Sorry it took a while to get back to you - this 12hour time difference is a pain.
So I was wrong in how I interpreted your first post - you found a washdown hose that is not attached to any pump, not a pump that not attached to a hose.
Big difference.
This is what I learned from the guys on this forum while I was installing my pumps and I installed 2 in my 230 - a raw water and a freshwater: a baitwell/bilge pump is based on gallons per hour, like a 750gph pump may be fine for a baitwell, a 1500gph may be fine for a bilge pump. A washdown pump, on the other hand is based on gallons per minute - in other words you need a lot of volume to blast stuff off your deck, etc.
On my 230 I have baitwells and the original baitwell pump (750gph) had a "Y" valve on it's output to share between a "shower" type washdown head and the baitwell. Obviously as a washdown hose, it had no pressure.
If you're trying to use the baitwell pumps as a washdown, you might be disappointed in performance.
I decided to unhook the baitwell feeds at the pump, remove the baitwell pump from the thruhull and use the water pickup for raw water washdown with a 2.5 gpm pump which is adequate but wish I would have gone with the same size that I bought for the fresh water washdown - 5.0gpm @ 70psi (I think).
(Click
here and scroll down to the bottom of that page and on to the next, to see what I went through)
I have/need only one pickup, so these are questions I'll post to the forum:
1) I realize that some of you said that you share the pickup - is this an approved approach?
2) I realize the least number of holes you put through your hull the better you are, if he does share the pickup, is his best option a "Y" and some form of shutoff valves to control which is getting water through the pickup?
3) If you did share a water pickup among different volume pumps and without some form of shutoff control between the sharing pumps, will a high volume pump suck water through a bilge/baitwell pump that's on and potentially damage the diaphragms in them?
