Bilge water alarm

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pcatterall

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After recent problems I've just bought a cheap water alarm with internal 9 volt battery. It has contacts which can be mounted up to 6 feet away in the bilge.
It has a really loud alarm and I'm thinking of buying the more expensive 12 volt battery model ( £15 !!)
I gues that I should mount this a few inches above normal bilge water level and the auto pump sensor a few inches above this?
Hopefully if I am away from the boat the harbour patrol would investigate ofr some kind soul report it!!
 
This may sound too simple, but I did it and have had no problem so far.

Why not wire a siren parallel with the bilge pump, Then when the pump is activated by the floatswitch the siren will sound.

Doing it the other way if only a small leak occurs, the alarm will not go off until the pump can no longer deal with the leak, whether this be through a flat battery or otherwise.

Does this make sense.??
 
I got mine for around £8 each or so, another forum member picked them up for me from one of those horrid cheap supermarkets. They are designed I think for fridge/freezer malfunction at home, but like Peter's have a remote sensor.

I have only so far tested them by licking the sensor and they do seem to work in the way described. The alarm is loud enough to be heard from the helm, I have two and intend them as an alarm for when we are both in the cockpit rather than to alert people to the boat in harbour.

Things like a flooding bog will be a thing of the past I hope!

oh, the shop was Lidl or the other one beginning with A, I forget. Might be worth a search on their pages maybe.
 
I've put a simple timer (I designed my own but Maplins do simple timer projects) across my bilge pump so that if it is on for more than 30 seconds at a time the alarm goes off. The point is that with the engine running and, say, a hose spurting water in the bilge, you wouldn't hear the bilge pump and the spray could be doing real harm even if the bilge pump is coping and getting rid of the water.

I have two bilge pump switches across each other as the switches tend to be the most unreliable part (based on experience, you would think that the pumps are the most unreliable part but that isn't my experience).
 
Rule and Johnson both do ready-made alarms. Aside from MCA legislation, the main reason for having them would be to indicate a FAILURE of the bilge-pump/s, like Lemain describes, i.e. "bring out the buckets, Skipper". My customers usually mount the sensors or alarm float-switches 2" or so above the pump's float-switch, and have the buzzer at the helm-station.
 
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Does that not mean that a small leak ( a leak within the pump's capacity) could have the pump cycling on and off draining the bilge but never setting off the alarm.?

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, it would. I also have a BEP battery monitor that also monitors the bilge pump so I can see the total number of operations and the total time run since the last reset. I check that every hour or so at sea along with the other checks, when the engine is running.
 
Yes that is correct and to overcome that I fitted a 12VDC electro mechanical across the bulge pump which will indicate the number of times the pump has cycled on/off while away from the boat.
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