water in the boat

the other day one of the guys at work went out in his open aluminum boat with a full floor. it has a bilge pump and he checked it before he went out. well after a couple of hours he noticed his boat was sitting low in the water and when checked the bilge area it had 6'' of water and headed to the bank and found two things. the main problem was the plug. he uses the flip lever style and it pulled into and was leaking the second was the bilge pump and pine needles got in and bound up the impeller ( those things get into every thing and are hard to get completely out of the boat ) so it wouldn't pump water. now my boat has 2 bilge pumps and a water alarm which might be over kill but I would have it and not use it than to need it and not have it. so when at harbor freight I saw they have a battery operated water over flow alarm and thought that would be a cheep alternative to what I have and would be easy to install in any boat for that extra bit of insurance. here's the alarm. http://www.harborfreight.com/water-overflow-alarm-92334.html they were on sale for 5.99 and my buddy has one in his boat now and will see how the battery and it lasts. it is loud! dfly

Good idea and for the price a guy can't lose. Where'd you mount it? Right at the bottom of the bilge or up off the bottom a bit? I have two pumps as well, but one of mine got jammed with needles last fall.....blew the fuse. Took a minute or so to figure out why the fuse was blowing. I thought maybe I had a pinched, shorted wire, but when I pulled the pump I found the junk in it.

MackayGuy he mounted it on top of one of the runners so rain and other water won't set it off but if the bilge doesn't kick on and it reaches that high the alarm will go off so he has time to fix or get back to shore I think I have him talked into adding a second pump. dfly

Thanks Dfly. That's what I was thinking.

I've got one that's auto and one that's manual. With a deep V hull, there was only room for one on the flat pad at the back. The second is mounted next to it but is just uphill a bit on the slope of the hull.
Photos from my install project.

Exiting Bilge Removed


Secondary Pump In Place


All Back Together

that's a lot like my set up Dave only I have a inboard jet and they have a flat delta bottom so I have one on the floor that is auto/manual and the other auto about an 1 1/2 higher on the jet pedestal but my floats are wired in to a alarm beeper to let me know the bilge is on and should be pumping water, if not I can see if there is a problem. the bilge pumps are the only thing that is hooked directly to the battery and when I switch every thing off with the pergo switch the pumps will still be on when moored dfly