Washdown vs. Galley Sink Hookup

[dvuyxx]

What's the difference (or pitfalls) between me installing a washdown pump and just hooking up a nice compact coil hose to my galley sink and running it out to the deck?

[genieskip]

Unless you are tied up at a marina, in which case you don't need a washdown pump since you'll have a shore hose, the washdown pump sucks in outside water since if you take from your tanks you'll have to find fresh water sources all the time. If you are at a mooring or on the hook you don't want to use your fresh water to wash the boat.

[dvuyxx]

Mostly its for washing my children off. Yes, I'm on a mooring ... so I need to fill my water tanks at the local marina. I didn't realize that most washdowns were set up to draw sea water .... although that makes sense.

[Gene T]

A washdown system is mostly used to wash off the mud from the anchor and chain using salt water. Usually an aft shower for swimmers is plumbed to the fresh water system to rinse off salt water.

Gene

[Gladrags1]

If what you are looking to do is hose your kids off, a hose attached to your galley sink is convenient and is not something that will require winterization. If you wish to wash mud off an anchor, the source is usually seawater. However, on bigger yachts with large volume of fresh water carrying capacity, they are starting to plumb the washdown pump to fresh water. This avoids all of the salt on deck issued.

Tod

[bloodhunter]

David,
Assume you're on the Chesapeake given the Severna Park location.
You don't want to wash down anything with bay water except maybe the mud from the anchor and chain.
When our kids were young we ran a line from the freshwater tank to the cockpit and installed one of those telephone showers to wash the kids down after swimming. Of course we did end up adding another fresh water tank.

[dvuyxx]

We hold 78 gallons of freshwater. I think that's what I'm going to try out ... coil spring hose connected to a threaded connection on our galley sink!

[mgiguere]

Hi

We're in the Chesapeake Bay as well and have both on deck. The washdown pumps water from the bay that we use to clean the deck and anchor, (fish parts from the osprays), and the fresh water hose for taking a deck shower with clean water. Both are quite useful