Mini rant: Rule 3700 bilge pump

[Oceandeep]

In response to davido.... Actually Rule did agree to replace one of the pumps as they were only a few months old and left me to deal with West Marine on the other one.


With respect to the oily bilge, the Engineer at Rule told me that this is a common misconception. The pump doesn't actually test whether you have oil in the water before it pumps. I suppose that oils and cleaners could harm the pump but it seemed to work well in manual mode. In any case my bilge is pretty clean so I don't think that was a factor.

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Calypso52

When we finished our refit in 2008 I put two bilge pumps in. A smallish Rule for regular duty and a $200 Rule 3700 with a 1.5" discharge for emergency dewatering. Long story short, due to installation details and the switch/monitor I used, the large pump was fully submersed several dozen times in the intervening years. It cycled on probably two dozen times in 7 years. The motor has seized. When I opened it up water poured out. Please correct me if I am mistaken, but a "submersible" pump is designed to be full submersible, yes? Anybody else have experience with Rule pumps of this vintage. Recommended alternatives of similar capacity?

In any case, I won't be taking any chances in the future. My new emergency pump will be located up higher where it won't touch salt water unless the boat is going down. And I am not buying another $200 Rule pump. I bought a $50 equivalent (Chinese?) Seaflow knockoff that is identical even to the mounting basket. I'll let you know how it works in test mode. And I'll post a photo when I get the install done.

Rant over....

This concerns me as my rule 2000 is in the bilge. I have two set up about 12 inches apart. They are my main pumps too.

In my shower well I have a Whale gulper with the pump in an overhead locker. That gulper sucks up every drop of water and lifts it 1.8m before going through the pump body and then overside through the head exit. I'm seriously thinking of getting a new gulper for my bilge as the 'rule' pumps always leave about 2 to 3 inches in the bottom of a bilge trap. Not a big deal but annoying.

[jmschmidt]

I've had good luck with the Johnson UltimaSwitch. Two installed, one failure in ten years. Pumps are both in bottom of a fairly shallow bilge but switches are mounted at different levels, one switch on a 300 gph Rule to keep the sump as dry as possible is mounted as low as possible. The switch for the 3700 gph is mounted about six inches higher. Both pump switches and pumps are on a hot battery bus when house power is not selected on and will run until the battery charger and/or shore-power fail or until all 460ah of battery die. I wouldn't trust a Rule, or any other float switch when the boat is unattended. Must have gone through a dozen or so over the years and besides most, especially the Rule flapper type, can get jammed on or off with debris. I do have a Rule flapper type for my ultra loud, ultra obnoxious bilge alarm (also on the hot battery bus) but that switch is just below floorboard level and hopefully never gets wet or subject to debris. That one works fine, sometimes too fine. When really heeled over on a starboard take it will come on and scare the crap out of everyone. I guess I should mount it fore and aft instead of sideways.

[jmschmidt]

Sorry, after all that I am actually using two SensaSwitch solid state switches on my pumps not the Johnson UltraSwitch I mentioned in my post.