I had issues with my live well after I bought the new boat a couple of years ago.
1) The over flow line did not work well. I had to adjust the water inlet flow to a fairly small amount or the live will would overflow. After looking at the installation of this line and taking a few measurements, I found that the hose went up about 1.5 inches after it came away from the live well. I lowered the hose support clamps and this really helped to allow more water impute and not over flow the water.
2) The drain line took a very long time to drain water out when I washed out the live well after a fishing trip. I would get in the boat and squirt a little water and then use a sponge to push the dirt and water to the drain hole. Doing this several times would finally get the live well bottom clean.
When I finally got fed up with this design, I started investigating what was the problem. I put 5 gallons of water in the live well and it took 9 minutes to drain out. I squirted water down the drain hole to see if maybe something was blocking. I measure the live well drain hole and the hole coming out the back. Both were 3/8" diameter 90 deg. ell's and connected to a 3/4" diameter hose.
When I disconnected the hose from the transom fitting, it drained the 5 gal. of water in 5 min. Better, but not great. The fitting on the bottom of the live well......it is a 90 degree type fitting and no room to put a larger fitting. I considered installing a second drain line down near the bottom of the live well so I could get more water circulation.
I took the boat back to the dealer and they agreed to look into my problem. After several phone calls to the manufacture and a couple weeks considering various options they changed out the transom fitting [no cost to me] to a larger size straight fitting. This drained the 5 gallons of water in about 6 minutes.
The pictures are what I use to get fairly good water circulation in my live well. The ends of both PVC pipe have a small stainless steel wire blocking the end so that small bait will not get into the lines and plug them up.
Yesterday, I kept about 150 shad for 5+ hours and only had ~ 20% died. During this time I changed spots [drove with no water circulating] and drove 10+ minutes several times.
|