 

The pipework is just as likely as the tank to contain bacteria so the flushing process via the taps on the boat is important.

Therefore if you use a separate pump to empty the tank you are not flushing the pipework so only doing half the job.

 

If the boat is known to you and its just been left over winter then I would suggest  simply fill the tank and let the taps run for as long as you feel is appropriate (eg  put a full tank of water through)  and the job  is done.

 

[Peugeot 106]

11 hours ago, Momac said:

You beat me to it.

It may only be rated intermittent so not designed for continuous running. It probably has a thermal cut out but just make sure it’s well ventilated and keep a check on its temperature with your hand. Probably best not to empty it all in one go if you can. I empty mine for winter using the water pump and switch it on and off while doing other jobs

[blackrose]

If it were me with my integral tank I'd just use the water from the tank as usual until it was almost out and then wetvac the last bit out through my access hatch. However, most stainless tanks don't have an access hatch because they don't require cleaning or painting. I think the OP needs to clarify exactly what type of tank they have.

[Bosley Dave]

Thanks for advice everyone. It's an internal stainless steel tank and only access is through filler pipe/hole. The reason I'm being so careful is that my wife is recovering from a serious illness and has no/limited immune system so I want to be as sure as I can about the safety/cleanliness of the water supply.

[Tony Brooks]

24 minutes ago, Bosley Dave said:

Thanks for advice everyone. It's an internal stainless steel tank and only access is through filler pipe/hole. The reason I'm being so careful is that my wife is recovering from a serious illness and has no/limited immune system so I want to be as sure as I can about the safety/cleanliness of the water supply.

 

I know how you feel, my wife had similar when recovering from Leukaemia. I suspect that dangling a foreign object into the tank is more likely to contaminate it than relying on the residual hypochlorite in the public water supply.

 

We, too, had a stainless steel tank and my solution was to pump out as much water as I could with the domestic water pump (not had one overheat yet), poured a full bottle of thin cheap beach into the tank and fill with water. Run each tap until I could smell/taste the bleach in the water, and leave to stand overnight. That sterilizes the pipes, calorifier and pump as well. Pump it all out again and refill the tank. You will have a taint in the water for a few days, but bottled water will overcome that for drinking. I then put a couple of sterilizing tablets into the tank at each fill, but soon stopped on my wife's orders because of the resultant taint.

[LadyG]

2 hours ago, Bosley Dave said:

Thanks for advice everyone. It's an internal stainless steel tank and only access is through filler pipe/hole. The reason I'm being so careful is that my wife is recovering from a serious illness and has no/limited immune system so I want to be as sure as I can about the safety/cleanliness of the water supply.

The water for tea, coffee, cooking will have been boiled, so no worries.

You can rinse through the tank with a chemical, or bleach until the taste has gone.

When you fill the tank run the water through the hose for two minutes first,, don't drop hose in the canal! Spray and dry hose ends before use if you are concerned they could be contaminated. 

I use Pellgrino sparkling for all other drinks, it is definitely free of pesticide residues and mixes with any flavours.

Also wash hands in whb, and rinse off more fastidiously than normal, do this when coming back in to the boat, before food prep and after visiting the loo. Use paper towels to dry hands to avoid multi use towelling which spread germs.

I use paper towels for drying cutlery and plates.   

 

Keep the sink and the loo clean with antibacterial spray, use paper roll. You can take over these tasks from you wife

 

Use paper towels and antibacterial spray every day on touching surfaces, eg handles, taps etc.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 5 by LadyG

[Alan de Enfield]

21 minutes ago, LadyG said:

I use Pellgrino sparkling for all other drinks, it is definitely free of pesticide residues

 

 I wouldn't be too sure - remember the Perrier water recall, and the French authorities saying it was polluted ?

 

 

Spring water destined for Perrier, Vittel and other flagship Nestlé brands contains faecal matter, E. coli and “pollutants” and current treatment methods cannot “guarantee” it is safe, according to French health authorities.

The Swiss food giant has been embroiled in a spring water scandal since French media leaked a government investigation in January asserting that around 30 per cent of mineral water sold in France had undergone illegal purification treatment only meant to be used on tap water.

The initial investigation found that Nestlé had concealed for years the fact it illicitly treated supposedly pure mineral water to sell it at vastly inflated prices compared to tap water, even going so far as to hide filters in electrical cabinets to fool health inspectors.

 

Its Nestlé Waters arm has since confirmed that it put some top brands, such as Perrier and Vittel, through ultraviolet light and active carbon filters “to guarantee food safety”

 

However, a leaked investigation by France’s food safety body, Anses, and the Nancy hydrology laboratory came to a different conclusion, according to findings published on Thursday by Le Monde and France Info. 

Anses experts reportedly warned that they had an “insufficient level of confidence” in Nestlé to “guarantee the sanitary quality of finished products”, namely the natural mineral waters marketed by the Nestlé group.

They said they had found widespread contamination of spring water both in the eastern Grand Est region, where the Hépar, Vittel and Contrex brands are bottled, and in the southwestern Occitanie region, which bottles Perrier.

The memo cites regular microbiological contamination from coliform bacteria, E. coli and enterococci in many wells “reaching high concentrations on several occasions”, even though the rules governing natural mineral waters do not tolerate the presence of any bacteria in the water, either before or after bottling.

 

 

[Momac]

3 hours ago, Bosley Dave said:

Thanks for advice everyone. It's an internal stainless steel tank and only access is through filler pipe/hole. The reason I'm being so careful is that my wife is recovering from a serious illness and has no/limited immune system so I want to be as sure as I can about the safety/cleanliness of the water supply.

Sorry to hear that and wish her well.

We don't usually  drink tank water from our own boat other then perhaps  brushing teeth.

Instead we have a couple of 5 Litre spring water bottles from the supermarket which we refill from the  water point.  We buy fresh bottles each year. If the bottles are handled  with reasonable care they last the year. 

We are never moored very far from a water point and even if a walk is required its good exercise.  So this works well.  

 

I would say in your case flushing the pipes is as important as the the  tank. 

Also if you have a shower head of any sort give that a soak in a bleach solution followed by a good rinse.

 

 

[Ken X]

Whilst every pump is different, the fitted water pump can be a tough little beastie. 

 

We were watering up early one morning on the Bridgewater last year when a hire boat appeared and asked if we could assist as they had completely run out of water.  We stopped filling our boat and began to sort out their hose over our boat.  They then asked if I could diagnose what an incessant whirring noise was on their boat.  I stuck my head inside and quickly worked out it was the water pump running dry.   Turned out they had run out of water the night before and the pump had been running dry all night and some of the morning.  We started to fill their tank and, as expected, the noise stopped.  A quick test confirmed normal service had been resumed. Did feel sorry for the pump though.

[blackrose]

2 hours ago, LadyG said:

Also wash hands in whb, and rinse off more fastidiously than normal, do this when coming back in to the boat, before food prep and after visiting the loo. Use paper towels to dry hands to avoid multi use towelling which spread germs.

I use paper towels for drying cutlery and plates.   

 

Keep the sink and the loo clean with antibacterial spray, use paper roll. You can take over these tasks from you wife

 

Use paper towels and antibacterial spray every day on touching surfaces, eg handles, taps etc.

 

 

[Maudesmaster]

On 03/04/2024 at 20:17, Momac said:

You beat me to it.

That’s what we do Shower pipe out of porthole and galley tap through side hatch