Bilge cleaning recipe
Milt's bilge cleaning soup sounds quite a bit like mine -- I like the addition
of the lemon juice though and I'll try that next time. A gallon of Clorox is
a lot of bleach and you don't need nearly that much. The detergent is what is
really doing the job on the oil. One thing I do is use hot water. I use the
concoction to clean the bilge area with a short handled car wash brush and
then pour the remaining unused mixture into the bilge to do its magic.
One word of caution. Milt should really be filling his bucket half way with
water FIRST and then adding the chems, especially the Clorox. NEVER pour
water into the undiluted chems - the resulting splash will be chems. One
should ALWAYS pour chems into water. Finally, there is no need to use
Clorox-brand bleach. The cheap store brand laundry bleach will do just fine
in this application. Read the label...its all the same stuff. Pool bleach
will also work fine, although its much stronger than Clorox.
Regards,
Randy Pickelmann
MORNING STAR
lying in Clearwater, FL
www.CruisingMorningStar.com
Keep in mind, that TriSodium Phosphate (TSP) is the basis for all detergents. It is what gives detergent the cleaning power. Might be just as effective, and cheaper to use TSP, instead of a commercially prepared detergent.
TSP is available in most hardware stores and many grocery stores and drug stores.
Rudy
Briney Bug, Panama City, Fl
I cleaned my bilges using hot water and TSP on my last fiberglass
boat. (I also used DSP but that was just laying around and not 100%
sure I needed it. The "D" is for "di" just for xompleteness sake.)
They were NOT CLEAN....
Did NOT have to use bleach.
Used TSP, hot water and let it sit at the dock for a week while I went
to work.
Was not perfect, but what remained was much more manageable. (I wanted
bilges one could eat off of but your need may be different than
mine! :-)
And, my guess for that person who does not want to remove the cat
engine to clean the wood bilge beneath it, a concentrated TSP / water
mixture may be all you need. And a bottle brush, with a line on each
end. Then you and another can grab each end and run the brush back and
forth under the engine until whatever gunk comes out stops coming
out.... Just a thought...
Lee
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So a question with the Bilge soup concoctions everyone mentions.
How are
those that use these mixtures getting them out of the bilge after they
have
done their magic. Many are toxic and/or phosphate laden and of course now
have oil in suspension so I assuming you are not using a bilge pump and simply
pumping it into the water. Some might also be flamable so using non-spark
arrested motor driven devices might not be wise...
How about disposal?
Joel
Wilkins
m/s Miss Magoo
C-45, #98
Indian Rocks Beach, FL
Hey all...
Stuck in Rhode Island and wanting to head south and I have a problem with my
starboard transmission and thought I would ask my fellow T&T members for any
info they might have tor a source for a new, used or parts for a Kanzaki
KM5A transmission...
Thanks
Jay E Wigginton
M/V SAILS
Stuck in Warwick, RI
How are
those that use these mixtures getting them out of the bilge
after they
have done their magic?
Possibly the same way they get rid of the oil ladened bilge water, wait for darkness, look to see if anyone is watching...
Just kidding you guys and gals, at least to most of you all.
Rudy
Briney Bug, Pamama City, Fl
Joel
A small battery powered bilge pump (that i use to empty the water from
the tender) and the gallon milk containers that i collected from my
neighbors..
Never said it was easy...
:-)
Lee
On Oct 27, 2010, at 21:15 , Joel Wilkins wrote:
So a question with the Bilge soup concoctions everyone mentions.
How are
those that use these mixtures getting them out of the bilge after they
have
done their magic. Many are toxic and/or phosphate laden and of course
now
have oil in suspension so I assuming you are not using a bilge pump
and simply
pumping it into the water. Some might also be flamable so using non-
spark
arrested motor driven devices might not be wise...
How about disposal?
Joel
Wilkins
m/s Miss Magoo
C-45, #98
Indian Rocks Beach, FL
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[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pkcs7-signature which had a name of smime.p7s]
I agree with the hot water.....just like dishwater, it helps dissolve the
oil.
Dishwashing detergent like Dawn would also be an alternative surfactant.
Cheap basic chemistry vs designer products!
As far as bacterial action...I do believe that the bilges are an aerobic
environment with lots of oxygen present (otherwise you would not go down
there!)
I do remember that oil recyclers used to add acid...sulphuric maybe??
because it caused the mixture to heat up.
From: "Randy Pickelmann" rwp_48@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 9:14 AM
To: trawlers-and-trawlering@lists.samurai.com
Cc: miltbaker@mindspring.com
Subject: T&T: Bilge cleaning recipe
Milt's bilge cleaning soup sounds quite a bit like mine -- I like the
addition
of the lemon juice though and I'll try that next time. A gallon of Clorox
is
a lot of bleach and you don't need nearly that much. The detergent is
what is
really doing the job on the oil. One thing I do is use hot water. I use
the
concoction to clean the bilge area with a short handled car wash brush and
then pour the remaining unused mixture into the bilge to do its magic.
One word of caution. Milt should really be filling his bucket half way
with
water FIRST and then adding the chems, especially the Clorox. NEVER pour
water into the undiluted chems - the resulting splash will be chems. One
should ALWAYS pour chems into water. Finally, there is no need to use
Clorox-brand bleach. The cheap store brand laundry bleach will do just
fine
in this application. Read the label...its all the same stuff. Pool
bleach
will also work fine, although its much stronger than Clorox.
Regards,
Randy Pickelmann
MORNING STAR
lying in Clearwater, FL
www.CruisingMorningStar.com
How are
those that use these mixtures getting them out of the bilge after they
have
done their magic. Many are toxic and/or phosphate laden and of course now
have oil in suspension so I assuming you are not using a bilge pump and
simply
pumping it into the water. Some might also be flamable so using non-spark
arrested motor driven devices might not be wise...
This post seemed to need a better response so here is mine.
The overall idea is to get the bilge clean, not to dilute the dirt.
First, don't use the chemical soup.
Add a little water if it is near dry. Scrape or brush as much as you can to
get a soup. Pump manually to jugs (milk gallons).
Get the jugs off the boat.
Scrape again with dry absorbents, again off the boat.
When you are down to no soup left and all the scalies and stuff off that you
can, then sparingly use green cleaners
to wet and then dry. Do it again if necessary.
Although this sounds like a lot of work (and it is), you will have to do it
anyway with any other cleaner. Minimizing the liquid both the bilge water
and the cleaner is more effective and in the end, less work.
Oh, BTW, it might be a better idea to find and fix whatever made the mess in
the first place before doing any of the above.
Richard
I have found that using a high pressure washer that makes really hot
water and has a soap dispenser really worked well when I helped clean
up the bilge on a 60+ foot sea ray that the marina had taken in trade.
(Used TSP as the soap!)
The marina set up the bilge pumps to drain to 55 gal drums (outside
the hull and we filled two. (The boat was out of the water!)
The rest of the cleaning was wipe down with towel-type rags.
Bilge was really clean after that, and the leak(s) causing the mess
were quite easy to ID and then fix. (Used adult diapers to catch what
was leaking until they could be fixed.
The boat sold for about 20K more than the initial estimate once all
the bilges were clean, leaks repaired, and some waxing and polishing
was done.
Did this all over one 3 day weekend...
What i got for this? My fee for storage the following year was
discounted a lot.
Lee
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