Catalina 355 water tanks and water pressure

[Frank Chopin]

Hi everyone: 

It's coming time to winterize on the Canadian east coast and I am trying to empty my tanks but have a few questions:

I have 4 water tanks. A fwd 38 gallon tank; a port midship 32 gallon tank;  an aft stbd 27 gallon tank and an 8 gallon water heater tank. 

● are there any valves between the three water tanks or does water simply flow under gravity between all three tanks?

● after turning on the water pressure I open up the galley faucet but the water comes out at about 1 gallon every minute.... quite slow and will take about 4 hours to empty all tanks. Does this seem slow?

● I checked the jabsco strainer and it is clean.  The lines are not kinked. Would the flow rate speed up if I open the deck filler caps (the boat is on the hard)?

● With the pump powered on and faucet opened,  the pump does an initial 3 second prime and the water flows for about 10 secs before the pump turns on again and  stays on while the faucet remains open. Does this sequence seem about right?

● The pump gets noisier after about 60 seconds. If I turn the faucet off, the pump shuts off correctly and goes through the same process on opening. But it is very slow. Am I missing something to get a better flow rate?

● I checked the Cat355 plumbing diagram and can't see any connection from the tanks tube's through the hull. I had a good look through under the floor. Am I missing something?

Apologies for the basic questions, and very grateful for any suggestions.

Many thanks

Frank

Hull 132

[bill pittore]

Hi Frank,

 On my boat #77 all three tanks feed a small manifold that is in the aft part of the bilge. If you pop up the aft piece of floor that covers the bilge, look towards the aft area and see if you have this manifold with 3 valves. These 3 valves control which tank is being fed into the input of the pressure pump. I added a drain valve to this manifold so I can easily drain the tanks into the bilge. Here’s a pic:

The 3 silver valves (one at top partially obscured) are from the tanks and the blue one I added just drains into the bilge. The hot water tank is just starboard of these valves under the bench that runs along behind the sink and fridge. There should be a drain valve at the bottom of the tank that would drain into the bilge as well. You would typically not want to drain using the pump as the pumps don’t like to run that long, they can overheat. 

You might also have a couple of valves under the sink where the shower sump and sink drain seacocks are. These are connected to hot and cold lines after the pump. These are used to drain all the post pump lines. I added a couple of pieces of 15 mm plastic pipe to these valves so they drain into the main bilge area and not just into where the seacocks are. Those are the two red pipes you see in the picture.

In the copy of the 355 manual I have there is a manifold shown, just hard to spot. I’ve circled it in this picture:

Bill

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[Frank Chopin]

Thanks very much Bill, this is very helpful.  I will take another dive tomorrow. 

Again, many thanks for all your help.

Frank

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[Dean Vermeire]

Bill,

Do you have a list of parts you used in adding the drain line to the manifold?  Are these all for 15mm line?

Thanks,

Dean Vermeire

2013 C355 #83

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[bill pittore]

I used a couple of Whale 15mm fittings, WX1574 valve and WX1521 stem tee. I installed the tee in between the two bottom valves in the picture. Probably got them at defender and/or Hamilton Marine. 

Bill

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[bill pittore]

There is also the WX1575 valve which is identical to the other 3 valves but it was $37 vs. $20 for the plastic one.

Bill

[Frank Chopin]

Hi Bill

Is this the valve you referred to im the Pic for draining the fw tanks?

On Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 21:40 bill pittore <bill.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[bill pittore]

Those are the ones that are on the output side of the pressure pump. I put some short pieces of 15mm tubing into those valves so the water would go directly into the bilge. If you drain into that small space it will eventually reach the bilge but you’ll get some standing water in the passage ways as it drains. That’s why I added the tubing. There’s a great post from Jon Vez about winterizing here: https://groups.google.com/g/catalina355/c/KuJ8DeNGaKo/m/JfzoLp60qdQJ

Bill

On Sep 24, 2024, at 9:14 AM, Frank Chopin <chopin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Bill

Is this the valve you referred to im the Pic for draining the fw tanks?

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[Dean Vermeire]

Thanks, Bill!

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[Dean Vermeire]

Following up on the manifold conversation, I followed Bill's plan and expanded the freshwater manifold to include a drain to the bilge.  I had never worked with Whale fittings before, so I was very pleasantly surprised how easy this project was.  The only challenge was in finding the tee fitting, which I finally found on eBay.

Here is how mine ended up: