Winterize a Jabsco Washdown Pump

Jeff: Thanks for watching jabscotech.com. I'm Jeff Lander.

Mike: And I'm Mike Irving.

Jeff: And today we're going to show you how to winterize your washdown pumps.

Mike: On this episode, we're going to shoot down to the harbor and do a hands on episode.

Jeff: Sounds good, Mike. Let's get at it.

Mike: All right, here we are in historic Salem, Massachusetts. We're on The Gauntlet – it’s a commercial dive boat, and we're going to show you how to winterize your washdown pump. What you're going to need – flat screwdriver, about 3 feet of hose with the Par-Max fitting on the end, and some of that pink antifreeze. That's all you're going to need, and we'll show you how to do it now.

First, cut the power to the pump. And second, we're going to go and close this seacock. If the vessel is going to be out of the water for a while, go ahead and tie that off with a wire. Grab your flathead screwdriver, it goes right underneath the clip and pops that quick disconnect clip off the fitting. Now it can come off fairly easily. So, you've got another fitting with that short length of hose on it. That goes into the side of the pump. The locking connection goes down. And you take the other end of that short length of the hose right into that one-gallon container of antifreeze. We're going to head outside, turn the pump back on, pull the trigger, and it's going to pump the antifreeze right up all the way through the system. Get you winterized right quick.

Now watch what happens when we go ahead and apply power to the pump. Sucks it right up through the system. Now it's going through the lines. All right, so the pump’s on and we know that the antifreeze is up to the pump, go ahead and go outside, grab your trigger, and squeeze it. first. What's going to happen is it’s going to be clear water coming out, either salt water or fresh water, then the pink is going to start coming through. Once the pink comes through, you know that washdown pump is winterized. There we go. There's our pink. Then shut it down. Now this is good for the season. Wait til summer.

All right, so now we've just winterized the pump to the outside of the vessel and it took about 7/8 of a gallon of antifreeze. Don't forget there's still going to be water in that hose that goes to the pump from the seacock. You want to go ahead and try to figure out a way to get that water out, maybe pour some antifreeze down in there. Now the other way to do this instead of using that little fitting that we talked about is disconnect the hose right from the seacock and put that into a gallon of antifreeze. That's going to pull the antifreeze up through that hose, up into the pump, and out of the vessel. That's another great way to do it as well. Don't forget in the springtime when you reattach everything to open up your seacock before you turn that pump on. Let's head back to the office and we'll wrap things up.

That was a pretty cool afternoon on The Gauntlet. Now we showed how to winterize one of our washdown pumps. It took us about 10 to 15 minutes and one thing that we need to make sure that we cover is this going to be a section of hose that goes from the pump assembly down to the seacock. Make sure you winterize that as well. You can try pouring some propylene glycol in there to get some of the water – displace that water. Or if you pull up the boat for the season, go ahead and open up that seacock, dump the contents, close the seacock again, and you'll be good for the season.

Jeff: Yeah, Mike, well it was a great afternoon because I got to see you in cramped quarters trying to maneuver down there, so that was worthwhile for me. But just a quick little recap, what you're going to need – that pink propylene glycol, one of the Par-Max quick-disconnect fittings, and a short little piece of hose. Use those and then the only thing left to do is count down the days until springtime. Thanks for watching jabscotech.com. I'm Jeff Lander.

Mike: And I'm Mike Irving. Check back with us soon; we’ll have some more videos posted for you.