Fuel delivery system

The fuel delivery system is how Im going to supply my main engine, generator and any other diesel fired device that might end up on the boat. This system is separate from the transfer system and is fed from one 200 gallon tank.

The delivery system is fairly simple although having quite a few valves. Basically, Im pulling fuel out of the 200 gallon day tank, through another Racor filter followed by a five port distribution manifold that directs fuel to either the main engine, generator or another device.

In case I have a problem with the Racor filter while under way, I installed a couple of " Ts " in line along with three valves, so I could quickly by pass the Racor filter without shutting down the main engine. I could then change the filter or do whatever was needed while leaving the main engine running. Once the problem with the filter was resolved, I then would bring the Racor back on line by moving the valves back into the filter mode.

Between the Racor and the distribution manifold, I added two more " Ts ", and three more valves so I could add a 12 volt pump to prime the main engine or generator. Both the main engine and generator have a manual primer pumps on them, but I wanted an in line electric pump to make priming the engines a quick process. If for some reason any engine looses its prime, all I have to do is close one valve, open two valves, turn on the electric pump, and crack the fuel intake line on the injection pump. Im just guessing now, but Id say I could prime either engine and have them back running in less than a minute with this set up. For me, this is an inexpensive set up that is easy to do while Im running pipe that could pay me huge dividends some time down the road.

Because Im using a manifold to feed multiple engines, I felt as if I should install check valves where the engine supply lines connect to the manifold. Im afraid that one engine could want to pull fuel from another engine, and start messing with robbing an engine of primed fuel, or causing air and headaches to enter the system.

Im waiting on the check valves to show up and Im looking into different fuel pumps for my electric lift pump I want to install. I left myself plenty of room to fit the lift pump between the valves and "Ts", but Im stopped on this system until my parts show up early in the week. Besides having shut off valves at the manifold, I need shut off valves right next to the main engine and generator. While it may seem like Im have too many valves on this system, I think that they will pay off big once I start having to service the engines and system.

Because of where I want to install the electric lift pump and and the type of pump I want, I held the 1/2" steel fuel line 1.25 inches off of the fuel tank. An added bonus of doing this is that I now have a nice grab rail running the starboard length of the engine room.

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Fresh water system

The fresh water system is complete and ready to use. Once I finish the shower tile and connect the drains to the two sinks I have installed, I think Ill add a few gallons of water to tank #1 and test the system.

I have eight stainless water tanks under the forward sole of the boat. The tanks primarily reside in the master cabin and kids dressing room between station #9 and #5. Total capacity of the tanks are about 370 gallons. There are no tanks under the bathroom or kids cabin.

My plan for having 8 water tanks was for obvious reasons to fit them under the sole between frames and get as much fresh water on board as I could. To prevent one tank failure from taking the water system off line, I provided a shut off valve for each tank. The tanks are connected in series, so this required a valve at the tank along with "T" connections. Because I wanted to have the ability to take any one tank off line, I manifolded the vent lines and fill lines together on both the port and starboard side. I have a one fill and vent manifold on both the port and starboard side of the boat. I can close any one vent or fill line via a valve at the respective manifold to totally isolate any one tank. The vent lines are 3/4" from the tank and connect together via a 1" manifold that leads above deck. The fill lines are 1 1/2" that lead to an 1 1/2" manifold that reduce down to 1 1/4" leading towards each tank. I used flexible sch. 40 PVC for the most of the fill lines and 3/4" rubber push lock hose for the vents. All the manifolds and fittings are rigid, sch. 40 PVC with pressure fittings. The picture showing the fill manifold also shows my engine room bilge pump and forward cabin bilge pump discharge lines. The bilge pump are 1 1/2" discharge. The overboard discharge for galley sink is just forward of the bilge pump discharges. In this picture, the galley sink discharge is not connected yet, but you can see the fitting, painted white, welded in to the hull. This is a busy area of the boat with a lot of piping between station #9 @ # 8.

The series connections for the tanks happen in the bilge area at the center longitudinal frame of the boat. The common line manifolds together forward of station #9, which is the water tight bulkhead separating the engine room from the master cabin. The now manifolded lines pass through the water tight bulkhead via a water tight seal and the now one line enters the engine room where the pressure pump resides. In order to keep an eye on the water level in the tanks, I made a simple sight gauge out of clear SCH. 40 PVC. By closing the valve leading to the pump and opening the valve leading to the sight gauge, I can see the liquid level in the tanks. I have a threaded cap on top of the site gauge Ill have to loosen to let air out of the gauge to get an accurate reading. The gauge is easily accessible by removing a sole panel. The gauge is threaded into a "ELL" fitting and is easily removed for cleaning or replacing.

The pressurized supply line travels under the engine room sole where it passes through another water tight bulkhead via another water tight seal and ends up in the lazarette where the water is distributed to the rest of the boat via a PEX distribution manifold.

I used a home style water heater that hangs from a bracket on the wall. The water heater uses a 1500 watt element, so it will pull 12.5 amps @ 120 volt. Im going to leave this device off of the inverter circuit, and commit to using the generator when I need to make hot water. The tank is 8 gallons, so we will be able to store enough hot water for hand washing and dish washing. When we want hot showers, well have to fire up the generator. I do not trust the wall hanging bracket to hold the water heater fast in many boating situations, so Im going to strap it to the wall with some sort of straps.

