On 14 Aug 2003 at 21:41, Dee Lutz wrote: > Anybody have good luck with these and have a brand to recommend? When I investigated mine, I found that the Attwood pumps were consistently rated in terms of capacity and power requirements, while other brands tended to be overrated by their manufacturers. The Atwood 650 (or 625 - whichever - can't remember the exact size) actually take slightly less power than the smaller 450. The 650's the one I chose, as it has the best performance for the amount of power reqd. At full load pumping out the kayak with a good pile of water, I've measured the current draw at 0.9A, slightly below its rating. There are a couple of other good pumps out there, but they weren't available locally. IIRC Whale makes one. There's also a new one I heard of that wasn't available when I purchased mine. Web searching on bilge pumps will find info - look for the reviews in the boating magazines. Mine isn't one with internal batteries - I put a battery pack in the rear compartment and wired thru the bulkhead (lots of 3M 5200 to seal the hole). Battery options include NiCd, NiMH and SLA (Seal lead acid). I'd recommend NiMH or SLA (specifically AGM type). Since NiMH can be considerably discharged repeatedly and safely, you can go with a lower overall capacity than with AGM. For example, 1Ah NiMH would be roughly equivalent to 2-2.5 Ah of AGM since you can only discharge the AGM about 50% repeatedly and up to 80% occasionally. NiMH can handle 90-95% discharge without a problem. Calculate the cost of 12 - 1.2V NiMH plus charger versus 1 - 12V AGM + charger and see what you prefer. NiMH will no doubt be lighter - 12 AA size can easily be found with a net 1.6Ah capacity or greater. Note that you want 12 batteries, not ten, since 12V nominal for a boat is usually about 13.5-14V. Locally (i.e. Canadian $) 12 AA at 1.8Ah would be $48 and the charger about $50-60. The 2.5Ah AGM would be about $35-40 and the charger about $26. I bought my 5Ah AGM at a surplus store for $6. YMMV Mike *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Aug 15 2003 - 15:04:06 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:09 PDT