Fresh water pump problem

I have a tricabin trawler with plumbing in the fwd head, aft head and a galley sink. The fresh water pump resides in the engine room. In the last couple of months the water pressure at the galley sink for both the hot and cold water is low and struggling while the water pressure in the fwd and aft heads have normal pressure.

The plumbing in the heads are lower than the galley sink and and are almost horizontal with the fresh water pump. The galley on the other hand has a 3 to 5 foot lift from pump to the galley faucet.

Is the fact that the pump can't lift the water to galley sink indicative that the pump is failing and should be replaced?

The fresh water pump is a "SHURHo - marine tough BLASTER" pump
12v, 45psi, 3.5 GPH, draws up to 11 amps max. The pump was bought by the previous owner in Jan of 1999, 23 years old.

I'm thinking of just replacing the pump. This pump is a deck wash pump and not a domestic water pump. Is there a difference in using one over the other.

Share your thoughts on this.

Being that it's just 1 faucet showing the issue, I'd say it's more likely to be a problem with the faucet (clogged aerator or other issue) than the pump.

My guess would also be some buildup in the plumbing or faucet. If you have proper pressure at some faucets, the pump is supplying pressure. 5' = 2.2 psi in head pressure. Not enough to be noticeable.

My bet is on the strainer in the sink faucet too.

This was a brand new faucet in 2015. The other plumbing is original plumbing dating to 1980. And I do have a Flojet quad series available at home. When I get back to the boat later on this week I'll switch out the pump and see if it is any better.

grahamdouglass said:

This was a brand new faucet in 2015. The other plumbing is original plumbing dating to 1980. And I do have a Flojet quad series available at home. When I get back to the boat later on this week I'll switch out the pump and see if it is any better.

Click to expand...

I'm with the other that believe it is the sink fixture.

The newer faucets are all low flow to conserve water, but all the orifices are much smaller to achieve the low flow rating and plug up with tiny bits of debris.

I had a shower head doing the same thing, I drilled or removed the flow restricting disc and problem solved.

Please follow up when you find the cause. Good Luck!

Pull the strainer, screen, etc from the faucet and see how the flow is w/o above.
Inspect & clean at the same time.

grahamdouglass said:

This was a brand new faucet in 2015. The other plumbing is original plumbing dating to 1980. And I do have a Flojet quad series available at home. When I get back to the boat later on this week I'll switch out the pump and see if it is any better.

Click to expand...

2015 can be "old". Cleaning out the sink faucet is an almost annual event for us. Normally a 5 minute job and as others have mentioned start there.

We had the same problem, that is, with a newly installed galley sink, low flow while the sinks in the two heads flowed well. Yup, as others suggested, take the galley sink faucet apart and clean the internal strainer. When I did so, I found that screen more than 50% occluded. Do the simple fixes first before jumping to the worst possible solution. Boaters, myself included at times, seem to assume the worst, spend a bunch of money only to discover that the problem was something simple and easily repaired with little cost.

Almost assuredly the aerator on the faucet. On some newer faucets, the aerator cartriged is concealed with an insidel thread requiring a special tool (such as THIS ONE from Amazon) to remove the housing. Also, aerators cannot always be cleaned and may need to be replaced which can be a hassle. From experience, reaming-out the holes usually ends up destroying the function.

Good luck

Peter

The galley sink in my boat came with one of those pull out wand things with a spray/stream selector. It wouldn't flow water at all but when I removed the wand from the hose I had good flow and pressure. Something jammed up in the selector I think. Bought a new faucet at the big box store and problem solved.

grahamdouglass said:

This was a brand new faucet in 2015. The other plumbing is original plumbing dating to 1980. And I do have a Flojet quad series available at home. When I get back to the boat later on this week I'll switch out the pump and see if it is any better.

Click to expand...

Keep it simple….clean the faucet aerator/strainer first. If that doesn’t work, then replace the pump.
Same thing happened to me. Galley faucet water flow was much less than the other faucets I have on my boat. Unscrewed the aerator/strainer and it was filled with gunk. A quick cleaning and I was good to go.
Took all of 2 minutes.

Does it have an accumulator?

Mine failed, took out the PRS switch, then pump.

Parts from accumulator ended up in faucet screens.

Just replaced everything. Was 30 years old.

Thank you trawler forum. As many of you who thought it was the faucet aerator, you were right.

First thing I did when I got to the boat was to take off the aerator. And there it was, a little bit of debris. Cleaned it up and it works like new.

On our last boat we replaced the galley faucet and soon after had almost no flow. I looked to see if it had an aerator and it didn’t look like it. The joint was so well done you couldn’t see where it screwed off. When I did get it off it was full of debris.

I'd look under the sink to see if a previous owner installed a separate water filter just for the sink faucet. If so, it's probably clogged. mine has one from previous owner.

Happy ending! Great stuff.