I located the pressure pump in the engine room under the work bench and below the steering hydraulic reservoir. This location is still easy to get to regarding maintenance, but it was not my first choice. I can easily sit on the engine room floor and do any service work or repair to the pump without having to get in any contorted position. All through the build, Ive been trying to build with maintenance and repair in mind, and I dont want to design or build any system that requires a contortionist to work on things. I decided to use a moderate priced pump system that was sold as a unit. The unit is four GPM with the cut off switch set for 45 psi and the cut in set at 30 psi. There is an inline strainer before the pump and a small accumulator tank after the pump. I would have liked to have a little larger accumulator tank, but well just have to see how this unit performs. The accumulator tank is a tank with a bladder in it that stores water pressure so the pump does not have to run every time the cold water is turned on.

I used 3/4" potable water grade suction hose with stainless wire in it for the suction side of the pump, and 1/2" PEX for all the pressure side. The suction hose is fitted with barb fittings and hose clamps. Id prefer to have compression fittings, but hose clamps seem to work better in the bilge space and they are less expensive. Because of the mounting issue of the hot water heater, I added bronze unions to make the water heater removal a quick and easy job. I also added quick release fittings at the pressure pump to make pump removal easy.

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Fuel system

This is going to be the first of a few posts relating to my fuel system. Im glad I did not bid building this system for someone as Im finding this job burning up a lot more time and material than I would have guessed.

The first order of business for building the fuel system were installing the fill pipes. I have four integral tanks in the engine room with a capacity between 1200 - 1300 gallons. I have one 200 gallon tank that I will use as a day tank. The day tank will supply the main engine and generator with fuel. On the aft deck of the boat Ill have two fill locations, one fill for the starboard tanks, and one fill for the port side tanks. Both the port side and starboard side fuel fill pipes have ball valves in line to direct fuel to either the forward or aft fuel tank on each side of the boat. When I want to fill the forward port tank, I close aft ball valve and open the forward valve. Likewise, when I want to fill the aft port tank, I close the forward ball valve, and open the aft valve. When the tanks are full, all the ball valves on all the fill lines are closed. The fill pipes are steel pipe, 2" sch. 40.

The tank vents are 1" steel pipe sch. 40 and will exit the boat with the fill pipes and terminate at the fill stations.

After the fill pipes were fabricated I turned my attention to the fuel transfer piping. With four tanks on board, and one of those tanks being used as my day tank, I have to be able to transfer fuel from any one tank to any tank I desire. In order to transfer fuel Ill utilize an electric pump with a manual pump as my back up. Each tank has a dedicated pick up tube that extends to about 1" above the tank bottom for the transfer system. I added a second pick up tube to each tank to give me the option on using the second pick up tube for feeding the machinery while still having a stand alone fuel transfer system. The fuel transfer system has a large Racor filter that will clean the fuel and separate any water in the fuel before the fuel goes to the day tank.

I wanted to get a decent flow rate out of my transfer system, and because I was a little nervous about friction loss in the transfer pipe, I used 3/4" sch. 40 steel pipe for the transfer system.

Im in the excavating business, and Im always calling to have underground utilities marked before I dig on a job site. The marking companies spray paint the location of the various utilities on the ground using the following colors: red for electric, blue for water, yellow for gas, orange for cable and phone, and green for fuel or oil related. Given I have to paint the pipe to protect it, I have chosen to paint all the fuel related parts in the engine room green.

There is a lot to the fuel system, and I feel as if I got a good start on my first week of working on it.

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Fuel system update fuel transfer

The fuel transfer system resides in the engine room on the port side of the boat against the aft water tight bulkhead. Ive put a huge dent in the amount of work building the transfer system, and there is enough of the system completed for me to blog about. I want to use JIC fuel fittings on the lines between the intake manifold, the filter, the pump and the distribution intake, so I have to wait until Tuesday to get the lines made. Once I run the wire for the disconnect switch and get those lines fabricated, Ill be able to pump fuel from tank to tank.

I have four fuel tanks on board for a total of between 1300 - 1400 gallons. Three of the tanks will be used for storage, and the fourth tank will be a 200 gallon "day" tank that will be used to feed the main engine and the 10kw generator. The fuel transfer system is completely independent from the fuel delivery system which feeds the machinery out of the 200 gallon day tank.

Every day we are traveling on the boat we will manage our fuel by transferring fuel from tank to tank and making sure the day tank is full. As the fuel is transferred it will be filtered through a 1000 series Racor filter that will also remove water. The fuel that leaves the day tank to feed the machinery, will again pass through another Racor filter before being filtered by the factory filters on the main engine and generator. I have a mechanical flow meter in the transfer system that will be the primary way we keep track of how much fuel we have left and how much we are using. Once I fill the tanks and have some sort of base line for tank capacities, well use a log book to track fuel usage along with a flow meter on the main engine and dip sticks for the tanks.

