Air conditioner sea strainer.

[SDTugs]

Good morning, I have been growing increasingly frustrated with how quickly my strainer gets clogged with biological growth in southern Mexico.

I am wondering if anyone has a solution to keep the growth at bay. I have tried chlorine tablets with minimal results. I am now starting to look into things like the ElectroSea strainer and the Groco Hydromatic Self Cleaning Strainer.

Has anyone tried either of these, or something else that works well and they would recommend.

All ideas are welcome.

 

[ksanders]

my sea strainer got pretty clogged really fast with barnicals in La Paz.

I poured in barnicle buster and it disolved them pretty quickly.

 

[O C Diver]

Good morning, I have been growing increasingly frustrated with how quickly my strainer gets clogged with biological growth in southern Mexico.

I am wondering if anyone has a solution to keep the growth at bay. I have tried chlorine tablets with minimal results. I am now starting to look into things like the ElectroSea strainer and the Groco Hydromatic Self Cleaning Strainer.

Has anyone tried either of these, or something else that works well and they would recommend.

All ideas are welcome.

When you say biological growth, does this mean stuff getting sucked in through your seacock, or things growing on the strainer screen?

If this refers to stuff getting sucked in, I put an external screen on my through hull. The screen reduced the suction effect to around 10% by spreading it out 32 square inches. I increase the hole size and percentage of open area in the screen to keep it from easily fouling. While objects would pull up against the screen, when the pump would turn off, the objects would fall away.

Ted

 

[Comodave]

Teds solution is probably the best long term thing to do. Minimal maintenance and you get good flow.

 

[SDTugs]

I believe that my problem is caused by things growing inside of the strainer more than being sucked into the strainer.

 

[Larry M]

I opened and cleaned our Groco strainer every 2 weeks. The barnacles would be growing on the glass and screen. I tried paint, chemicals and copper strips. In warm nutrient rich water with the ac on most of the day and night, it was the only solution that worked for me.

 

[paulpoz]

When you say biological growth, does this mean stuff getting sucked in through your seacock, or things growing on the strainer screen?

If this refers to stuff getting sucked in, I put an external screen on my through hull. The screen reduced the suction effect to around 10% by spreading it out 32 square inches. I increase the hole size and percentage of open area in the screen to keep it from easily fouling. While objects would pull up against the screen, when the pump would turn off, the objects would fall away.

View attachment 162313I have these on my boat and they are awesome. I use them on my Cummins 330s and I get plenty of water flow.

Ted

 

[Alex F]

I opened and cleaned our Groco strainer every 2 weeks. The barnacles would be growing on the glass and screen. I tried paint, chemicals and copper strips. In warm nutrient rich water with the ac on most of the day and night, it was the only solution that worked for me.

That's exactly my approach for south FLa water, bromine tablets and copper strips. In the winter months I go easily with once a month interval of adding new tablets. Once the weather warms up, I switch to bi-weekly.

I also have seastrainers screens and they're for totally different purpose, which has nothing to do with stuff growing inside the glass.

I'm not sure how effective the copper strips are, as just leaving them all the time doesn't do much. So, I'd say that bromine tablets do most of the trick.

 

[divert00]

I place a length of heavy copper tubing 1/2” in diameter in the strainer. Prevents barnacles, mussels, oysters, etc from the intake and strainer. I live in a nutrient rich area (NC).

 

[SDTugs]

@divert00 how often do you need to clean your basket, how often do you need to change out the copper tubing, what length of tubing do you use?

 

[divert00]

6” long. Clean basket every 6 months to remove silt.

 

[oak_box]

I'm in Galveston Bay, in Texas. In the winter, I can go 2-3 months without having to do much if anything. In the heat of summer, I have to clean my AC strainer every week. I use a combination of copper, bromide tablets, and weekly cleaning. For copper, I went to Home Depot and got a bag of 10 copper "unions" (small copper fittings a little over 1/2" in diameter, and maybe an inch to 1.5" long). I have two baskets - the one currently in the strainer, and the clean one ready to swap out. Each week, I pull the basket, set it in a bucket, scrub the inside of the glass, put a new bromine tablet in the clean basket, along with the 5 copper pieces, and pop it in. I then open the sea cock, turn back on the AC, and head outside with the bucket to make sure the AC pump is pumping (it can get an air bubble and fail to pump if I'm not careful) and clean the prior basket with a bottle brush and hose.

The marina I'm in is shallow and well protected. I get a lot of muck and algea. With the above combination of copper, bromine, and frequent cleanings, I'm not seeing much in the way of barnacles. But we do get the occasional small fish or shrimp sucked into the strainer.

 

[rwaldrop13]

Good morning, I have been growing increasingly frustrated with how quickly my strainer gets clogged with biological growth in southern Mexico.

I am wondering if anyone has a solution to keep the growth at bay. I have tried chlorine tablets with minimal results. I am now starting to look into things like the ElectroSea strainer and the Groco Hydromatic Self Cleaning Strainer.

Has anyone tried either of these, or something else that works well and they would recommend.

All ideas are welcome.

We had similar issues here in Ft Myers FL. Bromine (NOT chlorine) tablets helped, keeping the bottom scraped also helped. Apparently the biggest issue is simply that if you're in a marina or a lagoon, lack of water flow past the hull gives the marine growth a head start. During the warmer months I was cleaning strainers 2 x a week.

 

[Larry M]

I’ve never had any luck with copper strips. We were running 2-16k btu AC’s from one March pump pushing maybe 800 gallons per hour. Talking to a chemist who ran a waste water treatment plant, he said there wasn’t enough contact time between the water and the copper to be effective. With a smile he asked how often we had to clean the bottom of our boat that was painted with copper based antifouling paint?

 

[HeadedToTexas]

Do any of you guys using copper strips or pipe have before and after pictures of the copper? I'm interested to know how much of the copper is "dissolving" in the strainer.

 

[OldDan1943]

Do any of you guys using copper strips or pipe have before and after pictures of the copper? I'm interested to know how much of the copper is "dissolving" in the strainer.

I changed on the sea strainer by 2 and doubled capacity of the seawater pump. In theory, nothing remains in the cooling loop long enough to grow anything. The remaining problem is the diameter of the hull valve and perhaps routing of hose between hull valve and sea strainer.

 

[HeadedToTexas]

Do any of you guys using copper strips or pipe have before and after pictures of the copper? I'm interested to know how much of the copper is "dissolving" in the strainer.

Or maybe put another way, do you have to replace those copper strips or pieces of pipe every so often because they "dissolve away?" Or do they look the same month after month?