Need help designing custom ballast system

[mainelaker]

I have looked at a bunch of posts regarding custom ballast systems & it is obvious there are many ways to skin a cat. I am thinking of a 4 bag set up for my Centurion.

My main design goals are ease of use, speed for fill & drain as well as low cost. I have four Skylon fat buddies that I will use to start with b/c they are just sitting around collecting dust. I am thinking one in each locker out back & one under each front seat. I realize I won't be able to fill the front ones to capacity & may eventually have to go with the fly high under seat sack.

The plan is to run 4 Tsunami 1220 pumps for fill & four Tsunami 800's to drain. I plan on running a scupper in the hull instead of the factory thru hull fitting from my center ballast so I can fill while idling through my no wake zone. I will run a manual ball valve off the intake to shut down for emergencies. I would like to run all four bags off individual switches so I can fill & drain each bag independently.

Will one pick up in the hull be enough to supply all four pumps? I will need to create a manifold for the single inlet line to split into four inlets, this would be the best place to mount the inlet pumps I think? Can I use less than four pumps, would it be quick enough or do I need one pump per bag to fill? I also imagine I will need some check valves in the vent/empty lines to prevent draining? Can I run two pumps per bag with one pump being fed from the inlet in the center or rear of the boat & then one pump with a line out to a thru hull that would act as a drain & vent? Better yet canI run a pump or two on the manifold from the inlet then run a pump per bag to empty reducing my cost even more?

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

[wesgardner]

Here's what I did - it's straight-forward with only check valves to stop the water from running back out of the "fill" lines...fill times are pretty quick...you could use one pump to fill more than one bag but obviously the fill times will slow down and you'll need to install some sort of "throttling" valve as they probably won't fill at the same time...

Mine is very trouble free - when the sac gets full, water runs out the "drain" line indicating "full" - simple as that

Your call, you can install as much gear/plumbing/valves as you want...I run four fill pumps and four drain pumps because it works

http://forums.wakeboarder.com/viewtopic.php?t=52208