Tige Piggyback ballast upgrade. Thoughts?

[bryancm]

Hey y'all,

Thinking of adding this to my factory ballast system.

http://www.wakemakers.com/tige-piggy...upgrade-1.html

Any thoughts on it? Sounds like it will fill okay, but might drain a bit slower. From my understanding, the OEM pumps will fill the bag first, then when its roughly 1/3 full, the gravity will push the water into the hard tank and eventually create enough back pressure and continue filling the newly added #750 bag. The draining pump is attached to the hard tank, so water will have to drain into the hard tank and I assume this will be slower. I considered adding a T at the thru-hull port and just adding another pump but I believe I was told that the 3/4" opening in the hull would limit me and I wouldn't see a big decrease in fill time. Obviously if I had a separate draining pump, that would speed up that end of things. Just seems like it would be an easy/cheap/quick upgrade at the expense of slow drain times.

Thoughts? Anyone know how much ballast comes in the 2010 Z1 factory ballast?

[mdamon]

I used this setup last year on my 2012 RZR, it worked ok, but draining took forever. I quickly added aerator pumps between the bag and the hard tank to drain the bags faster and this worked much better.

This year I added two more pumps for filling the bags separate from the hard tanks (using a t adapter on the existing intakes) and then used the two pumps that I had feeding the bags to the hard tank as dedicated drain pumps for the bags. This was an easy change from the piggybank setup, so If you don't want to add four new pumps right away, going with the piggyback setup is a good way to go, then you can easily upgrade later.

[skippabcool]

Nothing against wakemakers, but I would check with Chpthril. He may have some custom plug and play stuff.

[Duncan]

Nothing against wakemakers, but I would check with Chpthril. He may have some custom plug and play stuff.

Agreed.

Another cost savings approach. Buy the biggest pair of sacks that will fit the rear compartment and fill them manually for one season. Then next season, buy pumps and get them plumbed in. We actually ran manual fill 1000 lb custom sacks on our RZ2 for two seasons until they were plumbed. It was fine and spread out the upgrade cost.

All my ballast stuff has been through Chpthrl

[bryancm]

I feel like I owe you guys some drinks or something. Way to easy to get some good advice here (and quick!). I already have 1 Fly High 50x24x24 (1100#) and 1 Fly High 50x20x20 (750#) that I filled manually on my old 21v. I know the bigger one won't get full, but it should get the job done. I was hoping to use them. If I could just piggyback them off the existing pumps for filling and then maybe add 1 pump for each bag to help with the draining (as MDamon suggested), that might be a pretty cheap solution for this season. I'll PM Chpthrl now about the retorfit and see what he thinks.

Again, Thanks!

[chpthril]

Ok, help my memory here. 09 was the 1st year for the in-floor tanks, on the Z1, so im guessing your 2010 Z1 has only the base level 900# setup, no surf sacs on top of the in-floor tanks.

Man, I hate piggy-back setups in boats with aerator pumps. They do not fill good nor drain well. It can be done, but its not as easy. The way Tige routed their surf sac system is pretty decent. Fill and drain volume is slow, mainly due to the amount of water, but it works pretty well. If it were me, I would try to replicate the hose routing that Tige uses. Now, the ideal setup is to add dedicated pumps for the supplementary sacs. This can be done by either tying into the factory pumps electrically so they all run at the same time, or give the sacs their own switch so they can be filled interdependently of the bass level system. This offers a little more flexibility for those that use the ballast for surf and wake-boarding.

[bryancm]

Correct. The boat has the 900# setup. Rear ballast tanks are under the floor. No bags.

[bryancm]

Chpthril- If i tied into the existing system electrically and added dedicated aerator pumps for the fill/drain of bags, can I tie into the existing thru-hull ports? In other words, can I do it without drilling through the boat? It's in a slip with a lift but getting under the boat is a no-go for now.

[bryancm]

NM- Just saw that is what mdamon did and apparently works. I thought someone told me that the thru-hull 3/4" opening was too much of a limiter to add two pumps to one inlet.

[chpthril]

NM- Just saw that is what mdamon did and apparently works. I thought someone told me that the thru-hull 3/4" opening was too much of a limiter to add two pumps to one inlet.

