Plastic seacocks & thru hull fittings

[Vedat Midilli]

Has anybody replaced or removed (for maintenance) the plastic seacocks & thru hull fittings that Beneteau uses for black water tank discharge. Are they and their installation method safe enough? Do they have a life span? It is said to be around 5 years. Of course these questions might be asked for the other metal seacocks which I am not sure if they are DZR bronze.

I hope sharing your experiences and thoughts on this important issue will be of high interest to other members of the group.

[James Taylor]

Funny you should mention this. We just (May 3rd) replaced the leaking plastic seacock on our 2008 Beneteau 43 (#19). Not sure why Beneteau decided to install these plastic seacocks other than cost saving. Ours was the forward head macerator discharge seacock. Boat was hauled and seacock replaced with bronze seacock. I inspected the removed plastic seacock and found that the internal rubberized gasket had failed thus leaking at the base of seacock. Of all the thru hulls to use plastic, why the macerator? This fall when we haul our B43 I will replace the salon heads plastic macerator seacock with a bronze seacock as a precautionary sanitary measure. So far that one is holding up.

James

[Vedat Midilli]

Hi James,

Mine is also a 2008 Beneteau Oc. 43. Your experience with leaking plastic sea cock confirms replacing time has come for 2008 or older owners.

Was it a sea water or black water leak? What brand bronze sea cock did you use, and what size? If possible could you give information about removing and installation stages? Finally, if you can put a photo of your new forward seacock,  that would be great.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

 

Vedat

[James Taylor]

Vedat

We were enroute (returning to Virginia from Bahamas) so we had the work done by St Augustines Marine Boatyard in Florida. When we realized we had the leak we evacuated the tank (macerator) and stopped using that head to avoid having blackwater, and its malodorous contents, get into our bilge. Once on the hard the tech removed sanitation lines from the main waste discharge seacock (blackwater) and the macerator (blackwater) seacock. He removed the main waste discharge line to make it easier to access the macerator discharge secock. After removing both lines from seacocks he unscrewed the plastic seacock and replaced it with a high quality bronze seacock ( I am at home and the papers are at the boat, sorry). Not sure of the size but if you are in Europe your boats may be a different size than ours. Took tech maybe 45 minutes to remove and replace seacock once boat was on hard. We splashed the boat and checked for leaks and were on our way. If you are ever in need of work in northern Florida I would highly recommend this boatyard. They have some very good techs and their pricing is very fair.Since the old seacock was plastic and cheap it was easy for the tech to simply unscrew it almost by hand, no kidding.

I will replace the other plastic seacock (salon next to hot water heater) myself this fall/winter and will take photo's etc if you have not replaced yours by then. I am not going to wait until the other seacock starts to leak. Trust me, that 2nd plastic seacock is eventually going to fail. I am pretty sure the odor Hegyesi mentions in his post is coming from his leaking plastic seacock (leaking blackwater into his bilge) and one other owner wrote that he sprayed wd 40 on the handle and it stopped the leak. Glad it worked for him but replacing those plastic seacocks with bronze is the only real solution in my opinion. Our boat has the white sanitation hose and the boat smells fine. No boat smells or any of that. We have always fresh water flushed on this boat. I completed that modification to the boat myself and it was a relatively easy and straightforward modification. There should be many many years of no boat smells if we control our discharge valves, macerators,intake waters and keep a clean bilge with the white sanitation lines currently installed.

I plan to go to the boat this weekend. I will take a photo of the new seacock but it is pretty much a high quality bronze seacock to match up with bronze thru hull Beneteau installed. nothing fancy but not the cheap brass.

James B43#19 "RaJean"

[Vedat Midilli]

Thank you so much James. I appreciate your detailed reply. Unfortunately I am quite far away from Florida. I live in Istanbul, Turkey. It's not easy to find proper parts and good techs here. That's why I am asking the size and type of the sea cock and the photo. If you are happy with it and it matched well, it will be OK for my B 43 too. However I attached photos of my both seacocks to check if Beneteau USA & Europe uses same parts.

As I understand from your explanation, you didn't replace plastic thru hull fitting. A thru hull replacement would need to be sealed with Sika 291 or similar, and requires app. 24 hrs for proper curing.

Thanks again.

Vedat

[James Taylor]

Vedat

That is some set up you have there with the platic thru hulls. The plastic seacock on my boat is just like the one in the picture "Harry" submitted under Stephen Hegesi"s "Odors" post. I have a bronze thru hull with a plastic threaded seacock. The screws you see in Harry's photo hold the seacock together.

In your photo the bilge is not discolored and your seacock/thru hulls do not appear to be leaking.That may be a better design than what we are getting here.  Hauling the boat, removing thru hulls and replacing the parts can get expensive and time consuming. If they are not leaking why take them out? If one fails in the future you can always shut that head down and use the other head then replace them both when you haul the boat to replace the leaking thru hull or at seasons end. The only reason I will be replacing mine this fall is I plan to haul our boat for the winter this year to paint bottom next spring. The bronze threaded seacock cost about $70US so it is a minimal expense. "if it aint broke don't fix it" is a quote you may wish to consider here, those thru hull valves might give you a lot more service, or they might not!!! Who knows.

James

[Vedat Midilli]

Thanks, James. I'd prefer a bronze thru hull to my plastic one.