cheap idea for a bilge pump switch

sdowney717 said:

Good, unless the failure is it sticks on. This last one did, float goes up and stayed up.

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If we have to have failures, we would rather they fail in "safe mode". Your failure might have been rough on the batteries or the pump itself, but it didn't put the boat in danger.

I would look into why it failed to return to the down or "off" position and my guess is that some debris in the bilge got caught in the switch.

sdowney717 said:

Good, unless the failure is it sticks on. This last one did, float goes up and stayed up.

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Had that issue with the assistance tow boat. Had to use a boat hook to reach up under the engine to knock it down a lot. Thankfully it was easy to hear on the smaller vessel when the engine shut down.

The was a few years back around 2005 that the cheap rule float switches had an astonishing failure rate. We went through dozens at the company...I had a couple fail, the internet was buzzing with the same info.

Not sure which years but it spanned a few and seems to have died off. Something got a little better...had to....between the float switches and burning pumps...Rule had become a dity word around a lot of boaters I knew.


So I can see where people are interested in inventing a better, cheaper mouse trap. Have kicked around a few ideas myself...but I just adjusted to off the shelf stuff as it has evolved as fast as mine either have failed or I needed to add one.

WesK said:

If we have to have failures, we would rather they fail in "safe mode". Your failure might have been rough on the batteries or the pump itself, but it didn't put the boat in danger.

I would look into why it failed to return to the down or "off" position and my guess is that some debris in the bilge got caught in the switch.

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I did take it apart. There was a metal shaft on a rubber bush, the metal shaft rusted and it became too stiff to move smoothly. the switch was a rule knockoff design, clicked off on on as the float moved, looked like a rule. I did get 5 years out of it. The rule 3700 pump ran for 2 days, but seems fine. It did not get hot. I heard it running when I got to the boat one day. We had a severe snowfall, 1.5 feet, the bilge flooded with melting snow. I have 5 pumps it is possible the bilge may have frozen too as the temps got in low teens for 5 days.

M quess by the 2nd melt day, the switch turned on and I got to the boat 2 days later.

My plan is to raise that pump up so if the bilge freezes, the pump wont be locked in ice.

Interesting that I posted this last july 2016, and the bilge switch never needed to move till the snow storm and deep freeze did force me to actually fix it.

Lepke said:

I have tried most brands but am replacing all with Lovett as the current ones fail.
I've never had a Lovett fail. One in a commercial boat was old when I bought the boat and much older when the boat was sold. Maybe 40 years.
Mercury switches worked good, but it must somehow be better to have all these junk pumps and switches in a landfill.

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I keep playing the bad guy here.

Anyway, my first Lovett failure was due to a stretched O ring (drive belt).
I was able to replace the o ring and it worked for a few more years. Then, the motor shaft seized. Overall, I will say it lasted a tad longer than the Rule pumps I tend to favor.

There was a time where folks were in love with Mayfair float switches. If you remember it has a metal ball inside the float, and it would roll back and forth. The good part about this is the force, both to float, and to sink, are larger than most of the competition, and so, tended not to get stuck. But, I think the country of origin went wrong there some years ago.

Pieyed47 said:

Has anyone used this type of switch?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_switch

https://www.amazon.com/Float-Switch-Cable-Water-Sump/dp/B00KUR867W

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Differential is huge.
Maybe the bilge water level has to go real high for it to come on.
Does work well in a sump pump arrangement.


My quess is used as a sump pump switch is infrequent, in a boat the wire would bend to much and eventually break from the flexing, if the boat's bilge gets wet frequently.

In the last year I've had 3 Rule switches (Heavy Duty model) fail.
Two failed to turn on, one failed to turn off. The failures were
internal, not the float sticking up or down.
One of them only lasted 3 or 4 weeks.
The pump is a Rule 2000 running on 32v dc.
This last switch has been working for 5 or 6 months.

Ted

I had Rule-a-matic pumps with internal switches fail. They turned on by a level switch and turned off by sensed current flow dropping low. Problem was the pump ran too long and sucked air so the current dropped but not enough to shut off the pump. It would then churn indefinitely until the battery died.
The pumps themselves worked fine with an added Sure-Bail external float switch wired to the manual override wire.