Maintaining the shower/sink sump pump

General maintenance discussion.
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ARPE
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Feb 20, 2017 7:02 pm
Location: Miami Beach, FL

Maintaining the shower/sink sump pump

Post by ARPE » Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:10 pm

The sump pump that gets fresh water from shower, sink or AC units has to pump out soap, hair, food scraps, etc. Some boaters only deal with this maintenance when the system clogs or when they end up with a stinky sink...

I learned that regular maintenance to the sump pump is required the hard way, when I heard the noise of mine running during a time that it should be off. At that time I did some google searches and realized that this sump pump is not something that you can simply forget about.

This summarizes how different users explained their cleaning procedure:
  • Periodically pour half a cup of hydrogen peroxide from each location, wait an hour and pour a gallon of water,
  • Pour bleach/drano into the sink or shower drains,
    There are several community members that strongly recommend against this practice because bleach hardens the rubber used in pipes and pump check valve
  • Some users remove the plastic cover from the sump pump and wash the pump with powder cleaner (Ajax or Commet)
    Personally I do not like the idea of using abrasives in the interior of the pump...
  • Dishwasher soap (Dawn)
    The users that mentioned it wash the pump with boat out of water, dishsoap seems bad for waterways
  • StarBrite seasafe bilge cleaner
  • Mixture of white vinegar and baking soda
Regardless of the product used the majority of users also seem to inspect their sump pumps on regular basis. There is a hair screen in it that deserves attention...


I ended up adopting a routine that I execute every two months as follows: (1) visually inspect the pump without opening the transparent plastic cover looking for foreign debris, (2) pouring about a cup of hydrogen peroxide on the shower and a cup on the sink and flushing them without a gallon of water one hour after by opening the shower and the faucet. This is it! 8-)

If any of you recommend a different technique, please post here as a reply to improve our best practices database.
2018 Bavaria R40 Coupe, D6-370
2015 Regal 35 Sport Coupe, D3-220 - Sold

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