Best Bilge Pump?

What are the best kayak friendly bilge pumps? 

What makes them the best?

It's well past time to add this option to my yak and I don't want to end up bringing a pea shooter to a firefight!

The best bilge pump is the one that you have with you...

Other than that, from what i understand, its best to have one with a steel shaft vs. a plastic.  One less thing to break when you're pumping wildly.  Longer pumps, while they move more water, can be a bit more troublesome with rigging (if you concerned with things sticking up all over the place).

I've been meaning to look into electric pumps a bit more. If the flow rate is sufficient (over 500gph), they might be a better option.

The Scotty one is nice.  Even comes with a bit of flotation.

You'll find bilge pumps on the market from 13-14" that run about 13-14 strokes per gallon up to about 21-22 inches that may get you to 8-9 strokes per gallon.

Let's see ... at 1 stroke every 2 seconds ... for 50 gallons it would take you 13.33 to 23.33 minutes to pump out.

-Allen

You'll find bilge pumps on the market from 13-14" that run about 13-14 strokes per gallon up to about 21-22 inches that may get you to 8-9 strokes per gallon.

Let's see ... at 1 stroke every 2 seconds ... for 50 gallons it would take you 13.33 to 23.33 minutes to pump out.

-Allen

OK, so amongst the 8-9 strokes per gallon crowd, who's pump is most durrable and likely to handle the stresses involved in a freaked out fish yakker pumping like his life depended on the results?   

Do any come with a length of outflow hose to direct the water over the side of the yak?

.................... is most durrable and likely to handle the stresses involved in a freaked out fish yakker pumping like his life depended on the results?   

Do any come with a length of outflow hose to direct the water over the side of the yak?

haven't yet seen one with a discharge hose, most just have an outlet of some sort. .......but i'm liking RevoRoys semi permanent pump installation he did on his Hobie... now if i can adapt it to my T15........

like allen said, metal is better than plastic in this case. i'd add that you want to find one that is high volume...oooo sorry, for the redundancy, the fire rock pale ale is taking over...

Shouldn't be too hard to connect a length of polyvinyl tubing with a hose clamp to a pump.  I was looking at mine, and was thinking that would be a good idea.  Having a length of tube on the inflow would help as well, since that would mean you could have more reach with it.

 The plastic pump i used had a discharge hose,, regular sport boat pump like
Bi-Mart ect. There are two sizes,, i used the small one,, from Englund Marine  22$..
  Thought about putting it thru the first foot ankle bitter,, then went for the side spot  on the Revo  ..Royg

Anyone want to venture a guess how many gallons of water (approx) the average fishing yak (like a fish and dive for instance )holds? 70, 90ish ? maybe a little more, less?

Pole raised a great point in that even with a quality pump you are looking at some serious time to hand pump out a full hull. 

Bouncing around some ideas relating to creating a self contained (submersible) electric bilge pump/battery power supply module (my old Saltwater PB had 5 bilge pumps so I have worked with them before ).  Plumb a through hull with a flexible hose (with a quick disconnect between the hose and the pump) then set the module in the bottom of the yak and just flip a switch on the unit if you need to pump out the hull. Would only get used in an emergency so you could keep the battery pack small as you would only need a short run time to empty the yak, you could keep up with any leak etc. with your hand pump once the hull was empty

Pelagic, I am leaning towards the electric pump as well.  And have the hand pump as an alternative backup in the event something goes bad on the electric side.

Obviously need to put the electric pump's discharge somewhere above the waterline of a sunk kayak to be effective.  I wonder if I were to put a "U" bend on the discharge above the surface of the kayak, so I wouldn't have to actually cap it. And then have this discharge located center behind the seat so that it is further protected by the seat itself through surf launches and wind waves. 

I bought one of these and paid more than they are selling for now. Seems to work pretty good, and has floatation built in.

You'll find bilge pumps on the market from 13-14" that run about 13-14 strokes per gallon up to about 21-22 inches that may get you to 8-9 strokes per gallon.

Let's see ... at 1 stroke every 2 seconds ... for 50 gallons it would take you 13.33 to 23.33 minutes to pump out.

-Allen

OK, so amongst the 8-9 strokes per gallon crowd, who's pump is most durrable and likely to handle the stresses involved in a freaked out fish yakker pumping like his life depended on the results?   

Do any come with a length of outflow hose to direct the water over the side of the yak?

I own both Scotty's and West Marine.  The Scotty's are lower volume but have integrated float.  The WM are higher volume.  Neither has failed me ... I use them when I was the kayaks out.  The WM comes with a hose attachement, but it just gets in the way and gets left in the garage.   They tend to shoot the water out so I don't think you really need the hose.

-Allen

FYI ... I've heard of the "yellow and blue" one breaking.

Another FYI ... you can get larger pumps.  WM has a 36" version.  I'm have no idea about the usability on a kayak.

-Allen

Here's one worth looking at: http://store.linekeeper.net/servlet/-strse-25/Power-Paddle--4/Detail

I am in the process of adding a Guzzler Hand Pump connected to a floor mounted strainer and a thru the hull discharge. The biggest issue I am having is finding a fair priced floor strainer that will accept a 1 1/2 hose.
I'll post pictures when it's done.
Troy

pelagic: I'd estimate the average SOT to actually hold well over 100 gallons. Your 55g fish tank is 48"x12"x21", or for sake of dumbed down math, 12,000 cubic inches.

Now, the math required to calcualte the volume of our kayaks is, well, pretty tough with all the contours, etc. But, lets take a 15' kayak. Say its 30" wide, and only 10" tall (round numbers are nice).  We're looking at 54000ci now - if our yaks were square... Lets be easy on ourselves and call the yaks only half square (lil off the front, lil off the back...), so 27000ci. Lets be even nicer and round our number down to something easier like, 25,000 (probably more appropriate for a 13'). There we're are sitting at 108 gallons. Again, easy math, lets call it 100. Safe to bet, by reading above, most hand pump yak pumps are pushing about 8g per minute, or 480gallons an hour. Again, trying to be easy, lets say you can pump faster than the guy sinking next to you, so you're able to pull an even 500g per hour. 100g of water, at 500gph, you're looking at 20 minutes - which seams to correlate with the info above...

According to this site pool noodles are "...nearly 60" long, and nearly 2.5" thick with 1/2" center hole..." (i don't have exact measurements till i buy some tomorrow). If it were solid we'd be looking at about 235cubic inches, or 1 gallon. If your noodle have a hole in the middle, you've lost almost 50ci, so your down to only .8 gal (6 pints) of water displaced per noodle.

So, rounding things up like I tend to do. 6-10 noodles are only saving you 1 minute of pumping time. However, since noodles have a lower density than water, they float. Given enough, they'll be able to provide enough lift to keep your yak from sinking completely. Better to have 90 gallons of water in your kayak than 100 gallons (pure water weighs ~8.35lbs per gallon. Salt water weighs even more).  That 10gal difference is like 85 extra pounds of dead, sinkable, weight on board.

The only thing we don't know at this point is how quickly water is getting into your kayak. If you know that answer, we can figure out if you'll even be able to pump water out of your yak fast enough to think about paddling to shore.  

Any pump is better than no pump. Now that I have done the math, I think I'm ready to retract my statement above, and start thinking about 1000+gph electric pumps as a primary. Especially if you're packing around anything more than AA batteries to run your FF. Not to mention they make it easier to pump water and paddle at the same time...