Typically what we do is stagger the pumps. T the new pump for the port side sac with the starboard side fill pump and so forth. When filling for surfing, these two pumps will generally not be running at the same time.

[bryancm]

Eureka! That might be the best solution right there!

[Ewok]

Take a look at my thread, sounds like you want to do this:

http://www.tigeowners.com/forum/show...lus&highlight=

[bryancm]

Awesome job Ewok! That is in fact what I think I might do with the exception of the hard tank vent -> new bag portion. I think I will just T-off the original input thru-full, add another tsunami, hose with check valve, to new bag. Add another pump at drain, check valve and route to opposite side of boat. Add another hose for vent with check valve.

Few questions-

1. When adding check valves, where is the best place to put them. You have a pump, then hose, then the check valve, then more hose to bag? Is there any perfect place for the check valves to be?

2. For the draining, do you just run hose from bottom of bag, through the lockers stern wall, then pump, more hose, then check valve, then hose to thru-hull on opposite side?

3. Does doing all of this require new thru-hulls for each new vent and drain? Seems like if you were running a new vent line for new starboard bag, it could cross around and through transom to port side and tie into existing hard tank port vent (assuming each vent line contains a check valve). Also, if you are draining just the starboard new bag and it is joining the port hard tank draining thru-hull, it would seem that it should have no flow restrictions if the port hard tank is not draining simultaneously. Probably something I am missing here.

4. What is the purpose of the loops in the hoses and where should those be?

I am starting my shopping list for Chpthril right now and drawing diagrams. I am super excited to get going on this project.

Thanks in advance for the many questions forthcoming.

[Ewok]

Awesome job Ewok! That is in fact what I think I might do with the exception of the hard tank vent -> new bag portion. I think I will just T-off the original input thru-full, add another tsunami, hose with check valve, to new bag. Add another pump at drain, check valve and route to opposite side of boat. Add another hose for vent with check valve.

Few questions-

1. When adding check valves, where is the best place to put them. You have a pump, then hose, then the check valve, then more hose to bag? Is there any perfect place for the check valves to be?

I added my check valves as the hoses were traveling up from the pumps before they started back down, so they could hold some water and keep the pumps primed.

2. For the draining, do you just run hose from bottom of bag, through the lockers stern wall, then pump, more hose, then check valve, then hose to thru-hull on opposite side?

The drain hose comes off the bottom rear of the bag, through the hole I cut in the aft locker area, into a pup right there, then the pump sends that water up and across to the other side of the boat to prevent passive draining.

3. Does doing all of this require new thru-hulls for each new vent and drain? Seems like if you were running a new vent line for new starboard bag, it could cross around and through transom to port side and tie into existing hard tank port vent (assuming each vent line contains a check valve). Also, if you are draining just the starboard new bag and it is joining the port hard tank draining thru-hull, it would seem that it should have no flow restrictions if the port hard tank is not draining simultaneously. Probably something I am missing here.

I added 1 new pair of thru-hulls for the drain pumps for the bags and I kept the factory hard tanks with their own drains. The factory hoses are 3/4" and the new hoses I ran were 1" so they had a better flow. A handy byproduct of the hard tanks venting into the sacs is that they help drain the sacs as well with a siphon effect. I didn't plan for that but it helps drain the side a bit faster. I added check valves for the vent lines for the bags so the drain pumps would create a vacum and suck the bags flat, since I store my boards and wet life jackets in the lockers on the drive to/from the lake.

4. What is the purpose of the loops in the hoses and where should those be?

The loops are supposed to prevent passive draining from the fill pumps to the bags, but the lean of the boat when heavily ballasted forced me to put in check valves as well, and that has cleared up that issue.
I am starting my shopping list for Chpthril right now and drawing diagrams. I am super excited to get going on this project.

Thanks in advance for the many questions forthcoming.

I answered your questions in red above.

[Ewok]

The one thing I am doing this spring to help improve the system a little is I'm routing the factory drain hoses to the opposite side of the boat to prevent passive draining from the bag, through siphon effect, through the drain of the hard tank. Yes there is enough water pressure from the full sacs on top of the hard tanks to have a good amount of water dribble out the factory drain. I didn't believe it until I saw it happening.