Winterize a Jabsco Circulation Pump

Jeff: Thanks for watching jabscotech.com. I'm Jeff Lander.

Mike: And I'm Mike Irving.

Jeff: And today we're going to show you how to winterize your cyclone circulation pumps.

Mike: Now check these out. These pumps are a little quirky when it comes to winterization, mainly because the fact that they're not self-priming. So, there's a couple ways you can do it. You can either pour the fluid right into the pump head while the pump’s running or go ahead and take the feed hose off where the feed is and pour the propylene glycol right into the feed hose.

Jeff: This is a special edition of jabscotech. We're actually going to head out to Salem Harbor, get down and dirty, go on the boat, The Gauntlet, and show you how it's done. Let's get at it.

Mike: Here's the seacock we're working with today. It’s coming over plumbed to the sea strainer. Then to the cyclone pump. Which then feeds the air conditioning unit. All right, we're going to go ahead and winterize that cyclone pump we talked about in the office. You're going to need a nut driver or a screwdriver, a funnel, and a gallon of antifreeze. What we're going to do is we're actually going to take that hose off the seacock after that seacock is closed – that’s key right there – and we're going to put the hose right up into the funnel and pour the antifreeze right down that funnel. It's going to circulate through the system. We're going to show you how to do it in this next clip; we can't talk because we actually have this pump hooked up to an AC unit; the AC unit's noisy, but we'll show you how to do it.

Step 1: Close the seacock.

Step 2: Remove hose clamp.

Step 3: Remove hose from seacock.

Step 4: Place funnel into the hose and pour the pink antifreeze while the pump is running. The line that runs to the AC unit starts off white and then it will turn pink with antifreeze.

Don’t forget to reconnect the hose/hose clamps when you’re done.

Mike: Because this is hooked up to an AC unit, it's going to keep on running for a little bit longer. Right now, you've got antifreeze from the sea strainer, into the pump, out through the hose, and into the AC unit.

So that was a pretty cool afternoon on The Gauntlet. We showed you how to winterize one of our cyclone pumps. So, Jeff, what’d it take?

Jeff: It was easy, Mike. Took about 15-20 minutes, if that. All you need is a funnel and a gallon of that propylene glycol. What we did, we closed the seacock, disconnected the hose, lifted it up, put the funnel on top of the hose, and then poured some propylene glycol down into the funnel, down the hose, so that could gravity feed the pump.

Mike: Now the pump was running as you want to push it through the entire system. In our case it was hooked up to an AC unit. We want to make sure that we winterize the entire AC unit as well. So, I'm Mike Irving.

Jeff: And I'm Jeff Lander.

Mike: Thanks a lot for watching this episode of jabscotech. There'll be more videos coming up.