Customer: "Rod, I need your help quickly."

Me: "What's the problem?

Customer: "My wife was opening the overboard discharge seacock and the piping snapped off."


There are some materials we simply do not use below water and one of those is PVC. This seacock was positioned and installed in such a manner that to open the valve you essentiually used your upper arm as a bracing point on the hose. While this customer was 18 miles off shore they went to open this valve and SNAP. Lucky for the owner his wife was able to close the 1.5" seacock before it was too much of a problem.


I now had the lovely chore of extracting the snapped off piece of PVC, without damaging the seacock threads, and re-plumbing it with the correct bronze alloy.


Marelon is really one of the only plastics suitable for below waterline application. Please DO NOT use PVC. BTW this was a factory installation from back when this builder chose to ignore the ABYC standards. Think your builder is doing it correctly? Think again....