I’m always looking for a good pump, since the nature of having a boat is having to stave off water being in the boat at some point. I have a couple of manual bilge pumps, and of course a couple of powered ones permanently installed in the right places. But you can always use something more portable.
While doing some random searches, I stumbled across a great idea from the folks at Rule – the iL500 Portable Pump. It’s a portable pump that is submersible, can be used in-line, has battery clamps for quick use, comes with hose and a nozzle for spraydowns, and can be used for both water and diesel.
I think it’s a great pump to have around when you happen to be away from the dock and need to get water out of somewhere hard to reach, or if you want to use the included nozzle to spray down an area – my boat’s not big enough to rank a dedicated spraydown system.
They also built it so you could use it in-line – connect a section of hose before the pump, and down inside, say, a tank or hard to reach area, and then the other side of the pump would be plumbed into wherever you wanted to transfer the liquid.
The included roll-flat hose, and convenient spray nozzle that clamps down on the flat hose are a nice convenience, as is the strainer for the non-in-line configuration. It would be nice if they had a kit or option to replace the battery terminal clamps with a standard 12VDC cigarette adapter for safer connections, and without having to find your battery terminals. You could always chop the cable and do that yourself I suppose.
I found it online at West Marine, but it’s only sold in the “kit” version which includes all of the extras above. You can find it elsewhere as well, but I order so much from them it was more convenient to get it in the weekly shipment ?