The transfer systems pump is a rotary vane pump driven by a 120 volt 1/2 hp motor. The motor is continuous duty rated motor so I dont have to worry about run time. The pump and motor can move 220 gallons per hour which exceed the 180 gallon flow rate of the 1000 series Racor filter. I dont know if I need to put a gate valve on the pump to choke it down or if the Racor will do that for me. The motor pulls about 7 amps, and Ill have it wired in to the inverter circuit so I don have to worry about having shore power or the generator running if I want to transfer fuel. The rotary vane pump is self priming and is pretty close to bullet proof. This is very long life pump made by Procon that should give me a long life of reliable service. If for some reason the pump or motor fails me, I have a manual pump plumbed into the system that will handle our fuel transfer needs. I got the idea of the manual pump from a careful builder doing a fine job on building their 55 footer. You can check out Peter and his families boat building blog here: building koloa . If the manual transfer pump fails me I can use one of the four drain valves and another type of manual pump to move fuel. If I dont feel like doing that, I can block the vents and carefully use my air compressor and a regulator to push fuel from tank to tank using the transfer manifolds.

When transferring fuel,the fuel is pulled for one of the four tanks via a four port manifold. After the fuel goes through the filter, pump, and flow meter it is then pushed through a distribution manifold with five valved ports. Depending on what combination of valves is opened is how the fuel will find its way to the desired tank. On the five valve distribution manifold, four valves are for directing fuel to any of the four tanks, and the fifth valve is used for pumping fuel to some place else. If I ever have to give fuel to a stranded boat or get fuel off of the boat for some other reason, the fifth valve will be the way to do it. I actually have a sixth port of the distribution manifold since I did not know from which end I was going to be feeding the manifold. I have the sixth port plugged. All the flexible fuel line Ive been using in the engine room is Coast Guard approved marine fuel hose.

This was a pretty involved project, but Im for sure on the tail end of it and will have it operational within a few days. If I were to do it all over again, I would have paid more attention to how I was going to run the piping while I was building the tanks. A plan would have been nice, but you know how that goes. Stainless steel pipe would have been another good thing, but since Im on a shoe string budget, painted steel pipe will have to do. All the piping has been air tested from the manifolds, through the tanks to the deck fills and vents. Ill probably put 30 gallons of fuel in the system and start moving fuel around to clean the tanks. The next part of the fuel system to build is the delivery system and returns for the main engine and generator. Ill be starting on the delivery system this week.

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Fuel transfer system complete

The fuel transfer system is complete, and I dont have to do any more work on it. Well, I guess a persons definition of "any more work" should be discussed over a beer sometime. I do have to decide which electrical circuit I am going to use and make that connection. I only have one circuit ran to the engine room so far ( lights) , but Im going to be installing some more circuits in the next week or so as I am beginning to do some design with Kevin Morin ( www.metalboatbuilding.org) on the electrical system.

I backed my service truck in to the shop and pumped 30 or so gallons of fuel into tank #4 . I temporarily wired a plug end on to the fuel pump transfer switch and once I made sure I had the correct valves open ( I need to label the tanks), I turned the pump on. It took a about a minute for the pump to pick up the fuel, but once the the fuel hit the flow meter the sound of the pump changed and the flow meter started clicking off tenths of gallons. It felt good to finally have a system up and running.

To make sure things were as they appeared, I checked the amperage draw on the pump. The pump is only pulling 5 amps, which is lower than its full load rating. I also ran the pump for five minutes to check the flow rate. The flow rate of the pump is just about 220 gallons per hour based on my five minute run time. The flow rate I measured is is exactly as advertised by the manufacturer. The 1000 series Racor filter is rated at 190 gallons per hour maximum flow, so I have to figure out what is happening with the measured flow rate of the pump and the maximum flow rate the filter is advertised as capable of. At a first glance, I would have figured that the filter can only physically allow 190 gallons per hour of flow through it given the micron size of the filter media. I might put in a call to Racor and ask their opinion. A gate valve would choke down the flow rate and give the pump some head to work against. Ive always felt that pumps live longer if they have some head to push against.

I want to install a vacuum gauge on the filter to monitor when it begins to clog. I think Ive seen Racors with a vacuum gauge in the "T" handle, and given how Ive plumbed things, that looks like a good option.

After I had ran the electric pump for a half hour or so, I closed a valve, and opened the two valves for the emergency manual transfer pump. I pumped about five gallons to see how it worked, and Im pleased to say it worked fine. I will say that whenever one of the kids makes it to ye ole shit list, they can meet me in the engine room to manually transfer a 100 gallons of fuel.

It really feels good to finally have a system up and running. Because I now have all the fuel pipe work completed, some of the smaller jobs will begin to fall in to place. I can now install the generator in its final resting spot vs rolling it around the engine room on 3/4" pvc pipe. Once the generator is set, I can finish the conduit run for my AC in the engine room, and so on and so on....

Now that I have fuel running through the tanks, I will continue on my schedule and build the fuel system for the main engine and generator. This is not nearly as complex or costly as the transfer system, so hopefully Ill have that up and running in a week. Ill fire the engine once I have all the fuel parts in place.

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