As the weather has finally turned really nice and "spring fever" is in the air, I thought I'd offer a couple of project tips from Clyde W. Ford's book Boat Green: 50 Steeps Boaters Can Take to Save Our Waters. This week we take on a couple of bilge ideas, next week a couple of maintenance tips. This is a great book, check your library for a copy, in which Ford offers all sorts of advice, tips and information regarding our water, and how boaters can make choices to help keep our waters clean and healthy.
Those of us with inboard engines realize that the bilges in our engine rooms can easily become dirty with oil drips, antifreeze drips, etc. If the engine room bilge pump is an automatic pump and it turns on, we (and the environment) have a problem - we now have an oil slick that must be reported, contained and cleaned up. The best solution is to avoid such a problem in the first place. Ford points out that the best practice is a clean engine room bilge, the use of an oil pan (with an absorbent pad placed on top to catch any drips from the engine.) Keeping the engine in top shape, watching for drips and then tracing them and fixing the problem are all good maintenance and management practices. Keeping a bilge sock in the bilge is also a good idea.
What I hadn't realized was that there were a variety of different bilge socks available. Polymer is the best bilge sock to use. According to the chart Ford provides (see page 143) polymer has "high" initial absorption, "good" overall absorption, "low" swelling and "good" retention (scoring best over all, and the only one not scoring a "poor" or "fails" in the retention category.
When there is a mucky mess in the bilge to clean-up, suggests using "bugs" to clean up the engine room. He writes, "You've probably heard of oil-eating bacteria dispersed over a major oil spill to help with the cleanup. This process is known as bioremediation, and it's now available to the average boater. It's easy to grow a colony of oil-eating bugs in your bilge, and it's good for your bilge and for the water" (Ford:143). Look on-line or at your chandlery. They come as a large dry tablets or in a powder form. Ford mentions that initially it's good to treat the bilge twice, over a two-week period of time.
The other great idea that Ford mentioned was adding a diverter valve to your bilge pump. This would allow the owner (you or me) to either pump the bilge over board (a direct dis-charge) or to pump the bilge (if there is oily water) into an onboard collection container. The container can then be taken to a marina oil-collection facility, or to an oil-collection facility in town.
Definitely things to think about, and add to the "To Do" list we all keep. Some of these are an easy project to add during this spring weather, that is warming up, but may turn rainy and we want to do an "inside" project.
Blessed Be,
Joel
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